De-Tour de Kiwi

We arrived in Taupo and drove to the Taupo Motor Camp. We parked right beside the river and hadn’t even got out of the vehicle when the ducks came for some food. We fed them some ginger nut biscuits but I had to keep telling one of the ducks off as it was charging and head butting the other ducks so it could get some more food. We also fed the sparrows and two beautiful grey/black swans with red beaks. After dinner and laundry we watched the first episode of “Entourage” an American TV series (we saw a few episodes of Series 2 whilst in Texas). The show is about a new rising star in Hollywood, his friends, agents and their quest to milk the fame game for all they can get. Worth the watching just for Kevin Dillon’s character “Johnny Drama”, the funniest character on TV since David Brent.


The next morning we got up to some glorious sunshine and Chris took some photos of the mist swirling about the river. We had decided to do a walk/climb up Mount Tauhara. The walk up was fine apart from having to do some tree hugging to get round the path and fight our way through some of the shrubbery, it was like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark at times. The views from the top were amazing and it was well worth the hour or so climb up!


We wandered around Taupo city centre before driving south towards Wellington. We stopped off for dinner at a Chinese takeaway in Turangi no cooking for me that night YIPEE and the food was great too!! We drove upwards through snowy mountains on a road with signs to advise if it was opened or closed and saw some of the most amazing scenery highlighted by the luminous full moon lighting the way. It was dark when we stopped for the night at a picnic area in between Taihape and Mangaweka.

Saturday morning the mist was swirling around like pea soup and after taking some photographs we headed down towards Wellington. We arrived there about 11am and after finding a parking space we booked a room in the Wellington Hotel. The parking at the hotel was non-existent so we spent about 20 mins trying to find a space big enough for the van and safe enough to leave the vehicle overnight. We booked into the hotel and then headed out for a wander around Wellington. We had lunch in the Black Harp and a delicious pint of red cider….I think it was laced with Blackcurrant (So I had a wee smile for my sister Jennifer and my friend Audrey who can drink anyone under the table with cider).

Chris headed out later on to meet a kiwi called Mick who told him where he could watch the Celtic v Rangers game…..might I add we have done a 5 our detour for this and hence the reason Mr Reilly decided to get me a nice hotel room for the night!!
I stayed in with my bottle of wine and watched some DVD’s whilst waiting for my man to turn up. At 2.30am he appeared none too worse for wear despite the fact that Rangers won after some dodgy refereeing decisions and unsportsmanlike behaviour from the home side according to Mr Reilly. About 5am I was woken up by Chris trying to put his jeans on, enquiring as to what he was doing…“I am going to the bathroom!“, he thought he was still in the campervan!! Chris was also mentioned in an article on the E-Tims website written about the Black Harp pub where the Scottish ex-pats watch game’s in Wellington. Black Harp Diaries.

I had decided the night before that we would go for a good breakfast so we went to the Krazy Lounge and sat and chilled whilst reading the NZ Sunday Papers. As we were deciding what to have we spotted Robert (my ex) leaving the place with coffee’s before I had the chance to say hello. I knew from his sister, my friend Eileen, that he was somewhere in New Zealand but didn’t know exactly where. The breakfast was fab, bacon, two poached eggs, mushroom, 3 wee sausages, bread and a hash brown all washed down with lashings of tea. I didn’t leave a morsel on my plate.

We then waddled along to the Te Papa museum down at the quay which is free and definitely worth a visit. You could easily spend a whole day in here if you wanted to, we wandered through the geological part which had lots of interactive displays. One of my favourites was where you had to jump onto a piece of metal which showed how hard you had jumped on the Richter scale. We also went into a house which shook as though you were in a small earthquake. There was also an exhibition that Chris really liked of a New Zealand artist called Bernard Roundhill, who designed art work for soup cans, magazines, jigsaws and many other day to day items. Near the museum we spotted a UK shop selling all manner of sweets and condiments from back home, we left with a few cans of Irn Bru which were quickly devoured.


To make up for our de-tour, for Chris to watch the footie, we headed back north east on the road to Napier late in the afternoon. It was going to take over five hours and the first part of the road was a nightmare as we drove over a high pass with tight bends and narrow lanes, so we stopped on the road overnight after about 3 hours.

