Last day

Our flight departs in 12 hours, so the countdown is about to begin. All that's needed is one final pack of the suitcases, including a 3rd that has been added so we can fit in all the stuff we bought! :P

Yesterday we went and saw Shrek the Third. It wasn't exactly "fantastic" or anything, but it wasn't bad. Probably around on par with the first couple.

Last night we did one final trip to Costco, basically to pick up some more alcohol to take home :P
I bought one of these bottles of Belvedere vodka - it doesn't look it, but those are 1.75l bottles! :D

As we left we picked up dinner from - of course - Costco. They sell a couple of takeaway items, including 18" pizzas for only $10.


We land at 6am Brisbane time, so I'm hoping I can sleep on the plane tonight, otherwise Friday will be really tough. The flight leaves LAX at 11:20, and the last few nights I've been dead tired by then (my body still seems to be on Eastern time, 3 hours ahead of LA), so I'm half confident I'll sleep.

Today all we want to do (other than pack) is go to the supermarket for a couple of things, including more Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream ice cream. Pity we can't take some home with us :(

I've uploaded the last of the photos, and didn't realise I hadn't linked to the last few yet, so here's everything else I haven't posted links to.

Mont Royal looking over Montreal:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/MontRoyal

Ottawa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Ottawa

Toronto:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Toronto

Niagara Falls:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Niagara Falls

Chicago:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Chicago

So until we get home, that's all, folks!

Resting in Los Angeles

We're back in LA again for a few days of nothing much until we fly out on Wednesday night.

Chicago was nice, if a little rushed.

The weather was against us on Saturday. We had planned on going up the Sears Tower, but it was in the clouds and they were telling everyone that visibility was "Zero". So we had a quick change of plans and headed to an architectural boat tour that we were planning on doing Sunday morning. Despite the weather, they were almost completely booked out, but we got tickets for the 1:30 tour, which left us about an hour or so to pass. The tour was better than we thought, and gives a thorough background of almost every building on the Chicago skyline. It drizzled a little during the tour, but not enough to actually make anything wet.

We'd bought tickets to the White Sox game that night, but were a little concerned about the weather. The website said nothing about the possibilities of the game being cancelled, so we hopped on the subway and headed to the game. We were in the process of finding the Will Call window to pick up the tickets when they announced that it was cancelled! :(

So we headed back towards the hotel, but in the end went to Pizzeria Uno for a (second) Chicago-style pizza :) We'd been to Pizzeria Due (same place, just on the next block) the night before and loved it that much that we wanted to go again. Unfortunately a lot of other people had the same idea - there were many people waiting there with White Sox gear on. In the end we waited over an hour in light rain just to get a table. Yes, the pizzas are that good! :D

Yesterday the inclement weather had passed and we woke to brilliant blue skies. So after grabbing breakfast we headed straight to the Sears Tower. It took almost an hour to get to the Skydeck - again, a lot of other people had the same idea as us. The view was incredible and we could see almost all the way to the horizon. It was very busy, though, so we didn't stay overly long, plus we were getting close to running late getting to the airport. We caught the subway back to the airport, but not without another encounter with one of Chicago's many homeless people.

The flight back was uneventful, other than being too short - Em and I were both engrossed in tv shows on the flight and missed the end of them when we landed :(

So all the real sightseeing portion of our trip is now behind us, and we've got a few quiet days ahead of us. All we really want to do before we leave is a little bit more shopping, and maybe go see Shrek The Third.

So I'll probably not have much else to say on here, baring another brush with fame or something :)

Or I guess if I upload the last of the photos...

Back in the US of A

Sorry for the lack of updates lately - we had some fairly average internet in the hotel in Toronto (it'd connect but barely anything loaded), and then no internet at Niagara Falls.

We crossed the border at Niagara this morning, dropped the hire car off at Buffalo airport, and then flew to Chicago. We're now in the hotel room in Chicago, overlooking the river and Wacker Drive. :D

I might try and get some photos up tonight and talk a little about the last few days. I'll see how things go - it's almost 7pm already and we've barely seen any of the city yet so we might go for a wander to find dinner.

So watch for more updates in the next few hours. :)

Ottawa

We've been in Ottawa for a little over a day now. It's more like what I expected Canada to be - a bit hilly, clean, and VERY green.

The Tulip Festival is on at the moment, so there's tulips everywhere. Plus, today is Victoria Day, so the parks and tourist spots were extra busy with people enjoying the sun on their day off. We ended up at Parliament House just before midday, and came across about 2 dozen soldiers and 4 big artillery guns just beside the Centre Block. After asking at the information tent we found they were doing a 21 gun salute at midday for Victoria Day, so we hung around to watch that. They weren't quite as loud as I thought they would be (considering they shoot maybe 5" shells!) but they were still loud enough to echo around the city and leave pretty much every single young child in tears.

