For a city that ‘never sleeps’, everything closes on a weekday at 1am, with a few exception of some places being 24 hours or bars until 4am. I had a massive sleep in yesterday, did my laundry at a traditional chinese laundry and walked around the city at night. Finally got around to doing White Castle, which like the city-counterpart, was largely disappointing. Walked down 42nd to Madison Square Garden which is a stadium I need to go to and see Depeche Mode. Went down 4th Ave to Madison Square Park, which was not too bad. Journeyed up to Central Park and did a mad slash in the middle of the park, and avoided dimly lit areas to keep myself stab-free, a condition which I really enjoy.

There’s some really cool department stores that were closed and I will endeavour to check out sometime.

Today I will probably go to Madison Sq to pick up my tickets if I can, and go to Central Park for a walk, then go to the Zoo there, or Ripley’s, or go to Rockafella/Chrysler/Empire State, I dunno.

First impressions of NYC: Parts of it ghetto, the subway is dirty but amazingly works, Times Square is massive and exactly what you expect… Tomorrow I think I will do some laundry and check out Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Will upload photos tomorrow.

The internet at our hostel cost too much…

We landed in las vegas yesterday afternoon, a sharp change in temperature, from the windy cold 19 to hot hot heat of 32. The final day of SF was spent moving around Union Square, known to the locals for it’s shopping. I had advertured around before but never into the massive department stores, the Macy’s here being the biggest in the West Coast, and the Ferrari Store the biggest in the US. Shopping is never a good thing, I bought another pair of jeans for 34 US, the equivalent back home would be 150 AUD+. It’s a hassle to carry, but it’s a saving worth it, and increasing my gamut of jean colours. Not much else was done in SF, I suppose we could have bike rode down to the park, or up to see the red wood trees, but I think that was enough biking on that trip, still the best thing done up to this point. There was another department store I went to, Nordstorm was attached to it, but the 4th floor has this massive dome like structure which reminded me of italian architecture, and in this dome had lots of room with seats. I took a few photos when the mall police wasn’t looking.
I really like SF, it reminded me much of Melbourne. The weather there is very much like Melbourne, windy and cold. The powerlines for the cable cars are similar to Melbourne’s tram system. The overall layout of the city is grid like. The guy at the bike store says he hears that a lot from Aussies, so I’m not the only one.

We left for vegas the next morning, getting a shuttle there. I still don’t know what’s the rules for tipping, I think the guy wasn’t too impressed. Whatever… they should just raise the prices of the ticket from 15 to 20 or whatever, instead of waiting for a tip. In the airport, we waited in a queue through TSA’s new herding rule, having to take shoes off, thick clothing, no liquids blah blah blah. At least I didn’t have to go through the imaging machine where they see your junk. Nathan had to go through, and get patted down, AND get his on-board checked. Karma.

Vegas is totally different. To my surprise pokies were present in the airport, just for that last minute hit, or early hit. I bought tickets for a Cirque De Soleil show, KA which got rave reviews online, and from the descriptions; sounded like an epic show. After buying tickets to that, went for a dip in the Sahara pool (where we are staying), and burnt out my eyes from the cholorine.
KA was amazing. The set was massive, and the show immersive. The stage wasn’t the only place the actors/dancers performed, they got in the thick with the crowd, shooting arrows and what not. The lighting and effects were awesome, and I’m a bit of a lighting/stage nut and some of the stuff they were doing made me think wtf, and also how awesome it would be to design a set like this. The seats themselves where designed with UX planned; they were comfortable and gave a bit of wiggle room, the speakers were integrated with the seat, and the placement of them meant no one’s head was in the way. The stage itself had flamethrowers at the start, and used a huge pneumatic arm to move the stage in angles for the performance, some of the time at  90 degrees so actors had to “climb” the stage. Actors also jumped and ran around the crowd to emulate this massive attack from an army, it was truly immersive and amazing stuff. If you think Cirque is good back home with the travelling tent, this will blow your mind.
We walked around LV Blvd for a while. We got from MGM (where KA was plaining) to Paris  LV, which seemed like a 30 or so minute walk/look around, turns out they’re next to each other on the Monorail. LV is massive, and in the 3 days, I don’t think we’ll even get to have a walk through all the major casinos. I can see myself coming back here with a wad of money and checking out all the casinos though. It’s a shame we won’t get to see it all, but it’s good how the shows here rotate around, there’s at least 5 Cirque shows on at a time, so there’s always something to see, that’s not including the stupid amount of music artists like Australia’s Human Nature, or Celine Dion, and peep shows, cabaret, etc etc.
Girls here are also very pretty, probably not where I’m staying, but closer to the major casinos there’s plentiful amount. That’s just an icing to the cake that the LV experience gives you.

