Right now we are in Cancun, Mexico, enjoying pretty nice weather as we wind down before the trip back to freezing cold England. But in terms of our blogging progress, we are just about to leave Auckland, over a month ago...
The flight was almost a repeat of the fiasco that ended up with the longest day ever without sleep in Melbourne, so this time we took the pharmaceutical route and took sleeping tablets after we'd finished our first round of in-flight movies. This turned out to work quite well, we both got enough sleep to get by, and before we knew it we'd arrived at LAX. It was still some crazy hour in the morning in US time, and with the sleeping pill lag to contend with as well we weren't exactly on top form as we staggered off the plane.
Everything was going well until we'd spent the best part of an hour waiting at the baggage reclaim; slowly but surely the torrent of luggage slowed to a trickle, and the other passengers had pretty much all gone... but no sign of either our bags. Things went from bad to worse when we asked the Quantas people in the terminal - the idiot that had checked us in in Auckland hadn't given us our baggage tags so we had nothing that they could check in their system to find out what had happened. (Note to anyone going on a plane with checked in baggage - never leave the check in desk without bag tags!)
Arrrggg... we spent another hour queueing and filling in lost baggage claim forms and were dispatched off to our hostel with the promise Quantas would phone each day with a status update. Neither of us were holding our breath.
We had booked to stay in a hostel right on Venice Beach, and it turned out to be a good little place ("Venice Beach Cotel - its like a hotel, but cheaper!", gah!) situated right on Venice Beach prominade.
Fortunately we only had to wait for a couple of hours before they found a room we could take - thank god their customer service was better than Melbourne or we'd have been waiting until the afternoon again. Its a really nice area to stroll around, even in the early hours of the morning! We crashed out and slept for the rest of the day, not really knowing what was going on.
The next day we woke up and took stock of our situation; neither of us had anything else to wear, no toiletries at all, and only one airline toothbrush between us. After harassing Quantas baggage service by phone - who as expected seemed quite oblivious to our missing bags despite it only being 24 hours on - it became clear we'd need to buy some stuff to get by.
(In hindsight we should have should have done so much more before we left the airport - once we'd got some internet we did loads of research on what kind of compensation they will give you if you kick up a fuss. Its well worth googling for this information if you are embarking on a lot of flights this year - knowing your rights in advance makes things a hell of a lot easier than trying to chase it all down after the event!)
Alex took charge (not just because we needed to shop, she'd been to LA before) and we took a stroll down to Santa Monica. The famous pier was a little bleak and closed down as it was the middle of winter, but the walk was great. From there we headed in land to hit the shops along the 3rd Street Promenade. A hundred or so dollars later we had enough bits to get by with.
The next few days passed by in a bit of a haze as we couldn't really plan anything until we had news about the bags. On the third day we managed to get through to the guy that had helped us at the airport, and thank christ he actually knew what he was doing - we gave him a much more detailed description of the bags and within an hour they'd been able to track them down in some random section of Auckland airport.
Our best guess as to what happened was that the guy who checked us in was a) annoyed with us or b) just plain stupid, and had 'forgotten' to put the baggage routing tags on the bags (and therefore had no bag tag receipts to give us.) So the bags just got left around the check-in area before hitting the on-hand (airport talk for lost property?) bags pile in the airport. Anyway, all interesting stuff to know in hindsight, but the best thing was the bags would be flown overnight and would be back with us the next day.
We did more walking for the rest of that day, and explored the canals that give Venice Beach its name:
There were some amazing little houses around there, it looked like a great place to live. People were starting to put up their Xmas lights and decorations, so we had a great day out.
That next day we planned out the rest of our time in the US, ready to book everything the second the bags arrived - obviously still paranoid that Quantas would some how mess that up too. We'd not really explored LA at all yet, so it was about time jumped on the bus and headed over to Hollywood.
We'd picked a pretty special day for it - within about an hour of leaving the heavens opened and it rained solidly for the rest of the day. Hollywood in the rain, without an umbrella, is not a great place to be. We couldn't even see the sign in the hills it was so grim, so we headed inside and went to see the Christmas Carol 3D film instead.
It was a great film and everything - the amazing 3D scenes of Dickensian London made us feel pretty home-sick - but the real highlight happened before the film started. Just as the adverts finished and the film was about to start, the whole screen shot upwards to reveal a load of perma-grinning singers and dancers, complete with Mickey and Minnie mouse. We'd managed to completely miss the fact we'd booked ourselves into some crazy kids Christmas show - even after being given strange jangly wrist bands on the way into the cinema.
Oh well, a few extremely twee Christmas songs later - and after being covered in fake fairly liquid 'snow' - the film finally started!
