San Fran Day 3

Hello!

Today is our last full day in the US, which is sad, but I'm also ready to go home.

This morning we took the cable car. It was an hours wait but was fun.

I saw this on the way, and it made me laugh, hahahah.

We took the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf, where we had Clam Chowder again for lunch. After lunch we did a bit of shopping around there. I managed to get some sunglasses I've been looking for for cheap.

Afterwards, we took the cable car back to Union Square. Aaron wasn't feeling too good so he went back to the hotel room for a sleep and I went shopping. I got a cool dress from Calvin Klein, plus another skirt from BCBG Max Azria.

We're probably going to head out for dinner soon.

Finally, I decided to leave Aaron for a real man. You can see him below.

San Francisco

Sadly, we ended our tour yesterday. We're now in San Francisco for another few nights.

We arrived in San Francisco and went straight to fisherman's wharf for lunch. We had clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls, and it was the nicest lunch I've had in SO long. I'm definitely having it again while we are here.

After lunch we had a tour of the city.

Alcatraz

This car made me laugh so I had to take a photo hahahah. I'm tempted to find out where to hire them from.

Imagine the Full House music when you look at this photo.

After the tour, we headed to our hotel and wandered around for a bit, finding some amazing shops. Later, we met with the tour (some people are still on the tour, and end back in LA) for dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. It was good to see everyone one last time.

Our taxi home was so freaky! Living in Wellington, I'm used to hills, but it was like being in a roller coaster! I actually lost my stomach some of the time. The angle was crazy!!

Today we spent the day shopping. Near our hotel, there's a 5 storey mall, with a 6-7 storey Nordstroms in it. Also nearby is a 7 storey Macy's with a second building across the street, plus loads of high end stores like Louis Vuitton, Chanel etc. We spent most of the day in the mall, and managed to buy a few things.

For dinner, we walked to Chinatown and went to a restaurant. The food was good, but the staff were pretty useless and really rude, which was weird considering it's meant to be the 'best' Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.

Afterwards we walked back to the mall and did more shopping. It's cool because the shops don't close til after 8pm here every day, but the annoying part is that they don't open til 10-11am.

Anyway, going to go plan tomorrow with Aaron now. If you haven't done so yet, read our last 5 or so posts as I posted quite a bit tonight!!

Kim

Yosemite

After 2 nights and almost no sleep in Vegas, we headed to Yosemite and back to nature. It was so so so pretty, another place I definitely want to go back to.

We stayed at Bass Lake, which is about an hour's drive from Yosemite National Park.

After a sleep catching up from Vegas, we headed to Yosemite to spend the day exploring.

We rented bikes and cycled everywhere, which was so much fun.

We saw a bear!! They are almost never seen around there, and we saw one up close!!

For our final night of the tour, we went out to a karaoke pub at Bass Lake. We all wore white t shirts and everyone on the tour signed each others. Aaron sang about 4 songs, and people kept asking him to sing more because he was so good! We only got about 3-4 hours sleep but it was a good night.

Vegas baby!!

Next morning we headed to Vegas. We stopped at Route 66 on the way, and got some merch.

Vegas is so cool, I want to head back there sometime and do more. It's a lot less seedy than I thought it would be, and I overheard someone talking on the bus and apparently it's cleaned up a lot from what it used to be.

We had a mini tour in the afternoon, below is the lion outside the MGM grand.

In the evening, we had dinner at an italian restaurant. Afterwards, we had a night tour of the town. At the end of the tour in a seedy area, the tour manager suddenly got a phone call, and said his friend was in trouble. He said he had to quickly stop at a bail bonds place to help out his friend. We'd been waiting in the bus for around 20 minutes, and suddenly he came back and asked us if we wanted to watch a vegas wedding while we were waiting. So we headed to the Graceland for what we thought was going to be a vegas wedding.

Turns out he was actually organising a surprise for us, which was an Elvis impersonator performing for us inside the chapel! It was so funny, below is a short video of him performing.

After he'd sung, he called out two names from the tour and asked them to come up. It was a couple from the tour. He fake married them for us, so we could see a Vegas wedding.

Next morning, Aaron and I went to a HUGE outlet mall for some shopping. I bought a dress and some new togs and boardies. That afternoon we wandered around the Strip. Below is Aaron outside New York New York.

We HATED the hotel that Contiki was staying at, it was very low budget and had loads of homeless people hanging around it because they were allowed to ue the laundry. The air con didn't work properly and since we were in the middle of the desert it was pretty uncomfortable!! So, we decided to stay our second night how everyone should in Vegas; in style! We stayed at the MGM Grand. It was so nice, there was a TV in the bathroom. We had dinner at the buffet in the casino, and it was amazing. Below is me in the room, about to go out for the night

Our tour manager had organised a hummerzine (hummer limo) to drive us around the strip. It was awesome, but wasn't really long enough.

I looooved Vegas so much. I could never live there or anything, but I definitely want to go back sometime; two days wasn't enough!

Grand Canyon

After a visit to Sedona, we drove to the Grand Canyon where we stayed for two nights.

