St Patricks Day Vegas Style

St Patricks Day Vegas Style
Originally uploaded by domfells.

I promised Colm I'd take a picture of something suitably gaudy & St Paddy's day related in Vegas whilst we were there .... this sign was hanging from the Irish Pub which is part of New York New York, on the Strip.

We are now in San Diego, and have done loads in the past 2.5 weeks since the last post. After a hectic few days sight seeing and shopping in San Francisco - riding on trolley buses, seeing Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge - we headed out of the city, and across California to the state capitol: Sacramento. We spent one night in Sacramento, sleeping on an old converted river boat - which is now a floating hotel - and seeing the city and its impressive state capitol building.

After Sacramento, we headed off again on the road to Lake Tahoe - we spent a few days staying in a little wooden cabin in Tahoe Vista, on the north shores of Lake Tahoe. From there we were only a few minutes drive from Tahoe's skiing areas - particularly Northstar, where we spent a couple of days reacquainting ourselves with the slopes. This was Anne's first time back on skis since her knee op, and everything went really well ... after an initial bout of 'the fear'!

From Tahoe we drove south to Mammoth - again in the mountains, and again we stayed in a little wooden cabin. We were able to ski there for another couple of days as well as taking in the local sights for a day or so, before once again hitting the road out of the Sierra Nevada's and down to Lone Pine.

We stayed overnight in Lone Pine, at a hotel which was used by all the old western stars when on location filming - Roy Rogers, and John Wayne to name a couple. It was fab being able to sit in the hot tub, looking across the desert valley to the snow capped mountains we'd just driven down from. The next day we drove from Lone Pine to Las Vegas via Death Valley -- we drove right down to America's lowest point 282ft below sea level, at Badwater.

We reached Vegas by the late afternoon, and checked in the Luxor where we stayed for two nights. Vegas was all we'd expected it to be ... and a lot more. It's almost overwhelming, but at the same time quite fascinating and a lot of fun. On the first night, we wandered "The Strip", and visited several of the giant hotel/casinos - played some Blackjack (not very successfully!), had some cocktails and dinner, and watched the water show outside The Bellagio. On the second night we went to the Beatles Love show by Cirque du Soleil at The Mirage, which was absolutely brilliant - the performers are quite amazing and we would both thoroughly recommend anyone who gets the chance to go and see it too. After the show we wandered through Caesars Palace marvelling at just how over the top some of it is, and into the Bellagio where we had dinner before retiring to the Luxor much later!

We flew into San Diego on Monday morning, and checked into our hotel in Little Italy. The area is fab, and filled with great italian restaurants and coffee bars. We have spent an afternoon wandering San Diego's tourist spots and an evening in Croces in the Gaslamp having dinner and drinks whilst listening to some excellent live jazz. We spent yesterday at Sea World - I have now seen Shamu in action; plus two other shows featuring seals, dolphins, otters and more. One small boy who participated in the dolphin show, was asked to tell the audience what they felt like, he said "they feel like hotdogs." No more fast food for me!

Right, we're off to wander the Gaslamp a bit more, and maybe head to the Zoo as well --- we leave here and head to New Orleans on Friday, so we will try and post again from there; if not we will post from Florida which is our final stop before heading home :-(

Take care all.

D&A

Room 174 - Madonna Inn

Room 174 - Madonna Inn
Originally uploaded by domfells.

This is the room which Anne made me stay in during our road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

It's the Madonna Inn, near to San Luis Obispo on Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway).

It is one of the oddest motels/hotels that you could ever choose to stay at. Each of the 112 rooms is decorated completely differently, as you can see from their website http://www.madonnainn.com/

It made Anne very happy, and it broke my kitsch-o-meter.

We have now made it to San Francisco after a beautiful drive up the remainder of Route 1 -- and a very slow and frustrating drive around the city centre; unfortunately we hadn't realised that tonight is the annual Chinese New Year Parade hence loads of closed streets and masses of traffic! But we eventually made it to our hotel and then out for dinner.

Tomorrow the sight seeing begins in earnest!

California

Well, we've made it to the US ... eventually. Our flight finally took off from Auckland at about 1.30am, so we were consequently about 6Hrs late arriving in LA. Fortunately this didn't have any impact on our hire car or motel booking.

We are now in Santa Monica, and have spent a day and a half wandering about and doing plenty of window shopping. Tomorrow we head off up the coast towards San Francisco, but not before taking a look at Beverley Hills and a wander down Rodeo Drive (I will be confiscating Anne's credit cards beforehand!).

Going from the southern to northern hemisphere, and thus from summer to winter is something of a shock to the system --- I think we will both be buying some warm clothes over the next few days (just not on Rodeo Drive).

Nothing much more to say, but hopefully we will have some time to upload a few photos to Flickr over the next week or so. Keep a look out.