So LA was a bit of a write-off really, mostly down to the missing bags, and partly due to how impossible it is to get anywhere without spending four hours a day on buses. The different areas are so spread out its a bit disappointing how hard it is to see everything.
Amazingly the bags did show up on time the next day, so we booked up some greyhound tickets and a hostel, and the headed north to San Fransico the day after.
The guide book told us the city was way smaller than LA, and could be walked around in a day. So we set off from our wonderful hostel in downtown to the Golden Gate Park, thinking we could walk back around the coast in a day...
This is before we realised it was about a 15 mile roundtrip - it turned out our map had a section that wasn't to scale (I mean who does that... mean trick to play on tourists) and after about five hours of walking we were still nowhere near getting back! It was a beautiful city to stroll around though, so we loved it despite being knackered after we got a tram home.
We spent the next few days exploring the cheap things to see, like Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. Alex was keen to try the Clam Chowder :
Not really my cup of tea, but Alex loved it... she is definitely winning the game of how many local dishes you can try going around the world. (I'd just snuck off to the BK around the corner before we took that photo :p)
The weather was a bit grim, but we managed to make it up and down the zigzags of Lombard Street without sliding down. That evening we took in a quintessentially San Fran show called Beach Blanket Babylon - Alex had found this online and it looked like a good laugh. Its a really long running satirical musical revue, which is constantly reinvented to poke fun at whatever is in the news at the time. This was hilarious, despite the fact we didn't get some of the more quirky American jokes - and well worth a visit if you are in San Fran.
On the way back home that night it was my turn to sample some classic American fare - I was a bit peckish on the walk home so we grabbed a Philly Cheese Steak from a diner and holy cow is that the best food ever invented?! I'm sure my heart stopped for a few moments as my internal organs fought the waves of lard sweeping through me, but it was worth it for the cheesy-meaty-bready tastiness of it all. Happy days =)
We'd had a string of relatively cheap days in the US so far, so it was about time we slapped down the greebacks and did some tours - first up was Alcatraz. We'd followed some good advice and booked ahead of time to do the night tour - allegedly the best tour in the San Fran area. We'd fluked a perfect day for it to; it was very clear and sunny, so by late afternoon the city was bathed in an amazing orange glow as we set sail across the bay.
This is the view from the island away from the city:
This was one of our favourite tours of the trip, its just so well organised and the audio tour around the prison itself was great. Because we'd done the night trip there weren't that many people around, and we manage to use our London commuter elbowing skills to get the front of the queue to get into the prison, so it was eerily empty as we explored around it.
When we made it back outside the sun had just about set behind the Golden Gate Bridge, and the views were breathtaking :
It was a great trip out, full marks. We walked home from the pier through Union Square (our hostel was just around the corner) and couldn't resist getting caught up in the Christmas spirit with just a week to go until the big day :
The next day we went to see the long awaited Avatar film - in IMAX 3D no less - in the morning. Its undeniably a brilliant film, we both really enjoyed it. As it was the first day of release we had to go during the morning to get a seat, so it was really disorienting coming outside into the sunshine and walking around afterwards!
We'd shelled out the big bucks for our next trip - a full day tour out into the Yosemite National Park :
We'd got lucky on the weather yet again and enjoyed an amazing day out in the crisp mountain air. The tour was a bit of a rush but they managed to pack in loads of the main sites through the park. We've already forgotten the names of everything but this one might be a big rock called El Capitan seen across the valley.
The waterfalls were all running a bit low on water, you can just about make out one of them in the background past the crazy tree :
We got to do a few hours of exploring after lunch, so we did a bit of scrambling to get up close to one of the bigger falls near the visitors centre :
And another one for good luck...
Another amazing trip - it was quite a long bus journey to get out there, but well worth it. The clear day and all the snow made it unmissable.
As we were getting closer to Christmas - and our 'holiday' in the Bellagio - we started winding down again after the big tours. The next day we thought it'd be nice to talk a stroll over the Golden Gate Bridge, but sadly the amazingly unpredictable weather thought better of it.
With not much else to do in the gloom, we hit the town that night and headed up to the bar in the Marriott Hotel for a cheeky beer or two. The mist had cleared a little and the views from the 39th floor bar were great.
(For some reason I couldn't stop thinking we were in scene from Star Wars, is it like the Death Star in Return of the Jedi?)
We hit a few more bars and had a grand old time, but on the way back we broke the cardinal rule of 'never go shopping after drinking', and ended up going a little bit silly in the corner shop...
Ah well, it was Christmas after all =)
We'd come to the end of a great week in San Fransico, so it was time to head back the way we'd come and head to Las Vegas via a one night stop back in LA. Christmas in Vegas deserves its own post, so we'll leave it here - until next time...
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