Campervan Rule No 5: Never park next to an airfield

We were woken up about 6.30 in the morning with a huge thrumming sound and the van was shaking. Looked out the window to see a small airplane take off. 10 mins later and the same thing happened again so we decided to make a quick getaway onwards to our destination. There seemed to be an awful lot of crop spraying going on.

Drove for another couple of hours after stopping off for a quick breakfast before we hit Napier. This town had a huge earthquake in 1931 and most of the buildings were destroyed. In addition to this the land level rose by over 2 metres and increased the size of Napier. The insurance companies called this ‘An Act of God’ anything to get out of paying any claims. The government re-financed the rebuilding of the town and many young architects were brought in from Auckland and Wellington who were influenced by the current ‘Art Deco’ styles in vogue at the time. Napier rivals Miami for the Art Deco capital of the world.


We picked up a map at the tourist info to give us an idea of where to go and started on our Art Deco tour. Some of the buildings were amazing and the sky at most points was a beautiful blue so we snapped away to our hearts content. We stopped off at the Deco Centre which sells a lot of trinkets and also provides a free video giving an insight into the earthquake along with the rebuilding. It gave us lots of additional information. A couple of our favourite buildings were the ASB Bank and the Daily Telegraph Building.


We wandered around with cricks in our necks from looking upwards for several hours and would have happily spent much more time there but we’d decided to head back to Wellington to catch the things we’d missed over the weekend. So after a quick lunch we drove all the way back from the way we’d come. We managed to hit the dodgy pass just before the sun set - we didn’t fancy drive back up this in the dark. That night we stopped off at the Capital Gateway in Newlands on the outskirts of Wellington which also recently provided campervan sites. Since we’d had a long drive we ate in the bar that night and had a great meal before retiring to watch another couple of episodes of ‘Entourage’.

The following morning we walked for about 10 mins into Johnsonville where we got a train into Wellington. When we arrived in Weliington) we realised that we were next to the Beehive building (Chris didn’t think that it looked anything like a beehive) which is a parliament building. As we walked along the sun had started to shine so we took the Cable Car up to the top of the Botanic Gardens for a view over Wellington which was up a really steep hill and whilst we found the view good but there wasn’t much else at the top!

After another wander about the shops and going to the friendly bakery which lived up to it’s name for lunch we went on to the internet for a while before we decided to have a ‘handle’ of beer (425ml in a glass with a handle) whilst sitting in the sunshine in an Irish bar on Cuba street. It would have been tempting to stay there all day but we decided to head back and have a pizza for dinner. Two nights in a row not cooking for me YIPEE!!

The following morning we had a feast of cheese with some delicious cheese and beef sausages on cheese rolls for breakfast (Chris is really missing his cheesy pasta with cheese pasties). We then headed to the ferry as it was time to say goodbye to the North Island and head south. The ferry was over an hour late but we sat in line and I caught up with my own diary. I wasn’t looking forward to this trip in view of my sea sickness but the ferry wasn’t that busy and we got a seat next to a window with a power point so that we could plug in and do some things on the laptop ie Chris played games…this laptop has it’s advantages!!

P.S. Chris has also had an article published on a celtic fansite, to have a read click here

Carry on Campers

We picked up our camper and eventually left Auckland after I managed to get Chris pointed in the correct direction (we were travelling for at least an hour in the wrong one!). We drove for a couple hours as far as Waipu on the north east coast and managed to find a spot near the beach and the toilets for parking. After cooking our first dinner in close confinement and working out the best position for our bed we managed set up our in-van entertainment system and watched “The Bourne Supremacy” on DVD before settling down to a decent night’s sleep.


On the Friday morning we woke up and had a stroll along the beach. There were islands off in the distance with the sun coming up behind them which was such a nice scene. The sky had started off being blue but as we walked further along it turned darker and darker. We headed back to the van but were caught as the heavens opened and soaked us.

Campervan Rule No 1: Never leave your waterproof in the van.

