Pacific Grove, Monterey

We are currently relaxing in the desert preparing for our penultimate trip to Las Vegas. It's 111 degrees outside so we're lounging in our room until it cools a little, which gives me a chance to fill you in on the trip from San Francisco to Monterey.

Sunday 24th June.
This was the day we were kind of dreading. The journey to Monterey required us to catch a bus from downtown San Francisco to the train station in Oakland. Trains aren’t good enough for San Francisco unfortunately. The train in Oakland would be coming all the way from Seattle, part of it’s two day journey to Los Angeles and would drop us off at Salinas where we would then catch a mini bus which would take us to Monterey. To say it was a stressful journey would be an understatement and I’m not going to remind myself by writing about it any further. So lets just say we arrived at our hotel safely situated two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Our lodgings were a little unusual and the welcome a little tepid but we’re two blocks from the Ocean. We had nothing planned but to chill out and relax for the rest of the day and the following before we headed to Los Angeles. We enjoyed a meal at a nice european restaurant. I actually took a risk and had a bit of salmon from Alaska. Not much of a fish eater I actually enjoyed it. The service was good but deteriorated slightly once we ordered a $25 bottle of wine. The wine list was forty pages thick and we showed our dissatisfaction of the waiters snobbery with our tip. As we walked back to the hotel the sun was setting so headed on down to the beach for a better view. This seemed to be the thing to do as a scattering of cars and people sat and watched as the sun disappeared in the distance.

Monday 25th June.
Nothing much to tell you about today really, we walked down the beach, visited Cannery Row in Monterey bought some gifts and tat and walked back up the beach. The pictures can describe the day better than I ever could.





Cheers, Los Angeles next.

San Francisco

I’m currently typing this entry on the train to Los Angeles. It’s been an interesting day. We left Pacific Grove, Monterey this morning and caught the shuttle bus to the desert town of Salinas to catch the train to Los Angeles. A nine hour journey. A good chance I thought to catch up on documenting our travels. Things on the road don’t always go to plan. Our train has been delayed by six hours due to a derailment, pushing the Los Angeles arrival time back to about two, three o’clock in the morning. Not ideal in our book, we were a bit scared about arriving at 9 pm never mind 3 in the morning. Luckily we had a chat with Donna at the ticket desk who helped us out and booked us on a different train scheduled to arrive in LA at 9:45 pm. Good enough. After a 3 hour bus ride through the vineyards of California we are finally on a train heading to Los Angeles. So I need to jump back a few days before all this happened and San Francisco.

Our two year old guide book informed us it was more convenient to fly into Oakland than San Francisco. Enabling us to catch the Air Bart and connecting Bart train at the Oakland Coliseum which would have us in downtown San Francisco in 15 minutes. Of course San Francisco had now updated it’s transport system from the airport and it would now be more convenient to land there and commute into downtown. After a squashed ride on the Air Bart and the help of a presumed homeless lady to buy a couple of tickets to get downtown we arrived at our hotel. Thankfully only half way up one of the notoriously steep hills of San Francisco. In our room we are greeted by a nice view of a brick wall and the fire escape. We’re only on the third floor so cant see past the next building. The first night we just had our usual walk round to find our bearings and check out the local neighbourhood, find a place to eat.

Friday 22nd June.
Our two year old guide book did help us out this time, following it’s advice to book tickets for Alcatraz in advance. The tours were sold out for the next few days so we were pretty relieved to have followed it’s guidance this time. It’ was only a ten minute boat ride to the island so not long enough for Emma to get sick but the boat rocking from side to side did it’s best to unsettle her. Alcatraz was simply great, a fantastic experience and quite beautiful in parts. Outside that is, not the cells which were cold and small. The audio tour allowed us to wander at our own pace and informed us about the prisons history and the attempted escapes. We continued to walk around the viewable areas of the island, keeping our eyes open for the bird crap. It’s a bird sanctuary now after all.