We couldn't do a guided tour of Parliament, so we just wandered around the grounds for a while and admired the view before continuing on through the city. It's such a lovely city to look at that we spent most of the afternoon just admiring the views. We went into the mint, but as with Parliament we couldn't do a tour, so we just checked out the gift shop and a couple of little exhibits they have.

It's going to be a shame to leave tomorrow. I'm sure Toronto couldn't be as nice as Ottawa is. It's a bit of a drive to Toronto - at least 4 hours, probably closer to 5 - so we're not going to be able to hang around too long tomorrow before heading off.

Montreal

Today we caught the Metro towards the centre of Montreal, and then followed the underground tunnels through part of the city. It really is an underground city - shopping malls 2 and 3 floors high, all underground. There's buildings above it all, but it seems they're gradually building more underneath it all. It wasn't so necessary today in the 20C sunny weather we had, but it does mean you don't have to dodge traffic all the time.

When we did surface we wondered where all the people were - it was like a ghost town. We finally managed to find some when we got to Basilica Notre Dame. After checking it out, we wandered through Old Montreal and then sort of stumbled across the waterfront. This was where all the people were! It seemed like everyone had come out to enjoy the sun and warmer weather, be it on foot, on rollerblades, bikes of various shapes and sizes, or just sunbaking on the grass.

Then we saw a guy go flying by on a Segway! He had a shirt on that suggested there was a rental place for them somewhere, so we immediately went on search to find it....

And find it we did :)

Here's the result:


They are amazingly simple to ride. To go forward or backwards you basically have to think about moving, and voila! Em and I are totally hooked, and if they didn't cost $8000 Australian, we'd be totally sold on them.

After we gave the Segways back (and came to terms with having to move our legs to move again) we walked back to the nearest Metro station and headed over to Ile St Helene (St Helen's Island) to check out the Biosphere. It is impressively huge. I don't know if the photos will do it justice - it's 62 metres high, so probably 10 or 12 floors tall.

Here's all the photos from the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Montreal

Tonight for dinner we just had to try Montreal's specialty, Poutine. It's french fries and cheese curds covered in hot gravy. As a friend of a friend described it "it's 0% healthy and 100% fat". It was quite filling, and neither Em nor myself managed to finish it off.

This is what it looked like:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Poutine

It's quite strange here being so far north. It's after 9pm and there's still a little bit of light left in the sky. Not much, mind you, but more than there'd ever be at this time of night in Brisbane. It's making it hard to get to bed at a decent hour when the sun doesn't actually set till about 8pm.

Tomorrow we're going to drive up Mont Royal and have one final look at the city before we head on to Ottawa. It's only a little over 2 hours drive, so it will be our shortest leg of the trip so far.

Bienvenue au Canada!

We've made it across the border to Canada! :D

Crossing the border was much simpler than I thought, so the trip today was mostly uneventful, other than when we came across a deer standing in the middle of the interstate.

The last few days were pretty good. On Wednesday we went to walk the Freedom Trail, but ended up on a guided tour. It was well worth the $12 each. We only saw about half the trail, but instead we had a guide (dressed completely in clothes of the time as you'll see in the photo) who was awesome! He told many stories about the trail and the events that happened along it, but was very entertaining in the process.

After the trail tour, we ended up at an "Authentic Replica" of the Cheers bar for lunch, then walked back to the hotel. We were only back 5 minutes when a decent sized storm arrived. Since then it's been quite cold here - the lowest was 4C this morning, and the highest has been about 15C I think. It's not cold to the locals (we've seen people in shorts!) but to us Queenslanders it might as well be snowing! :P

Yesterday we picked up the next hire car and drove to Salem. It's a picturesque little town with a lot of references to the witch trials of the 1600's. We checked out the Salem Witch Museum before heading towards Canada.

We stopped in Burlington, Vermont, last night just to break the trip up and have a quiet night for a change. Burlington is the hom of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, so of course we had to sample that this morning before we left town :)

We haven't seen much of Montreal yet. We went for a short walk this afternoon to find somewhere for dinner, but decided to have a night in to plan the next few days.

I uploaded photos last night from the last few days. They are...