We then stopped off at Whangarei (Chris’s description - “A downmarket Galashiels“). After a short wander through the shops, mainly second hand and Two Dollar Shops, we made a hasty exit. We then drove further up the coast to Okara and into a campsite just off the beach. As we couldn’t find any staff we drove onto the grass towards the power points.

Campervan Rule No 2: Never park on the grass

After a couple of minutes we were completely stuck in the mud and despite the owners attempts to pull us out via his truck the van didn’t move. There had been a large amount of rainfall the previous night and this was why the ground was so bad. So we bedded down for the night with another delightful meal and a couple of bottles of beer. We fell asleep to the lulling sound of the waves on the beach.


The next morning Chris was up early and out taking pictures as the sun came up over the beach until the owner got his tractor to pull us out. We offered to pay but he insisted since we got stuck we weren’t to pay for anything - we’d had a shower and a free night’s campsite accommodation - BONUS. We stopped off just up the road at Sandy Beach for a cuppa and some photos.

Campervan Rule No 3a: Always close cupboard doors

After our cuppa we headed off until the first bend when we heard an almighty crash as everything fell out of the pantry. So we jumped in the back and made sure all the doors where closed this time. Eventually after the false start we had another scenic drive along the coastal road and a rather lazy day at Haruru Falls in Twin Pines Tourist Park. We needed a laundry stop anyway, afterwards the van looked like Mr Wong’s with clothes hanging everywhere…..we had no change left to use the drier. This place was really nice everything was clean and the showers/toilets were warm. That night we had our second night at Campervan Cineplex and gave ourselves nightmares watching “28 Days Later”, you should have seen Chris jump every time he heard a noise outside.

Campervan Rule No 3b: Always close the side door of the van before driving off

On the Sunday we stopped off to pick up some provisions at the supermarket in Pahia and realised that Chris had driven for 10 mins with the side door wide open, he couldn’t understand where the draft was coming from. We walked along the front at Pahia but made a sharp exit after realising that the place was over run by old foggies and weirdos there for the jazz festival.

We drove until we reached Cable Bay and parked facing the beach and ocean. The weather was lovely and we just chilled for a while people watching. Chris spotted an ice cream shop so we had to have one whilst we walked along the beach. The ice cream was delicious and we wandered along as far as we could go slurping away to our hearts content. This was the best ice cream we’ve had since Colonia in Uruguay! We stayed there overnight and the waves swished us away into dreamland.


We had decided on the Monday to drive to Cape Reinga the most Northern point of New Zealand. It all went well until the last 45 mins where the road turned into gravel and we had our bones shaken all the way until the end. There was a lighthouse to mark the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and the water swirled underneath us.


There was only one road there and back so we drove another couple of hours back down the same road before stopping off at Opononi Beach Holiday Park Campsite. The owners here were extremely friendly taking us directly to the spot they wanted us to park in. We decided to forgo the cooking for that evening and had a chippie. Chris got fish and I got the sausage supper. To be honest it wasn’t that great and Sharpy was right when he told us that the chips would be rotten….they were frozen chips!!

The following day we had a long drive heading south and inland towards Rotorua and drove through the hills covered in shrubbery and trees. This reminded us of Scotland….it could be almost anywhere outside the cities and the rain also came on briefly just to make sure that we didn’t forget our weather back home. We stopped off just past Cambridge in a picnic area in amongst the trees for the evening

We arrived in Rotorua early the next morning and parked next to Kauru park. The geotherms were in full swing with the steam majestically rising from the various outlets, ponds and holes in the ground. The only problem was that every so often you would get a little whiff of rotten eggs and I looked at Chris but he promised me that it was the sulphur and not emanating from his rear end.


We wandered about the town - window shopping - I am getting quite good at this you know!! Before heading to the Polynesian Spa where we spent a couple of hours bathing in pools ranging from the cool 36 degrees centigrade, 38, 40 and then the roasty toasty 42 degree pool that we went into and lasted well about 3 mins maximum. The pools overlooked the lake and were described in the brochure as a serene and quiet location which was fine until a bus load of Japanese tourists arrived! We felt clean - but I am sure that the natural chemicals may have stripped some layers off of us. This was just what we both needed and that night we were both soooo relaxed that we didn’t mind sleeping in the park.


