Well, last Saturday, we checked out of the Vibe Hotel in Hollywood, and Alex and I went to hospital to get my foot looked at, as it was painful. It took about 4 hours for them to tell me nothing was wrong, and it cost me at least $100 for the x-rays and the ER fees (plus the doctor's fees, which will be sent home!), so it turned out to be an expensive day! We made it back to the hostel, where we left our bags (and Mike!!) for about 6pm, and then we rushed off to Hollywood/Highland to meet Steph, a girl that I met in Costa Rica. It was strange seeing her again, as the last time I'd seen her was in our hotel in Costa! But we all went and got some dinner at a place called Mel's Diner, and all was forgotten. It was a typical American diner, with jukeboxes all over the place, and the general theme of it being stuck in the 60's. We stayed there for about an hour, and then she gave us a lift to our hostel, and we said our goodbyes. It was really good to see her again, and was kind of her to take us out for a meal, but we all wish we could have seen her for longer! She found it funny (as many of you probably will!), that we thought Hollywood Bowl was an actual bowling alley, as opposed to the concert venue! When we got to the hostel, Alex & I had to go almost straight away, as we needed to check into our hotel that was included in our bus tour. We got on the bus, and it took about 2 hours to make it to Rosemead (which Steph said was one of the worst suburbs of LA!) and checked in by about 11:30pm. The first thoughts of it were that it was very nice - anywhere that we got a double bed each was amazing!
We got up at about 6:30am on Sunday morning, and went down to get our free breakfast - this is when we noticed that things weren't as we thought they would be. All of the people in the room were Chinese!!!!! We started to get a bit worried, and our thoughts were confirmed when all of them boarded the same bus as us. So, we had actually booked ourselves onto an Asian tour, and we had no idea when we saw it online! It wasn't too bad, but I was pretty annoyed during the first leg of the journey to the factory outlets. I bought some jeans from Old Navy, but nothing other than them. Alex, however, bought a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, which was nice, but out of my price range! We got back on the road again, and we could already feel the temperature increasing as we went along. We stopped off for some lunch in the middle of nowhere, and got to Vegas at around 3pm. We drove past all of the big hotels, and found ours was in Downtown, and was surprisingly nice! It had a big casino on the ground floor, and our room was on the 4th floor (of 19!). We watched a bit of TV, and went for a wander around Freemont Street, and then went to reception to go on an organised Hotel tour. Our first stop was Rio, where we watched a free show in the Casino, and then went to the Monte Carlo, where we watched a show about Atlantis (the myth). They had a really cool shopping mall, that had blue sky painted on the ceiling, which gave it feel that it was daylight. It was quite impressive, but I suppose it was Vegas! The next stop was the Bellagio, where we watched the water fountain display, and had a look around inside, before finishing it off with the Venetian. It had the same sort of ceiling as the Monte Carlo, but it was themed to be like Venice, so it had the boats giving people tours on man-made canals. We got back to the hostel at around 10:30pm, and got ready for our early start.
We got a wake-up call at 5am(!!!!), but we ignored it for half an hour, and then decided to get up. We got on the bus at 6am, and made our way to the Grand Canyon. I slept for a lot of the journey, but was awake to see the Hoover Dam, and to witness us crossing into Arizona (with a border check!). We stopped off for some brunch, which is where Alex & I bought a Subway Footlong for both breakfast and lunch. We stopped off a few miles from the Grand Canyon, where most of the bus watched an Imax film about it, but we wanted to save money, so we sat outside for a while. We got the the Canyon at about 1pm, and spent an hour taking photos, and it was stunning! It was so big, it was hard to imagine a river changing the shape of the landscape, but the proof was there! We got back on the bus, and started our long journey back to Vegas. We got back at about 6:30pm, and we went back for much needed showers. We went out onto Freemont Street at about 8pm, and we met up with Louise (the girl from home that I saw in Cairns) and also, one of my best friends sisters, who had won a holiday on the radio! It was cool seeing them, but it was strange seeing them in the middle of Las Vegas!!! We tried to tempt them with a $10 buffet at one of the hotels, but they had already made up their mind about going to Hooters. So we went to the buffet alone, and ate so much! We had numerous plates of food, which were washed down with a big bowl of chocoltae ice cream (!). We made it back to the hotel for about 10pm, after a short walk was made longer by the fact that it was painful for us to move too quickly! We watched some TV, and then went to bed.
On Tuesday, we got up at 8am (what a lie in!) and got some breakfast from the nearby 7 Eleven. We got on the bus at 9am, and went to the main strip to take some photos of the hotels. We saw the MGM Grand, New York New York, the Luxor and a few more. We left Vegas at about 10am, and started the long journey back to LA, but about 10 minutes out of the city, the driver pulled over, and went outside to fix something. We spent over an hour there, and it wasn't too nice in the heat! (when we got breakfast, it was already 35C!!). We stopped off at a factory outlet, where I bought a new watch, and by that time, it was 101F (a bit over 38C), which is the hottest weather I've ever been in. We watched Die Hard 4.0 for the rest of the journey and got to LA at about 6pm. We checked in to yet another hotel, and went to find somewhere to eat. We found a typical fast food restaurant called In-N-Out Burger, which does the huge burgers, with bucket sized drinks, so we got them and felt pretty full afterwards! We went to bed at about 1am, after watching numerous episodes of Family Guy and South Park!
On Thursday, we started the second part of our tour, and got on another bus full of Chinese people. On this bus, they weren't asking us why we'd decided to go on an Asian tour, and some were actually talking to us! We found another Subway, and bought a Footlong for breakfast and lunch, and got on our way again. We stopped off for lunch in the middle of nowhere. It was a small town that seemed to sell things for cars, and Mexican food. We got into Yosemite National Park at around 3pm, and took lots of photos. We saw El Capitain, and a really big waterfall, which is where we went on a small walk to the base of it. Sadly we didn't see any bears, but we did see loads of.... Squirrels! What a taste from home! We left the park at about 6pm, and drove towards San Francisco, stopping along the way to get some food from a town with a population of about 3,000, but about 10 different fast food restaurants! We went to a different place called Del Taco, which is another chain to add to our ever growing list of fast food restaurants! We got to the outskirts of San Fran. at about 10pm tonight, and checked into a rather posh hotel, which is where we'll be staying for the nst 2 nights! Look out for the next post soon!
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