The Grand Canyon is crazy. It's so so huge, something you definately have to see in person to understand. I always thought it was huge, but seeing it in person blows your mind.

Next morning, we went for a walk down the Grand Canyon. We were told that it takes twice as long to walk back up as it does to walk down, so we walked down for about 45 minutes and then headed back. I'm glad we headed back when we did, because it was getting so hot. Crazy people go right to the bottom (it's 1.6km deep) and stay there - we saw a couple who had stayed down there for three days.

The awesome thing about the Grand Canyon and the area around it is that the animals still tend to rule the roost. We saw loads of elks, squirrels, bats, birds and more. The squirrel below was eating an m&m.

For Cam, to make him jealous:

That afternoon, I had the scariest hour of my life. I actually thought I wasn't going to survive. It was too windy for a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, so we decided to go in a small plane instead. The turbulence was so terrible; out of nowhere we would suddenly drop heaps. People were screaming and crying, and I was so sick that the next morning I still hadn't recovered properly. Meanwhile, next to me, Aaron was mostly okay and was able to take some photos!

It was pretty crazy to think though that we flew around for an hour looking at the Grand Canyon, and we still didn't even see 2% of it.

When I had recovered from the flight, we went for a walk and watched the sun set.

I think I found Tina's sister!

Sedona

Hey everyone

So sorry we haven't posted in a while!! We've either been too busy or haven't had internet to be able to update.

Anyway, I'll post pics of where we've been in separate posts, to keep it a bit easier to read!

After we left Phoenix, we drove to Sedona, which is in the middle of the desert with massive red rocks/mountains/hills/whatever you want to call them. In the middle, there was a small town with an ice cream shop that made the BEST ice creams ever.

...you're sure to meet some gentle people there.

Hey all,

We've arrived in San Francisco aka Wellington x3 with a big red bridge. Sorry it's been so long since the last update. The last few Hotels we stayed at didn't have Internet which kinda sucked.

Well the Contiki is over now which is kinda sad, met some really awesome people on the tour and the tour itself was amazing. We got to see so much in such a short space of time so it was well worth it. I'm finally starting to feel a bit homesick so I'm kinda looking forward to coming home now.

My favourite city during the tour has to be San Diego. It was realy clean and awesome there and the San Diego zoo was pretty awesome otherwise my favourite overall place had to be Yosemite/Bass Lake. We stayed in these awesome cabins that had a BBQ and everything so we made some american burgers haha.

The Taxi drivers in San Francisco could teach Wellington Taxi drivers a thing or two in getting people to their destination as fast as possible so I'm loving that aspect of San Fran so far.

Anyway, I'll try not to go on, Kim will be adding lots of photos from all the places we've been to since the last update so stay tuned.

Cya all in a few days.

Arizona

Today we spent the day driving to Phoenix, Arizona. It took us about 8 hours, but seemed to go pretty quickly.

It is so, so, so hot here. Noone walks outside really, because it's too hot. It was 44 degrees when I checked earlier today. When you step outside it's like stepping into a sauna, this massive wall of heat hits you.

Tomorrow morning a number of people are going on a hot air balloon ride over the desert. It's at 5am though and pretty expensive, so Aaron and I decided to skip but instead we will be going on a helicopter ride over the grand canyon on Thursday. Tomorrow morning after the others return we are heading to the grand canyon, so will probably be another day long bus ride.

Anyway, we are off to dinner now with the group and also to a bar where they race goldfish!

Kim

Zoo

Yesterday we spent most of the day at the San Diego Zoo. It was sooo awesome, so many animals!!

A woodpecker!!

I was the only person over 10 who was enjoying the petting zoo

Us on the bus that goes around the zoo

That evening we headed to a baseball game, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, will post about today in a bit!

Kim

Hey all,

Aaron here again. We arrived in San Diego today(as already mentioned by Kim) and I have to say, it's much better than Los Angeles and Anaheim. It actually feels a lot more like NZ(Probably Auckland but minus the really bad traffic) so yeah I'm loving it so far. The people we've met so far on the Contiki have been really awesome. Probably 70% Australians on the Tour which is all good, makes me feel more at home.

Today we went to some Museum place, Westfield Plaza(which is where I discovered an awesome shop called Sam Goody), a birth site of San Diego/California, and then went to dinner at a place called Dick's Last Resort. It was possibly one of the most random restaurants I've ever been to but never-the-less, it was amazing.

We're off to San Diego Zoo tomorrow. Apparently it's one of the best zoos in the world but if they don't have living Dinosaurs like Jurassic Park, then it ain't the best.

Anyway, Kim will upload photos of today's journey sometime.

San Diego

Hello!

We started our Contiki this morning, driving to San Diego. It's so awesome here, I prefer it to Anaheim/LA.

I'm too lazy to post pics at the moment, but probably will tomorrow.

We went to a few places, including a 5 storey mall, and Old Town San Diego, which is where the city/California originally started. It's really cool because they don't allow cars there, and have tried to keep it as true to what it was back then as possible.

We're off to dinner soon with the Contiki group. There are tons of Australians on the trip, a few from England/Ireland, plus a few from other c0untries.

Anyway, I'll hopefully post more tomorrow.

Kim