The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Downtown Manhattan:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/DowntownNewYork


Sunset from the top of the Empire State Building:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/EmpireStateBuilding

Boston including the Freedom Trail:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Boston

I don't think I've taken any photos since. So for now we're all up to date, but that will change as of tomorrow! :)

Boston

We made it safe and sound to Boston, after struggling to stay awake on the train here. The Amtrak trains are so quite and smooth and the seats are so huge that it's not hard to get comfy enough to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

We got into Boston a little after 3pm, picked up a small guide book at the train terminal, and got a cab to the hotel. We asked the cabby what our chances would be of getting tickets to the Red Sox game tonight. He said we'd likely have no chance at all, so we decided we'd find a sports bar somewhere to watch the game instead. When we got to the hotel though, I jumped on the wireless and checked the site and found 2 tickets! So about an hour after getting into town we were on our way to Fenway Park!

Here's the photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/BostonRedSox

I also got a little bit of video, which was perfectly timed for (I think) Ortiz to hit a double:


Unfortunately, Boston went down 7-2 to the Detroit Tigers, so it wasn't quite the night it might have been. I think I have some bad luck for sporting teams - last trip I went to see the Carolina Hurricanes while they were on a 9-game winning streak and they got flogged 9-0! :(

So if I come to your town, don't let me go watch your sporting team!

Tomorrow I think we're going to walk the Freedom Trail around the city. We only really have tomorrow here, and I think that will be the best way to see the city.

At least my legs had a nice rest today from all this walking!

Final day in New York

I'm still about a day behind on the photos - I have the photos from today on the laptop, but again I have too many to go through tonight and I don't want to upload them all (plus iPhoto managed to duplicate them when I got them off the camera).

Today we went downtown and visited Liberty and Ellis Islands before walking to Wall St to catch the subway back to midtown. The islands were very busy today. We had a one hour wait to get through security and get on the ferry at Battery Park. After that it wasn't too bad, but it was hard to get good clear photos without people walking in the way.

We ended up spending much more time on the islands than we expected, so we didn't get to see as much of downtown itself as we had hoped. We still walked to Wall St, walked the length of it, and then down Broadway a little to find the Bull. When we were ready to catch the subway it was right in the middle of peak hour, so we had to wedge ourselves in amongst the commuters.

Before dinner we went up the Empire State Building to see the sun set and watch the lights of the city come on. That was quite a sight, but it was packed with people, and VERY windy! We stayed at the top for a little over an hour before calling it a day.

So all up our time here in New York has been fantastic. After struggling through Vegas with coughs and sniffles, New York has been everything we could have hoped it could be and a little bit more. My legs feel like they're about to fall off with all the walking we've been doing, and we're a little pink after spending so much time in the sun today, so as sad as it is to say good bye to New York, my body is hoping Boston will be less strenuous!

Photos from today will have to wait till maybe tomorrow morning, but for now here's a video of Em, Spanky, and myself at Times Square yesterday:

Photo update

Here's the photos from the last few days.

Central Park, including the zoo: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/CentralPark

Autograph hunting after A Moon for the Misbegotten: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/AMoonForTheMisbegotten

And today, which was Midtown - Rockerfeller Plaza (including the NBC studio tour), Fifth Avenue (including the Apple store), and Times Square: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/MidtownManhattan

We finally managed to see Spamalot tonight. It was as funny as to be expected from the Monty Python guys. It's a shame the Broadway production didn't have Tim Curry playing King Arthur like they do in London - he would be perfect for the role.

I have some video from Times Square today that I'm hoping to upload first thing in the morning.

Kevin Spacey is the coolest guy EVER!

This evening was probably the greatest evening of the trip so far, and it all came about through a couple of chance happenings.

We were on our way to the discount tickets booth to see if we could get some Spamalot tickets, but we didn't realise the ticket booth had moved to 46th street, so we walked down 47th, where it used to be. As we passed a theatre on 47th we noticed Kevin Spacey was in a play there that night. So we changed our minds and picked up tickets to that - "A Moon for the Misbegotten."

The play was great, with Eve Best and Colm Meaney delivering fantastic performances alongside Kevin. It was quite strange to think that it was really Kevin Spacey there in front of us, and not just a projected image. This was what we came to New York for!

But that wasn't all...

After the show we went outside to discover the rain forecast had set in, so we put our heads down and prepared for the 5 block walk to the nearest subway station, but we realised a lot of people were waiting around the stage door. So we joined them. :)

After maybe 10 minutes wait the cast came out and signed a few autographs. I missed getting Colm's by about 10 seconds, but we got Eve's and Kevin's. I then noticed the crowd was thinning as they got their autographs, so I went back with Spanky in hand, and found myself asking a 2-time Academy Award winner if he could "hold my monkey for a photo". Kevin took Spanky, took a brief look at him, asked if this would "come back to haunt him", before posing with him for this, the highlight of my photographic career:



I was shaking the entire way back to the hotel because I couldn't believe I managed to do that! :D I mean I asked Kevin Spacey to hold a monkey that I think began its life as a Hungry Jacks toy or something!

