California Dreaming

Shopping in LA

2006-02-07T21:24:00.000Z

We didn't spend too much time shopping thankfully - just enough to keep Miriam satisfied, and for us to pick up some cheap clothes that we would otherwise have had to buy (and pay more for) back in England on our return. On our last couple of days we went to two malls - the first was Farmers Market just south of Hollywood, which was the usual collection of shops but was in an attractive area that (unusually for LA) had some history to it - it really was a Farmers Market in the 1930s ... ancient history by LA standards. The market itself now hosts dozens of food stalls and bars, and some live music, which was fun. Best shop I went to was Banana Republic, but the prices were pretty steep.

We left our major purchasing until the day before we left for home, when (on Barbara's friend Judy's recommendation) we drove out to the shopping centre at Glendale, a nearby suburb. This looked and felt a bit like Brent Cross in London, but less busy. I was looking for a jacket and found it depressing going into shop after shop seeing nothing I liked, or if I did finding it cost hundreds of dollars. But in the end I was delighted to find what seemed to me like jacket heaven, in a corner of JC Penny's. I ended up with a great leather jacket for $60, as well as a casual jacket and a couple of polo shirts, so I went home very happy. We sorted Miriam out with a few things for her new school, and it was a productive day all round.

Highlights of our last week in California

2005-12-06T18:32:00.000Z

Three months after coming home, and I still haven't finished writing about our trip, so now is the time to draw it to a close with a brief overview of our last week in California. Highlights included:

- a day trip into Tijuana in Mexico - very tacky, but lots of fun, with cheap shopping and tasty and spicy enchilladas

- Ocean Beach - spent a long afternoon at this low-key bohemian beach, watching the surfers, looking in rock pools, watching the sun go down - this remains an abiding and very happy memory of our whole trip .... the golden light, all of us together, nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in

- Getty Museum in LA - beautifully situated in the hills with a fabulous vista to the bay. Gleaming white marble set in perfectly manicured gardens. A relatively small but high quality collection of art

- a drive out to Malibu Beach for the quintessential southern Californina beach experience. Catherine and I hired surfboards and joined the thorngs of surfers waiting for the (very frequent) rideable waves. I had no success at all, failing to stnad up for more than a few seconds, but had a few good rides. We could have got in lots of practice as the waves were so good, but the problem was that it was so tiring swimming out through the broken waves to where they were breaking. I felt I needed to be a lot fitter to be able to do this, and when you look at surfers they are a fit bunch. Another problem was that there were lots of rocks on the sand under the water, and we ended up with cuts on our feet and ankles. But its not a surprise that Malibu is a world-renowned surf spot - it has great waves that run for 100 metres or more. The best sight of the day was a bronzed, pony-talied dude riding a wave into shore whilst sitting on his surfbaord in the lotus position, thumbs and forefingers together and eyes closed!
Barbara didn't have too good a time on the beach - she had a migraine, and was then stung by a wasp that she had stepped on in the sand. We left early to drive back "home", and spent some time in the pool before going out for the evening with Barbara's old friends from animation days in London.

Sea World

2005-10-30T21:03:00.000Z

With untypical discipline, we were all up and ready for an early start at Sea World, to get ahead of the crowds and avoid the worst of the queues. First stop was the dolphin-feeding pool. We queued up to buy a few small and over-priced sprats, then elbowed our way to the side of the pool to try and attract the grey, rubbery-skinned mammals. Despite the commercial set-up, it really was fun to get a close-up view of the dolphins. They are supposed to be the cleverest of animals, and with their sparkling black eyes and sweetly smiling mouth one does imagine a wry intelligence working away inside that large forehead.

We rushed to the next attraction, Shipwreck Rapids, which we were delighted to find without any queue. We climbed into a large tyre with a young Kiwi couple, and started down the “river”. As we went through the first bit of white water, which dumped copious amounts of H2O all over us, we realised why people were waiting for the sun to break through the morning clouds before ‘enjoying’ this ride. It was fun, in a perverse kind of way, going down the rapids, through waterfalls, past jets of water – the kids loved it of course and we had to go back on it a number of times.