Campervan Rule No 4: Never leave your headlights on

After waking up we quickly realised that we had left the headlights on which meant that we gave ourselves a flat battery and had to get a jump start in the morning. In the afternoon we drove out to Kerosene Creek where we had a small dip in the free natural river. This was warm but there were signs everywhere warning of amoeba meningitis and telling you not to put your head under the water or get any water in your mouth. Well this took away all the fun - I couldn’t splash Chris or duck his head under the water so we left after 10 mins or so.


Next Stop Taupo

Auckland Anonymous

Arrived in Auckland on Monday 8th August at 5.30am. We’ve now lost a day due to the international date line and I hope your Sunday the 7th was a bit more eventful than our non-existent day. Our hostel was just outside Auckland in a place called Eden Park which is just like Bearsden on the outskirts of Glasgow. We managed to get booked in (despite telling them we were arriving 12 hours later), the room was probably one of our smallest yet and swinging a cat in it was really difficult but we were only here for 3 nights. We still managed to phone Chris’s Mum to wish her many happy returns (found out a few days later that we actually phoned the day before as we mixed up our time difference by 12 hours the wrong way).

We walked into the city centre which was really small in comparison to most places we have been recently. It is dominated by the Sky Tower which you can see from most places around the city. The weather was cloudy but the rain managed to stay off. We were thinking of travelling around NZ in a camper van and had a look at a few different places for prices. At lunchtime we went into a little takeaway shop for a Chicken Pie….the lady was oriental and we ended up with a “Chicken Thigh” - a fried leg of chicken…..despite my disappointment it was fairly tasty trying to eat it through our laughter.

Later we went into the Auckland Art Gallery and saw a lot of interesting pictures by New Zealand artists before heading back to the hostel. We ate in that night - a novelty for us home cooked food!! All I can say with a joint effort the chilli was great….but maybe it was just the wine. There was a rather strange woman staying at the hostel and she gave two young trainee doctors a grilling about substances being used illegally by the police…..needless to say they left fairly quickly after that and we weren’t long behind them. An early night was had to catch up on the travelling.

Day 2 and we booked our camper van - the only issue is being stuck in a small space with Chris and his control over the music for 3 weeks. After dinner we headed out to the local Irish Bar….I know I said never again but there was a quiz on and we both fancied it. Well we had a couple of drinks before the quiz started and most teams had 4 people or more in them…..there was only Chris and I in ours. We were lagging behind in the first round when we got 6 points….then it gradually got worse…but we hadn’t used our two joker rounds. At least 15 questions were related to NZ so we could use that as an excuse until we saw our grand total of 45 points. We made a hasty exit out of the pub as we were by far the worst team. Chris is adamant that this was a stitch up to make the Kiwi’s look more intelligent than they actually are.


On the Wednesday we decided to climb Mount Eden - despite it’s name it is only 196m high. We had excellent views of the city from here despite the grey skies. We walked into the city and spent most of our day wandering aimlessly around the shops in the centre and quayside. As we were walking home we watched someone jump, JUMP!! out of the sky tower!! My heart was in my mouth but Mr Reilly said he would do it, I even volunteered to take pictures but I am still waiting!!….Still Waiting. Had a great night in with Bangers & Mash and a bottle of sparkling wine - we were the talk of the hostel!


I wouldn’t put Auckland on top of your list of must see places but we managed to have a good laugh, the people were friendly and the city centre is quite compact.

The City of Angels

Arriving at Los Angeles we didn’t know what to expect from out hotel after our trying time in the Tenderloin which we both felt relieved to escape without any real incidents, so we were very pleased to find that our hotel was in a nice street one block from Hollywood Boulevard and right next to the Capitol Records building. Once inside we were pleasantly surprised to find the most equipped room we’ve had on the whole trip. Here’s a quick run-down; Satellite TV, DVD player, Fridge, Microwave and best of all free high speed internet access in the room. There was also free Coffee and Cookies in the reception 24 hours a day, so if you are ever in LA and looking for a reasonable placed to stay check out West Side Rentals on Yucca Street.