Anyway, the rest of the day leading up to this evening was fun (tho in hindsight wasn't as fun as if Kevin Spacey had have been there :P)

We spent about half the day in Central Park, which was packed with people playing baseball, walking their dogs, or just getting some sun. We also checked out Central Park Zoo, which was smaller than I thought it would be. They have a lot of animals there though, so it was well worth the $8.

I got lots of photos throughout the day but will have to select the good ones out first before I upload them, so they'll probably come tomorrow.

Speaking of which, the plan for tomorrow is the NBC Studios tour and the Museum of Modern Art, followed by Spamalot (unless we decide to go see Kevin Spacey again :P)

Happy Mothers Day, Mum!

New York!

We've made it to the east coast, after both of us battled various illnesses in Vegas.

We went to the Stratosphere yesterday morning and went up the tower to check out the view. The roller coaster I went on last time is no longer there, and not many people were brave enough to go on the other rides, so it was a lot quieter than last time I visited it. We then caught the monorail the length of the strip back to the MGM for a quick nap as we were both feeling very run down.

The plan was to check out New York hotel and maybe ride their roller coaster that afternoon, but I battled to get out of bed. In the end we only barely had time to grab dinner before going to see Cirque du Soleil's show KA. It was absolutely amazing, with basically a 3-dimensional stage - they have two platforms that move back and forth and can even rotate through any axis, even past vertical, so they have a lot of freedom to do whatever they like. Unfortunately I had a migrane-like headache, and started to get the shakes and generally felt awful. I almost left half way through, but stuck it out because a) I wanted to see it, and b) we paid over $100USD per ticket!

Today we got up early, packed (again), and made our way to the airport. Everything was going fine - we got there with plenty of time to spare, the plane showed up on time, everything seemed set to go, then we heard the flight was delayed for up to 2 hours. There were some storms here in NY and they had to shut down one of the runways for a while, so the inbound flights were all backed up. Not wanting a repeat of their January problems, JetBlue decided to delay any flights to JFK that had not yet left so that people weren't stuck in planes again. While it was good to not be stuck in a plane, it was a little annoying not knowing exactly when we'd be on our way. They managed to find a spot in the schedule and got us in the air about 90 minutes late.

So we're now in New York, and have planned out our next few days - Central Park (including the zoo), NBC Studios, the Museum of Modern Art, Monty Python's Spamalot, Liberty and Ellis Islands, Times Square, and maybe the Empire State Building at night.

I think that's all the news for now. Wireless internet is free here, so the updates will come a bit more frequently over the next few days.

I <3 New York! :D

Viva Las Vegas!

Yesterday was the longest driving leg of the trip so far, and I think will remain the longest. It took somewhere around 8 hours for us to drive from San Simeon to Las Vegas. It was a bit longer than we'd expected due to roadworks. Other than that it was a good trip and we saw a big variation in landscape, reaching a peak of over 4000-5000 ft above sea level. We also passed through the wind farms just west of the Mojave desert, which was very cool.

First item on the agenda when we got here was tickets to The Producers at Paris hotel. We were worried it would be sold out, but it was only 1/3rd or so full, but we were still somewhat disappointed - David Hasselhoff pulled out of the show as of Sunday! :(

It was still a great show, and I was laughing to the point of tears at some points.

That night Em got hit pretty hard by a bit of a bug and was up coughing all night. As a result we decided against driving out to the Grand Canyon and back today. 10-12 hours in a car is hard enough without coughing fits. So we just went out to Hoover Dam and did a tour there instead. In the end we didn't miss not going to the Grand Canyon as the dam tour was well worth it.

Here's the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/HooverDam

Tomorrow morning we're dropping the car off (after driving 1000 miles in one week) at the Stratosphere, then tomorrow night we're planning on seeing Ka, the Cirque Du Soleil show here at the MGM Grand.

We probably won't have internet tomorrow night - it's $12 per day here to use the wireless! So the next update will be from New York this weekend. :D

San Simeon, Big Sur, and Hearst Castle

We've spent the last day and a bit in San Simeon and surrounding regions. This area is great. It's so relaxed and quiet compared to the LA. It's hard to believe it's only 4 hours or so drive.

The sunsets here are spectacular. The hotel we're staying at (Best Western Cavalier) puts on bonfires at sunset and most people go down to the bluffs and sit and watch the sun set over the Pacific.