The set-piece shows at Sea World are what everyone comes for – Dolphin Discovery, and Shamu’s Adventure. These take place in amphitheatres holding thousands, with a huge and deep pool instead of a stage, in which dolphins and killer whales show off their range of impressive tricks – jumping high into the air, letting their minders ride on their backs or noses, and waving to the audience with their tails, on cue. The shows have a warm-up entertainer who gets the crowd to sing along with a few songs, including, memorably, Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. But right before the show, they sing a kind of public warning song, which goes something like:
“If you’re sitting in the first 12 rows, there’s something you ought to know, if you haven’t heard about it yet, you’re going to get extremely wet”
This area, closest to the pool, is called the Soak Zone, and of course Catherine wanted to test out what this was really like, so I had to go with her. We thought we were going to get wet, but the dolphin and killer whale trainers seem to have a mission to ensure that the maximum possible amount of water gets dumped on those silly enough to sit in the soak zone. When we sat there, at the Shamu show, Shamu himself swam right by the edge of the pool, shaped his tail like a shovel, and sent waves of cold, salty, smelly water all over us, again and again. Again, getting this wet was fun, in a perverse way, and it was funny to see others sitting near us who hadn’t quite appreciated just how much water would be coming their way, and ended up with salt water all over their digital camcorders.

The shows were really good fun, with lots of oohs and aahs at the acrobatics of the dolphins and whales. Then only sour taste was the public address system before the performance, asking for those audience members in the military to stand up and for the rest of us to give them a round of applause and appreciate them as heroes who were defending our democracy. Anhauser-Busch, the company which owns SeaWorld and also makes Budweiser, are apparently big supporters of the Republicans, so glorification of the military fits with their world view – but it could have been a commercial decision, as so many residents of San Diego are connected in some way with the Navy or Air Force.

The kids’ favourite attraction was Journey to Atlantis, an uneasy mix between a roller-coaster and a mystical Atlantis story ride. A steep drop into water, and some fast twists and turns made it worthwhile, but by the fourth ride I was getting sick of the mystical nonsense about saving Atlantis. But on a warm day, with few queues, it made for mindless fun.

There was one other main “ride”, with a polar adventure theme, where you are strapped into chairs which then move a bit whilst a screen shows you flying in a helicopter over the arctic – very effective, it’s amazing how one’s senses can be fooled into thinking that you are actually flying. Many of the other attractions were zoo-like enclosures with polar bears, walruses, penguins, sharks – all sort of interesting.

We went to a couple of other shows. One was a kind of circus act starring a sealion called Clyde, and one or two penguins. The other one was called Cirque de la Mer, which really was painful to sit through. The performers were technically very talented, but I really did not want to sit through half an hour of mime and silent acrobatics, set to a John-Michel Jarre-esque soundtrack, on a psychedelic stage set with performers in day-glo costumes.

All in all then, a good day out (and we even went back for a couple of hours on our last day in San Diego, as it was free), but not a patch on Universal Studios.

San Diego

2005-10-23T11:51:00.000+01:00

I had planned this side trip from LA after reading about San Diego, and how many people consider it to be the most pleasant and attractive city in the US. I’d also thought that we wouldn’t really enjoy LA, so we would need a few side trips to get out of there. But even though we did end up enjoying LA, we are so glad that we went to San Diego.

We started off relatively early on a Sunday morning heading south, thinking the traffic wouldn’t be too bad then. But the fabled traffic problems of LA started to make sense to us, as it took a good hour and a half to make it through Orange County, past a pretty horrible landscape of suburban sameness caked in car fumes. We made use of the Car Pool lane (only available to cars with more than one passenger) which helped us make slightly quicker progress, and eventually escaped the conurbation and hugged the coastal freeway travelling southwards, under a blanket of cloud. We stopped for a break in Carlsbad, a low key seaside town (where we had had an offer of a home exchange), and got talking to a woman from Chicago who had with her a gorgeous little stray kitten she had found, and an Armenian woman who was visiting her relations who ran the café we were in. Miriam and Catherine were delighted by the kitten, and indulged by the Armenian woman, who was all sweetness and light until I asked her about how she had come to America. Her family lived in Turkey, and she harboured still a loathing of Turks for their massacres of Armenians during World War One.

Arriving in San Diego, we found the Youth Hostel after a bit of hunting around, and settled ourselves in. We decided to spend out first afternoon there in Balboa Park, a huge park right in the middle of the city, home of the San Diego zoo and liberally sprinkled with ornate Mission-era building that now house a range of museums and galleries. Barbara and I had a bit of a falling out as she wanted to stay to let the kids play in a wilder area of the park, with grass and trees, whilst I wanted to explore the buildings and fountains, so we each did our own thing for a bit. I found them later and led them to some really beautiful areas, best of all being the large lily pond, where nearby a mature lady was standing alone on a lawn, singing operatic tunes for her own, and our pleasure. The park was very restful, after a long day on the road.