We headed round to Hollywood boulevard and wandered along checking out all the names on the walk of fame and all the tacky gift shops selling fake Oscars and walk of fames stars which you can have your name printed on. We then walked along to Grauman's Chinese Theatre which has the hand & foot prints of many Hollywood Greats immortalised in cement and in Jimmy Durante’s case his iconic conk. The walk of fame and the Chinese theatre’s lot is also the haunt of really sad look-a-likes who charge you to have your photo with them, it was quite difficult to tell who some of these losers where trying to be.


At this point we passed by the El Capitan Entertainment Center when we were approached to see if we could make it for a screening of TV show that night, we’d nothing planned so we agreed to go along to the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” talk show at 6:30. We hadn’t heard of Jimmy Kimmel but we thought it might be an ok way to pass a few hours and it was free. Once inside there was a warm up guy who was quite funny and it wasn’t too long before the show got underway. We only knew one of the guests which was Venus Williams the tennis player the other two being some local radio DJ plugging his new TV talk show who we can’t remember and a rapper called Young Jeezy. The show didn’t take too long to film and we were out the place quite early so we wandered a bit more on Hollywood Boulevard before heading back to our hotel to watch the show on TV.


Next morning we caught the Metro downtown to see the Los Angles Philharmonic Hall now branded the Walt Disney Concert Hall which was designed by Frank Ghery, who is probably most famous for designing the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The building looked truly spectacular glinting in the LA sunshine with it’s curves throwing light and shadows in all directions, it had hundreds of little enclosures and corners that had me snapping away with the camera for over an hour. We then headed down to the City Halls that is another iconic building, and I’m sure any self respecting movie buff will recognise it from numerous movies and TV programs. We took an elevator straight to the top and had some views over the LA smog, to be honest LA is quite like Houston in that it’s all really spread out with a small grouping of skyscrapers in a few blocks of the downtown area.


We then caught a bus across town to the CBS studios in West Hollywood to be part of the audience for another talk show, this time it was “The Late Late Show” hosted by Craig Ferguson. Some of you may remember Craig from his stand up comic days in Glasgow as the character Bing Hitler, I’m not sure if he still has that on his CV. He’s had a few minor movie hits “The Big Tease” and “Saving Grace” neither of which I’ve seen and I wouldn’t like to pass judgement but they both looked a bit rubbish from the trailers I’ve watched. He’s being doing the show for a few months now which screens at 12:30 week nights but has supposedly being doing very good in the ratings and a big TIVO hit. The audience for this was a lot smaller than that of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” but this time you felt like you were part of the show and not just there for your laughing and clapping. Once again there was a warm up guy before the filming got started and Craig also came out and said hello. That night the first thing to be filmed was Natasha Beddingfield singing “I Love You”, which I think was a number 1 in the UK last year but is just getting the big push here, she sang live but she’s not really my cup of tea so it was good when she toddled off back to obscurity. Craig then came out and did his opening rant to the camera this was quite good and much better than anything on the previous night’s show, which wasn’t really difficult. The first guest was Joseph Fiennes brother of Ralph who was on promoting his new movie “The Great Raid” but he came across as a pompous twit full of his own importance and he didn’t really click with Mr Ferguson or the audience.

The warm up guy had told us earlier that the filming was going to take slightly longer tonight as they where filming a sequence that would be used on the following nights show. The extra guest was Sharon Stone and supposedly there were thousands of requests for tickets for the next days show when she was booked to appear, so we were fortunate as quite a few people were going to be disappointed the next day. I’m not sure if it was a late arrival or prima-donna behaviour backstage by Miss Stone but there was quite a delay between interviews, so Craig came back out and started to speak to the audience. He asked “Did I see some guy wearing a Celtic top?” and I replied which led onto a discussion about him supporting Partick Thistle and our trip round the world. Craig Ferguson hasn’t really toned down his accent for TV but I could see some of the audience struggle to keep up as Joanne, Craig and myself talked about Glasgow.

When Sharon Stone came on she looked great and when she said that she just had a child two months previously she made a few of the audience quite envious about her figure. She hit it off really well with Craig and was talking about her childhood and how she comes from an Irish family, when she suddenly ask Craig if he knows the song “You Canny Shove your Granny aff the Bus” which they both started singing much to the bemusement of the American audience but had Joanne and myself in stitches. The was quite a few references to her famous scene in “Basic Instinct” and to be honest she wasn’t hiding too much in her dress for the show.