Saturday 23rd June.
The other place we wanted to see in San Francisco was the Golden Gate Bridge. Morbidly it’s one of the most popular places to commit suicide, we didn’t see any jumpers, well only a couple of knitted ones. It was a beautiful clear day, we walked to the middle taking pictures as we went. By the half way point we decided to turn round and returned to buy some souvenirs in the gift shop. We hung around took a few more pictures of the impressive structure then headed back downtown, saving our legs on the old cable car which took the strain on the steep ascents of the San Francisco neighbourhoods.

In the afternoon we took a trip down to the Castro district which turned out to be completely bonkers as Em put it. It was gay pride weekend, so this predominantly gay neighbourhood with bustling and made it difficult for us to find our way round to some of the really nice cafes and gift shops. An experience non the less. Returning to downtown we went for a drink at ‘Cafe Zoetrope’ located within the Sentinel Building, home to Francis Ford Coppola’s production company. The cafe features memento’s from Coppola’s career. We sampled a glass of Francis’ own wine served to us by bartender Peter who let us stand behind the bar. With his rose tinted glasses he was a real throwback to the seventies and looked like he had just walked from the set of The Godfather. Great wine by the way.

Cheers for reading, next up Monterey.

Seattle, part 2

June 21st
Breakfast on the roof deck of the hotel is a great way to start your day. The staff in the Starbucks in the lobby are possibly the friendliest we’ve ever known. The same could be said about Seattle in general from our short experience.

First tourist activity of the day is to visit the O Deck of the Space Needle for some views of the city and the surrounding mountain ranges in the distance. A little hazy to have a really clear view but you could see all of downtown, the harbour and Puget Sound. Beneath the Space Needle is an area called the Seattle Centre, home of the Sci-fi and Science museums. A fun park which had a very 70’s look and feel to it. Possibly not updated since then which maybe the explanation.

We later made our way downtown on the Monorail. A quick three minute journey, cutting through the buildings and above the streets. Wish it went on for longer and through more of the city. Yesterday down at Pikes Place Market we found a groovy looking cafe/store which made it’s own cheese. Never ones to turn down a unique cheese toasty (grilled cheese) this was to be our lunch time destination. Sat on a couple of milk churns, enjoying our toasties within the busy market place. A couple of stores down stands the first ever Starbucks featuring the old logo, store front and interior.

Our afternoon plan was to take one of the harbour cruises. Whilst waiting for the boat we looked round some of the stores on the pier, that was until we entering one of the stores our presence setting off the alarm. Following a polite interrogation we were told we couldn’t look around the cheap store full of nik-naks and other bits of souvenir tat. Once on the boat we received some great views of the city skyline, the public announcer and guide pointed out landmarks and places of interest. It was pretty interesting but a little overpriced for the experience.

For the evening we had read about this place called Bruno’s. we checked it out and thought we should have dinner there. It was a strange, old fashioned, italian, mexican place. full of character which was probably the attraction. We think Bruno himself served us and frankly as weird as the place was we couldn’t complain about the food or the price. 12” pizza and 2 beers for $18. That’s about £9 in real money. It’s a shame we only had two days, loads more places to go and see. I think we’ll be back in Seattle some time in the Future.

Cheers, San Francisico next.

Seattle, part 1

The flight to Seattle turned out to be pretty smooth, the kids kept quiet and our ipods provided the soundtrack to the journey. We arrived around 9.30pm waited for our bags anticipating one of the sleepless children to loose an arm on the baggage claim.

Seattle looked absolutely beautiful from the taxi, the car travelling alongside the skyline with the harbour to our left. We checked in around 10.30pm, dropped off our bags and headed to the roof deck for a panoramic view of the city. The Space Needle illuminated and standing tall. It was wonderful to be finally hear. Both being followers of the Seattle Music scene in the early nineties it’s a place we have always wanted to visit.

Number one place to visit in the guide books is Pikes Place Market. A huge market place full of fresh food stalls, mainly seafood. The most famous being the Pikes Place Fish Market where they throw your order from the front and wrap it up for you. It’s a bit of a show. All through the market are small stalls selling homemade arts and crafts. I bought a really nice journal, sketchbook made from hand made recycled paper with a leather cover. There’s just tons of stuff and a great views of the harbour.