Vegas is sin city, and I like it.

The second day of Vegas was a journey for my collection. I started collecting patches for the trip, as souvenirs and to patch up my bag as a breadcrumb trail. I spent 3 hours trying to find one for the state of Nevada, but only ended up with a Las Vegas one.
We has a visit to several more casinos, Harrah’s, Imperial Palace, Venetian, Caesar’s, Planet Hollywood, Bellagio, a lot of walking and usage of the monorail…
Venetian also had Madam Tussade’s Wax Museum in which we went to. It was also, not quite sure what all the hype is about. Venetian is Venice inspired, with a gondola ride into the casino/shopping district.
Caesar’s is massive, and the forum shop is amazing. There’s a lot of marble work, statues, domes, and massive greek architecture.

The final day in Vegas, we spent the whole day (11 hours or so, waking up at 5am) for a tour of the Grand Canyon. This bus drove from Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam, an amazing man-made feat of engineering, through the paerie land of Arizona until we reached the south rim of The Grand Canyon.
Although the day was long, with much of it stuck in a bus (300 miles or so each way, which is about 4 hours), seeing the Grand Canyon was well worth it, and best explained with pictures which I will post on my flickr.

We still didn’t get to see some of the major casinos, Luxor is one I wanted to go into, Egyptian inspired casino, Circus Circus; where I think fear and loathing was filmed in, and New York New York even though tomorrow we leave for NYC.

Photos:

• Vegas My camera started to overheat, the motor kept shaking, temps got to about 42 degrees. Some pictures hell blurry.
• Stratosphere Camera overheated
• Grand Canyon

We booked for a tour for Alcatraz and Angel Island last week, after given advice from another hostel stayer who said that these tours get packed fast. Luckily we got into this tour, when we got there the sign said next available free tickets were a week away.

It was cold, with blistering arctic winds and a nice splash of drizzle. This is the life that convicts had back in the 1930’s. Alcatraz is worth going to, it’s got a nice audio tour and stories of the inmates and plans of how some of the tried to escape, and how they lived their lives. You walk down the cell blocks, and able to get into some of them, look at the Rec yard, kitchen, showers, the whole lot. You also get pooped on by birds, because this island is a breeding sanctuary for them. There’s a lot of history in this island, from the gold rush days, to the prison days, to the Indian take over, and then conservationist natural park.

Angel Island is a big natural park really. And it’s hell boring. The 1 hour tram ride around wasn’t that interesting, basic jist of it; Was a fort, then an Immigration center, now a park. It would probably be better if you had a whole day to hike and explore, you can hire bikes and segways there, but we were limited in time and had enough of the smashing winds ripping my face apart and just wanted to leave. However, from the top of the island, in good conditions, you can get great views from here, with a peak called 5 bridge point where you can see 5 bridges of San Fran from there. Getting a 360 degree panoramic would be awesome.

To get to these two islands, you get ferries, which is always a plus, seeing the city appear bigger and bigger as you close the gap between you and the wharf is great. You also see the rolling arctic cold air pass overhead of San Fran, and go towards it, which from the pictures I’ve posted on flickr here is simply amazing and beautiful.

My ass is on fire, but it was worth it. Today we spent the whole day riding through San Fran, from Union Square to the Piers, up Fort Mason then Fort Point, then over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausilito. It was a long but awesome ride, and seeing San Fran this way is highly recommended. It’s about 4-5 hours riding and 40 dollars, well worth it… the images you get to see is simply amazing. Sausilito is warm and sunny compared to the city of San Fran, and you get to see the artic winds push over the city and engulf these high rise buildings. It’s also got a nice strand with lots of little shops and nick knacks, worth a looksee if you’re ever around these parts.

In the morning I had to get new sunnies, because I snapped the ones I brought. I bought some oakley ones, didn’t really care what model, just ones that fit. I hate having to buy sunglasses over and over, because I keep breaking or losing them. Such a trivial matter but worth 2 lines in this post.