After the show we soon realised that all types of movies are made in Hollywood. We saw a movie of the blue persuasion being filmed on the roof of a house as we casually walked along the road before being chased off for taking photographs. We went to an excellent Thai restaurant “Toi on Sunset” which had some really cool Beatles stuff on the wall and some early Pixies records on in the background. We had a few Singha Beers to wash down our delicious Green Thai Curry and Pad Thai Noodles before wandering further along Sunset Boulevard back to our Hotel to watch ourselves on TV.


Blackpool Pleasure Beach is the only theme park that Joanne and myself have been to previously so we decided to go to Universal Studios more out of curiosity than any great desire, after a short journey on the metro and once we handed over a large slab of cash we entered at about 10:30 in the morning. As Joanne doesn’t like the fast rides or anything that shakes, twists or bumps too much and after her experience on the flight over the Nazca lines we decided to miss out on a few of the big rides, so our first thing to try was Judgement Day 3D (Terminator 2). Once your seated inside a large theatre some actors appear on the stage and set the scene for what’s about to appear on the three massive screens behind them, I won’t spoil the story in case anybody is planning to go see this. The 3D was amazing and million times better than the rubbish experiments on British TV in the early 80’s with those crappy red and blue glasses, you honestly did think things were flying about you. The room was also covered in dry ice and the seats were rigged to move at certain point in the show, even though I’m usually quite cynical about these things this I came out thoroughly impressed and was all for going straight back in.

We then we went to quite a few other attractions ranging from the quite interesting “Backdraft” and “Special FX” to the down right rubbish “Van Hesling” update on the Haunted House. I had always heard that you spent most of your days queuing at theme parks but luckily enough the longest we waited to get into anything was just over 20 minutes. Joanne then decided she would try the Jurassic Park which led us past some really awful plastic looking dinosaurs on a small boat before winding us up through a disused factory where raptors were spitting water at us, once at the top it was an almost vertical drop into water below. We were both soaked and when came off the ride there were photos for sale of the people on the ride just at the top of the drop. The photos of Joanne and I were so funny, we both looked terrified while hugging the safety bar as the kids behind us all had their hands in the air screaming with excitement.



After lunch we went on the tour of the film lot, taking us past some old film sets and a few street scenes which have been used in loads of movies. The guide was a right pain and didn’t really add anything positive to the tour, we passed the hotel used in “Psycho“, the street used in “Desperate Housewives” and the crashed plane site from the new Steven Spielberg film “War of the Worlds”. You also get taken to a few specially created lots for the tour, which has King Kong attacking you, Jaws snapping at you and a river flooding towards you. The tour wasn’t as good as I thought it might be but it was a pleasant enough way to spend an hour.

We then went to a show called “Fear Factor Live” a live version of an American programme where the contestants competing against each other in endurance tests and gross acts like holding gigantic spiders, eating worms and Joanne’s favourite petting Scorpions. This again wasn’t that great but the kids in the audience seemed to love it, but there’s no accounting for taste. It was good to get away from all the screaming and shouting after half an hour.


Out last attraction was “Shrek 4D” another 3D extravaganza which we had queued for earlier in the day but once inside the fire alarms went off so we had to get out but we were given front of queue passes for a later showing. This time no alarms and we were treated to probably the highlight of the day with another great 3D movie with water and gust of air being fired at you and seat shaking to enhance the film. You also had to wear some really stupid glasses as you can see from the pic above. After this it was out to the Universal City Walk where there’s loads of shops trying to get what’s left of your wallet and a huge outdoor cinema screening classic Universal movies as we passed hundreds of people where watching “West Side Story”. We headed back to Hollywood at about 9:30 after being in the place for over 11 hours. We’d had a good laugh most of the day and we both thought it was probably worth the money but I’m sure kids would absolutely love the place. Once back at the hotel we stayed up to watch ourselves and Sharon Stone on the TV.