Today we went for a drive along the coastline and ended up seeing parts of Big Sur, where a mountain range meets the ocean. It's probably the most amazing road I've ever driven along. Mountains to the east, Ocean to the west, and a road precariously balanced in between.

After lunch at a little town called Gorda (and a brief whale spotting), we turned around and stopped at one of the beaches where the Elephant Seals were sunning themselves. There were hundreds of them! They smelled a little bit, and made sounds distinctly like very long burps, but be stayed and watched them for about 30 minutes or so.

Photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/BigSur

After that, we went on the tour at Hearst Castle. It was quite incredible. There's an amazing amount of old items and pieces that were transported from churches etc in Europe, some dating back as far as 600 years. It's definitely worth a visit.

Here's the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/HearstCastle

Tomorrow we're heading off early to go to Vegas, which should take about 7 or 8 hours going by Google Maps. My back has been playing up a bit lately, I think from a combination of sleeping on strange beds and spending so much time in a strange car. Hopefully it doesn't give me too much grief tomorrow, because the day after is the Grand Canyon round trip.

So that's it for California. Next stop Vegas! :D

Video from Hollywood Boulevard

Here's some of the video we got at Hollywood Boulevard the other day (I can't remember what day it is today, let alone what day it was when we went there.... Thursday??)



We're heading to San Simeon tomorrow to go see Hearst Castle, so we may not have internet again until we get to Vegas. So if you don't hear from us then don't worry :)

Universal Studios and a 24" pizza

Just a quick one today to say that yesterday we went to Universal Studios and came home via Studio City to see the hospital Scrubs is filmed at as well as stop at a Big Mama & Papa's Pizza shop.

Universal was a lot of fun. It was fairly quiet so the longest we had to wait for anything was 15 minutes.

The Scrubs hospital looked a bit more run down than it does on the show. The front windows at street level were all boarded over as well. I think they're probably finished filming there because the season is almost over and I believe this is the last season.

At Big Mama & Papa's we were initially planning on getting the 36" pizza, but the guy said it feeds 15 people. Seeing as there were only 5 of us we decided to get the 24", which was still comically huge.

I didn't get any photos other than of the pizza, though I did take lots of video yesterday - I'll maybe put some up later today.

Hollywood and Griffith Observatory

It's Friday morning now, and today is Universal Studios, but yesterday was Hollywood and the Griffith Observatory.

Photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/HollywoodAndGriffithObservatory

Hollywood Boulevard was not nearly as busy as it was last time I visited. It's still a bit of a crazy place though, with the people in costumes trying to pose for as many photos as they can, and people trying to sell your tours to stars homes etc.

After I took the photos of Homer and Spiderman, they asked me for a tip. Unfortunately I only had a single one dollar bill on me, and Em had walked off so I felt a little bad about that.

Griffith Observatory was so much better than we thought it would be. If you're visiting LA definitely check it out. The planetarium show was quite good, and nothing like that South Park episode lead me to believe planetarium shows were like. :P

The weather was fantastic. It's a little bit chilly, with a bit of a cool breeze, but the breeze must have been blowing all the smog away because the view was spectacular! We could all but see to the horizon, which is about 5 times better than it was last time I visited the Hollywood Hills.

The night before we went to Outback Steakhouse, to see what America thinks we eat. It was really good food, but nothing like what real Aussie food is like. Where were the meat pies? Where were the lamingtons? Or the vegemite on toast? Now that would make a great restaurant! :P

Photos from the restaurant are at http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/OutbackSteakhouse/. Spanky got very drunk that night!

We have landed

We landed at LAX about 2 hours ago and cleared customs within an hour.

The flight was ok, but the movies on demand wasn't working and neither of us slept very well, even with a sleeping pill each.

But we're here now, it's almost 9am, and we've got a long day of trying to stay awake ahead of us!

New Blog!

I've created a new blog for our trip to the US and Canada in May '07. The plan will be to update this whenever I can during the trip so it will act as a central point for anyone wanting to follow our progress, as well as a diary of sorts for us.

Here's the places we'll be seeing:

• LA
• San Simeon/Hearst Castle
• Las Vegas
• New York
• Boston
• Vermont (Burlington perhaps)
  
• Montreal
• Ottawa
• Toronto
• Niagara Falls
• Chicago

It's a very full itinerary, so I'm sure we won't be able to see everything we'd like to, but we're going to try! :)

It's now 25 hours exactly till we take off from Brisbane airport, flying direct to LAX. I have 5 hours left here at work to finish first, so I better get back to that for now.

Spring Break WOOO!! :D