We also went through Chinatown, which was interesting, getting there through cable car. At this point we felt slight discomfort in the nether-regions due to a day of smashing it against rubber. Home seemed like a good choice, but we stopped by possibly the only 7-11 in San Fran. Nathan got a double gulp cup, it’s massive. It’s a slurpee cup of 1.9L, or 64 flouces. It’s a weighty thing, and possibly a reason why Americans tend to be obese. It cost US$2.79, cheap.

We’re going to go to Cheesecake Factory tonight, I love cheesecake.

Tomorrow we’re doing Angel Island and Alcatraz.

Epic View

More Epicness

Red Steel

Invisible Cock!

I win!

Massive

The first impressions of San Fran last night was good. From the 14 hour drive and blogging, crashed very quickly.

The morning was cold, scintillating winds, sharp air with a layer of fog and clouds on the buildings. Beautiful. The streets quickly reminded me of Melbourne, cable cars reminiscent of trams, power line structures graffiti over the heads, and grid like streets marked with well-designed boutiques and showcases. I went to Google Headquarters in Mountain View today for free lunch, and a little tour. The trip itself took an hour and bit on the Caltrain train, with a mad amount of walking and losting to be had before reaching the station.

What’s interesting about these trains is that they’re like the South Coast train line, running ever 40 or so minutes. They have different carriages, I was on the Bike Carriage which reserves the bottom part for bikes, and the top part for seats. Really interesting, because a lot of San Franner’s ride their bikes around, which we intend to do tomorrow on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Google HQ is rad, it’s got the look of a resort, the styling of a uni campus, and a big bunch of nerds. There’s a sand pit volley ball court outside in the courtyard, a replica T-rex with flamingos hanging off it, and giant shark fins randomly placed. Cool. I walked around a few campuses, checked out a bit of their fine cuisine, and bought some google merchanise, a drink bottle, rubix cube and hackey sack. Sadly, I didn’t get to high five Larry or Sergey.

The ride back was better, because I fell asleep.

After coming back to San Fran, I walked back to Union Square and caught a cable car to Fisherman’s wharf. I had to hang off that thing, and boy, I was hanging for dear life. It was fun though, much more enjoyable of a ride than anything in Disneyland. Fisherman’s Wharf was rad, there was a arcade museum there where you could throw some quarters and play things, we played Pong, some Rock’em Sock’em robot and other random things. Then headed up to Pier 39 for a bit. It was a big wharf with lots of shops. I was told to try the clam chowder, which I did, it’s served in a sourdough bread bowl. I felt sick afterwards.

During this sickness feeling, we thought it would be an awesome idea to check Lombard St better known as Crooked St. Only thing is, the whole road felt like it was on top of the friggen biggest hill ever. I almost vomitted clam chowder twice building that epic hill. It was worth it though, heaps nice views from the intersection there.

Thinking that we couldn’t get on a cable car because it would be full, we walked past some people who were waiting for ages, laughing at them for waiting. We walked 7 blocks back to Union Square, just to see them pass us on the cable car. At least the walk was downhill.

Back in the hotel room now, posting, uploading 3 days worth of pictures, so I will be adding all of them in a separate blog post.

Weow.

I try to update as soon as possible but sometimes it doesn’t work out. Right now I’m in San Fran on this crappy wireless that keeps dropping out, but at least it’s free.  I’ll post up pictures later when I’m able to get a stable connection which doesn’t suck ass.

Yesterday we went to Universal Studios; with what was a higher expectation than going into DL. The entrance fee is 69 but you can get a fast pass which was 129. We opted for the fast pass because we got there at 1, after a failed early wake up, and a stop over at an In-and-out burger joint. The pass let you get in front of the line at the rides, so you jumped the queue legitimately, and get reserved seating at the shows. This turned out to be awesome because the lines sucked at DL and I didn’t want that same experience.

In and out burger was awesome. They cook it fresh in front of you, and the counter doesn’t have bullet proof screening, so you actually feel safe in that joint. The burgers were delicious and filling, and the hype about them delivered.

We pathed out the optimum route for Universal, and with the super-awesome-I’m-better-then-you card, jumped the queue for all the rides. It was definitely worth it.

Starting at the Upper lot, we jumped into a Studio Tour. This is rad because it took you through some back lots and showed some neat things in the “business”, special effects and what-not. There’s one backlot with a subway scene that gets you in the thick of it, with water rapids and explosions. This was much more enjoyable than the PG rated DL rides with epic amount of monotous looped music in the background that makes you want to claw your eardrums out.