Next day we were burnt out after the last few days so we had quite a lazy day catching up with some things on the internet and window shopping in some of the shops on Hollywood & Sunset Boulevards. If you’re in the area check out “Amoeba Records” on Sunset Boulevard near Vine which has a massive stock of CD’s and Movies. We even got a Chinese take away and borrowed a few DVD’s from the reception to complete our completely relaxing lazy day.

After checking out the hotel we had a few hours to kill before out flight so being in Hollywood we decided to go see a movie. We went back to the Chinese Theatre and got tickets for “War of the Worlds” which was ok in blockbuster kind of way but a little to cheesy and All American at times but hey what else did you expect. I think I preferred the one from the 50’s but it’s been years since I seen it.

One of the things I’m going to miss most about America is the great choice of soft drinks, back home my favourite was Diet Vanilla Coke which I was glad to reacquaint myself with in the States. Some other great ones we’ve tried are Big Red,
Stones Cherry Soda but my favourite by a mile was “Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper” hopefully they will have it in Glasgow by the time I’m home but I doubt it.

We had a great time in Los Angeles and San Francisco and we would thoroughly recommend it as a two week holiday destination with maybe a few days in Las Vegas to break it up. Just remember to check the area of your hotel before booking and don’t go for the cheap option like we did in San Francisco. Now it’s over the Pacific and the International dateline for the next part of out trip….. New Zealand.

The Streets of San Francisco

Arrived in San Francisco and took the BART (metro) straight from the airport to our hotel. It only took us about 10 minutes to find our hotel but it seemed to take forever as we tried to avoid eye contact with the groups of people hanging round each corner, we soon realised why our hotel was quite a bit cheaper than the rest in San Francisco. Our hotel was in the Tenderloin area and was called Hotel Verona but we sure didn’t feel like no star crossed lovers as the room was very basic with a dodgy carpet and a TV set that was state of the art in 1962. Both of us felt like getting a plane straight back to Houston but we decided to give the place a chance although we seriously thought about checking into another hotel.

We locked up all our important things and headed out for a quick walk down to Union Square (the main shopping area) which was about 10 blocks away. The walk down wasn’t any better with junkies, drunks and assorted mental patients hugging street corners and any wall alongside. As it was getting late we had a quick Burger King (I know, I know) for dinner and then wandered a little bit about around the shops. Is Britain the only place left in the world that all the shops shut at 5:30, it so refreshing to be able to walk into a CD shop at 9:30 and know that you will be able to roam around for at least another half hour. For those readers worried about Chris’ CD addiction well I can say he’s almost cured with only one purchase in the first 5 months out of old blighty, but he has developed a nasty twitch every time we pass any emporiums of audio recordings.

We got up early on Saturday and managed to have breakfast….a donut and a coffee!! Healthy eating at it’s best. We then headed out bright and early expecting the streets around the hotel to be quiet but to no avail the locals were out this early rehearsing their parts from the next Zombie flick. After about two blocks they seemed to thin out so we decided to do the China town and north beach walking tours in the Lonely Planet book. We passed the place where they made the first fortune cookie’s and many other sights of china town which is quite similar to Garnet Hill in Glasgow apart from the cable cars whizzing past. North Beach had loads of cafés, cool bars and bookshops and was also a famous hang out of the beat writers from the 50’s and early 60’s. We also manged to get some pictures of San Francisco highest builing the The Pyramid.


We then headed up through Washington Square park where they where setting up for some music later on so first we went up to the Coit Tower. This gave great views of the city and we had our first sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge which was fairly impressive with the mist hanging eerily over the top and bottom and looking like it was suspended in mid air. We could also see Alcatraz but this was as close as we got to the famous penitentiary as the trips were all booked up for weeks in advance.


We walked back down through the park and had a nosey at some of the stalls. We then wandered about and stumbled upon the Cable Car Museum, which gave the history of the cable cars in San Francisco and how they worked. It was also possible at the museum to see the large wheels and machinery that pulls the underground cables that power the trolleys around the city. The museum is free and well worth some of your time if you find your self in San Francisco.