We went to one of Seattle's micro breweries and had a couple of really good beers. Shame the food wasn’t up to much. Cheap burgers at double the price, not a great day for food. Spent the evening at a ball game and introduced ourselves to garlic fries which were superb and put the obligatory hot dog to shame. The Seattle Mariners stadium was a work of art with a retractable roof so none of the games can be rained off. Tonight it was sun all the way. We had seats on the top tier behind home plate. The stadium was about half full, great family atmosphere. Later in the game we moved round the side so we could see the city skyline and the sun go down. Sadly the Mariners lost despite the crowds best efforts.

I thinks that’s enough for now, I’ll try and write some more tomorrow.

Cheers.

Momma, Momma,

Come on, come on. Come here, look at this, look at that. I want this, I want a donut. Momma, Momma, come on come on.
We want to make sure kids are sat nowhere near us. Benadryl is Emma's suggestion.

Airports are always fun, currently we are sat at gate C29 waiting for the flight to Seattle (or we were when we wrote this). A good view of the runway to our left. Two irritating kids to our right. You have to feel for the mother, she has to live with them. Our prnultimate night in Boston was spent firstly on the banks of the Charles river. Sorry to interrupt but the kids have got donuts now, looking forward to when the sugar kicks in! Anyway back to last night. After our lovely picnic, why we haven't done that before we don't know. We thought it would be rude not to have a drink at Woody's, make that three, which is a heavy night for us two. Good conversation with our friends behind the bar. Sadly watching the Yankees beating the Mets. The Red Sox won earlier so they haven't gained any ground which is good. So a good night was had and we managed to get rid of our TV. Great.

The sugar's kicking in now! Looking forward to Seattle, it's going to be a long flight. The ipods in for a heavy shift. Hope there's a good movie on or we can get absorbed in our books.

We'll get back to you later.

Montreal

What can we say about Montréal apart from you are one crazy city, and very French. Which I'm not saying is a bad thing. It's more a reflection on ourselves and the feeling that I personally wish I had paid more attention at school to learn the language. The second largest French speaking city in the western world after Paris. In fact I thought we were in France, not a two hour drive north of the American border. We we're staying in a nice little hotel in the gay district of the city. Not too far from the places you need to see, just off Saint Catherine, one of the main downtown streets. To say the area was a bit of a culture shock would be an understatement. Surrounded by the neon lights, graffiti and numerous sex shops, it took us a while to climatize and feel comfortable. We did take one left turn from the busy streets to find ourselves in the middle of a run down residential area which jangled the nerves slightly but we took it in our stride.

Old Montréal was a much cleaner and comfortable area to walk round, sure it was the main tourist area but for good reason. Streets of old architecture and old shop fronts, outdoor café bars, street performers and portrait artists. Also within Old Montréal stands Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica which from the outside I found nothing too spectacular to look at. However step inside and the place is a complete masterpiece. Possibly the highlight of the weekend.

We took the trip with Carrie a native Canadian and a nurse who helped Emma settle at the hospital in Boston. Carrie's step sister also lives in Montréal and met up with us on Saturday evening for a trip to Mount Royal which provides views looking over the city and the local raccoons. We certainly saw more of the city with our two excellent guides, introducing us to other neighbourhoods and a good restaurant for some Persian food.

I would say Montréal didn't meet my expectations when we first arrived but grew on me and Emma over the following day. It's certainly an interesting vibrant city with an acquired taste in certain areas. The only thing missing from the trip for Emma was to see a Canadian Mountie. We did see a young Moose on the journey up, jogging casually across the highway. Not a common sight we're told, so we felt pretty fortunate. Unlike the various bits of road kill lying on the side of the road.

We're into our final 2 weeks living in Boston, we fly to Seattle on the 18th June to start our journey down the west coast by train, plane and automobile. Well a bus actually. So there will no doubt be more to follow.

Cheers for reading.