After the ride we walked down to the Lower lot and combated the Jurassic Park ride. I love Jurassic Park, there’s dinosaurs, paleontologists picking up Triceratops poop looking for rocks, a lawyer getting eaten by a T-Rex, and some kid getting electrocuted from a fence. Anyways, the ride delivered. Water jets, a sharp drop, and lame robotic dinosaurs, I approved. We then did Special Effects tour where they get some kids together to show you how green screen, foley artists and fake blood works. Backdraft was another thing we went to there, talking about some fire movie I haven’t seen because it’s directed by Happy Days Ron Howard, and finally ending on the Mummy ride, which is the opposite of the movie (it was actually good). It was a roller coaster that tossed you around and stuff, and quick movements. At the end of it, you get a standing ovation from the staff there, for doing nothing, a great feeling of spending 129 dollars on ticket admission.

Upper lot was a huge area to conquer. We did the Simpsons Ride, which was an indoor roller coaster, a stationary cart that shakes with a screen that emulates movement for you, Shrek 4-D, Terminator 2: 3D (very outdated because that storyline meant T3 and T4 shouldn’t have happened, but cool as it involved live action as well as the Guvner), Waterworld (which was probably the best thing there), Animal Actors and House of Horrors. We saw a bit of Blues Brothers which didn’t interest us, and Curious George looked like too much running around with little kids, and we all know how I feel about kids, in public areas, in numbers.

Great time at Universal.

Today we left early at 6am for long drive up the Pacific Highway to San Fran from LA. The original plan was to take 2 days, but Nathan fanged it in 14 hours and I’m here in San Fran enjoying the crisp, cold air. Delicious.

On the way we discovered Chickafil, awesome chicken burgers. It was so tasty better than In and Out even. We also discovered Walmart and bought outrageous amount of Pork Rinds, Beef Jerky and unhealthy stuff.

We stopped off at Hearst Castle in the middle of fucking nowhere, to see a castle. Except it’s very inappropriately named, because it’s not a castle, it didn’t fortify anything or defend from attacks, it was a mansion with millions of money invested in it, there was even a zoo at one time. But it’s not a castle, very important for this distinction because I was expecting a Western style castle with portcullis, ramparts, rooks, moats and polearms. What we got was tapestry, marble walls, a lot of naked greek statues, and millions of hours of work put into the mansion. Either way, this was a good break from the trip.

The trip itself was awesome. Seeing the scenic route to San Fran West Coast was great, the landscapes of the sea, ascension of the mountains, farms of California, Mexicans selling fruit on the road, loving life.

I’m gonna head out and have a looksies around SF now. Catchya.

PS: Blogging is effort, but hopefully worth it for your amusement.

PPS: I want Chickafil.

PPPS: I don’t know why the font has changed for this post, but I don’t like it. Someone fix my wordpress!

Yesterday I didn’t do much. Pretty much stayed in the hostel waiting around for 5pm EST to buy nin tickets which failed miserably. Musictoday has to be the worst fucking ticketing sellers ever, none of the old spiral people we knew got tickets, and all we did was rage for several hours. The day wasn’t all wasted though, met  with some Aussies here in the hostel and got together with some other people here, English, Americans, Swedish, Dutch, all together having a couple of throwback beers. Good times.

Today we went to Disneyland. I had no level of expectation for it, and was glad, because it was epic disappointment.We started the whole experience by going through the Main Street, which is mainly stores to buy copious amounts of Disney merchandise at high prices. That’s about the whole reason for this street, there was a street parade on it later on, but it was lame. Target audience isn’t us.

Tomorrowland wasn’t too bad. We did our first ride which was some Invention Innovation thing, and it was bad. The 3D screen didn’t even work, I was seeing double. And the actual clip played was bad too, starring Rick Moranis, the super actor of the 80’s. After this, we got a fast pass to Astro Buzz, a shooting game based on Toy Story. This meant that we had a queue system for us and we could jump the line at an allocated time, which is a neat concept. We did some Future world thing, which went through “our future home”, but really was a massive advert for some home design company. We promptly skipped this and went ot the future gadget part and played with cool stuff like Surface. We played chess, but differently, we rushed moves and played opponent moves to win, so it was a fight basically just to make their moves bad. I won in the end. Cheating is the best. Astrobuzz was fun, we kept spinning the vehicle in circles, which happened to be more fun than actually trying to play the game.

Movement took us to Fantasyland, and into a  sword store. They wouldn’t let us run around Disneyland with a sword so we didn’t buy anything. We did this ride, It’s a small world. It was insane, in a bad way. A 20 minute queue for a 20 minute ride with the same damn loop in the background being drilling into your skull. I don’t know anyone human who could tolerate this ride and still find it fun.