While we were checking some guide books in the North Beach library an old lady came over and recommended a local museum which had a large Diego Rivera mural. So we went to the San Francisco Arts Institute and checked out the mural and some of the other exhibits. We were both impressed by the work of an artist we hadn’t heard of before called Chris Ballantyne. At this point we were fairly near the Lombard Street the famous winding street and we stood and watched all the cars going down at 5 miles per hour!! We had to walked up a really steep hill to get to the top of it, San Francisco seems to have all the hills that Houston lost out on. We then headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf where they have some large ships (one of which was built in Glasgow) and loads of really tacky shops selling all the usual tat.

At night we went back to China town and to the “House of Nanking” restaurant which we had to queue up to get inside and whilst waiting we got chatting to a guy called Cecil Brown a lecturer in film studies at Berkley who had been at this place once before when it was filmed by his friend Phil Kaufman for a documentary called “China - The Wild East“. At first I wasn’t sure if this guy was 100% especially when he started telling us he was in a scene with Sean Connery in the film “Rising Sun”. We managed to skip the queue with Cecil and once inside the owner came out and started speaking to Cecil and said he would arrange some food for us. The food was excellent and we sat and chatted about many different things with Cecil who was also very interested in our travels and about the different dialects in Scotland. After dinner we said goodbye to Cecil and headed to North Beach and a dark and dingy beat pub called Vesuvio which we had passed during the day. To be honest we were both stuffed from our dinner and we only had one beer before the dreaded running of the Tenderloin gauntlet back to the hotel. We also started using our pedometer that we had bought in Houston and despite us not doing any walking in Houston we managed to do over 20kms on first full day in San Francisco.


On Sunday we missed our healthy breakfast and decided to walk to the Golden Gate Bridge. On the way we spotted a really strange looking building and decided to do a short detour, this was a massive concrete building and turned out to be St Mary of the Assumption Chapel. We couldn’t believe it!! Inside was almost as impressive as the outside building and if we had only done similar things in our churches back home you wouldn’t have minded being in this! There was a huge silver futuristic mobile suspended from the ceiling and a huge pipe organ, then one of those strange things that seem to be happening a lot on this trip a whole Japanese tourist bus arrives and head to the front of the altar with a conductor and give us a rendition of Ave Maria in perfect harmony. The acoustics in this place were amazing and the choir weren’t too bad either, we couldn’t have timed our visit better if we tried.


We continued our walk through Japan Town and Fillmore districts(which reminded us of the West End with all it‘s coffee and organic veg shops) before reaching the Golden Gate Bridge. The sky was grey and the bridge was completely covered in mist so we decided we would go back the following day. We then done a u-turn and took the long walk towards Haight Ashbury the birth place of the hippies, which now has a Benny & Jerry‘s at the intersection. We wandered around some of the funky shops for a while before heading back towards the hotel. About 2 miles from the hotel we stumbled upon a strange Freak show which was in aid of a community centre. There was a roller disco….and I would have been up there until I saw the roller granny (I kid you not!) she was rolling her stuff in style and would have put me to shame. Huge Hoola Hoops, guys and girls in strange outfits on stilts and lots lots more.


We had bought a couple of second-hand DVDs and decided to have a night in after all our walking over the last few days. We wandered out and bought an 18inch pizza from the New York Pizza Co - it was humongous and we also sneaked in some chocolate for later. We weren’t disappointed in the pizza and had a bonus as we were given the wrong DVD so we watch De-lovely and took it back the next day for the real one we bought. After our huge pizza we had a peanut chocolate M&M bar all - I can say is they were delicious and I want one now!!

It was our last day in San Francisco so we headed to the SFMOMA where we saw a great photographic exhibition. We also walked back to the Golden Gate Bridge stopping off at the Museum Fine Arts Palace on the way.


As we got to the bridge there was only a little mist in the centre. We walked all the way to bridge and walked across to the middle of it and as we walked along the mist lifted to reveal a glorious blue sky.....only for us eh?? It was freezing on the bridge and the clouds were whizzing by overhead at some speed. We could see Alcatraz in the distance and the buildings of San Francisco. It was starting to get colder and the sun was going down so we didn’t walk completely over the bridge and headed back to town.


As we had walked for miles again our feet were killing us and we couldn’t face a long walk for food (or another huge pizza) so we decided to walk across the road for a cheap Indian curry which was great.

Then it was off to LA on Tuesday.