Mickey’s Toontown was next. We went to some Rodger Rabbit ride, waiting in line for 45 minutes, before it broke down in front of us in the line. It was not 45 minutes well invested. Frontierland took us to a ride on a 15 second roller coaster, not worth the 20 minute wait. We also did Pirates of the Carribean which was a water ride and heaps good. Haunted Mansion was nearby, probably New Orleans Square, that was alright too. I found this awesome Nightmare before Christmas store and bought mad gloves and socks, they’re fluffy and black and white and great. I will wear them.

Critter Country was boring, did some Winnie the Pooh ride which made absolutely no sense. Adventureland was last, and by that time we couldn’t be bothered. We did take the train around the place though, and see some of the parade. Our last port of call was to go to Space Mountain which we had a fast pass for, but turns out, it broke. Everything kept breaking, some of the rides we were on were “experiencing” difficulty leaving us waiting in the cart for a while. I have no idea how tight of a ship Disneyland runs, but there’s a lot of queue waiting and rides breaking this time around.

We then thoughts 1 more ride, to be decided between Indy Jones or Nemo. We did nemo, it said that it was a 40 minute wait but  really was at least 1 and a half hours, with some cover band near by singing terrible songs. It was torture, and the ride wasn’t even that good. There’s a reoccurring theme here. We then took a monorail to “downtown” Disney, which was my highlight of the day, because there was awesome legoland, with lego things. I love lego.

Another thing with this trip, KROQ is a radio station we’ve been listening to whilst driving for the last 5 or so days, and we can pretty much predict the setlist. It goes like this:

• Kings of Leon
• Kings of Leon (usually a back to back)
• Phoenix
• Linkin Park
• Linkin Park (usually a back to back)
• Rage Against the Machine/Green Day
• Something random
• Blink 182

The amount of times I’ve heard Kings of Leon this trip, seriously. They play at least 2 songs per hour. 2 songs! It’s terrible, they are a terrible band who deserve no airplay.

Tomorrow will be our last day in LA, and we’re going to hit Universal Studios, which  I hear is better than Disneyland. Word.

gay castle shot with nathan

fistpound the knight

weow!

american weiner

finding nemo ride, it was mainly bubbles

not bad for a p&s

downtown disney, better than downtown la

epic legoness

Downtown LA was a mystery to me this morning. Using the power of the internet, I searched for “things to do in downtown LA” with some hits; Central Library, Fashion District and Chinatown. Using this information, we decided to wing the rest and just go.

The Library wasn’t too bad; it was 8 levels of library ownage and a few galleries in there. There was some Hollywood posters from the 1930-1960’s and a pretty long exhibition by an architect Richard Neutra. It was free and seeing the library and the sheer size of it compared to the ones back in Sydney made the trip worth while.

We walked through Downtown from 1st to some arbitrary number in the street system, and had some lunch at a Mexican place. I had the biggest burrito ever, and it was delicious, filled with lemon rice and pinto beans, sour cram and cheese and a dash of in-house bbq sauce and chicken.

We saw Bunker Hill, Financial District (boring) through to the Fashion District (which was very much rubbish and undeserved of the title of Fashion District) and walked through some homeless ghetto area to get to the Toy District and Little Tokyo. At this point, we have been walking for the better portion of the day and decided that Chinatown would only be a drive through since it was a long way north of where we were. It was a good idea, because that also wasn’t up to scratch. Overall, Downtown LA was pretty much disappointment all around, which pretty much sums up the whole Los Angeles experience.

Disneyland could be the saviour of this place.

Some discoveries:

• Petrol prices have the fraction as a 3rd decimal point, so 285 9/10 mean it’s $2.859 per whatever units they use.
• Orange juice is fake and made from concentrate and give you stomach pains
• There’s heaps of parking in downtown LA, but they’re all hidden parking lots, all of which you have to pay for
• Too much sun leads to sunburn (which I have avoided because I am awesome, but the other guy on the trip got hammered by)
• We were right about turning left on red.

[flickr link]

liberty in LA

sister cities of LA

we were right! about turning right

one of the many alleys of the "fashion district"

this is an american burrito. it is massive.

this is an american burrito. it is full of flavour.

tacos. need to find a place that does fish tacos. (and pork porpoises)

now selling freedom, democracy, and obama towels