We headed off for a meal on the island of Coronado, reached by one of the world’s most astounding bridges, curving high above the bay to allow ships to pass beneath (to and from the huge naval base), and giving stupendous views of the city and the water around which it is built. The only problem for me as driver was that it was difficult to look at the view and keep the car going smoothly around the curve. Coronado is a pretty part of San Diego, and we had one of the first of a series of lovely Mexican meals there.

Back at the Youth Hostel we planned an early start the next day for our visit to Sea World, and went to bed. I woke about 2am on hearing a group of people in the common room downstairs, who had probably just come back from a club. There was supposed to be a keep quiet after 11pm rule, but I probably could have gone back to sleep had it not been for one particular voice, of a bloke from Bolton who I’d talked to earlier that day. The trouble with him was, I could understand what he was saying, and he was talking about Wayne Rooney and his granny-shagging antics, and analysing Man United’s game. There was no way I could have slept through that, so I had to go down in my pyjamas and tell him (and the rest) to keep the noise down. The next day, though, I took no chances and bought some earplugs, which were fantastic – I’ll be taking them with me wherever I travel now (and when Miriam’s friends sleepover!) as they almost guarantee uninterrupted sleep. They also reduced the noise from planes due to San Diego’s airport being right in the centre of the city. Despite the occasional noisy Bolton fan, the Youth Hostel was great, with free pancakes for breakfast in the morning, free films in the TV lounge, lots of guidebooks in the library, a table tennis table, and very helpful staff.

LA by the sea

2005-10-22T10:49:00.000+01:00

One of LA’s great advantages is that it is situated along an almost unbroken expanse of beach, and we couldn’t miss out on the quintessential southern Californian beach experience. Santa Monica is LAs main beach location, almost a city in itself, loved especially by ex-pat Brits, including (oddly) Morrissey and John Lydon. But we thought we’d go to its slightly quieter neighbour, Venice Beach, so named because its creator installed a series of canals a few blocks back from the beachfront. The beach is wide and never-ending, but most people come to Venice for its Boardwalk, a sort of Camden Market by the sea, with wizened old hippies squatting on the pavement selling white sage and ear-rings, tattoo and piercing parlours every hundred yards, bars holding “Jim Morrison Appreciation weekends”, and of course a drum circle. I scoff, but it made for an interesting afternoon. We had lunch in the Sidewalk Café, and watched a street entertainer whose whole schtick was following people and imitating their walk, and pretending to be their partner by holding their hand … it was a lot funnier than it sounds. There were other street entertainers too, including a dreadlocked rasta on roller-skates playing Hendrix songs on his electric guitar, which all added to the local colour.

A few hundred yards further south we came to the renowned “Muscle Beach”. This was a bit of a disappointment. I had imagined a vast area filled with Arnie-wannabees working assiduously on their pecs and abs, but what was actually there was a smallish outdoor gym with three or four narcissists deigning to share the sight of their rippling bodies with us mere mortals. Perhaps it was the time of day, mid-afternoon in mid-summer not being the best time to exert oneself in the open air.

Hippie bus in Venice Beach

The canals of this Venice were not too extensive, but ambling among them with an ice cream in the late afternoon was delightful – imagining ourselves living in one of the small canal-side houses, the beach just around the corner. The long walk back to the car was made bearable by stopping off in shops selling ethnic furniture and gifts, and one man chanting to the sun as it set. We decided to drive back, with the top down, along Santa Monica Boulevard and through Beverly Hills, rather than on the freeway. This was interesting in parts but took much longer, and by the time we were in Beverly Hills it had gone dark and we were getting cold – we had to stop and convert the convertible.

Meeting the locals

2005-10-09T21:23:00.000+01:00

What really helped us to enjoy LA was knowing some people who lived there. Barbara, who used to work in Animation Studios in London before we had kids, knew a couple of animators who had moved to LA in the late 1990s. Judy, originally from Australia, is a really lovely woman who I remembered from the first few months of going out with Barbara – she was very friendly at an animation studio picnic in Regents Park when I felt a bit alone as the non-artist in a bunch of creatives. She has left animation now and is studying to become a hypnotherapist. We went to visit her in her home up in the Hollywood Hills, quite near to our home exchange home. The house wasn’t very big, being on just one floor, but the rooms were large and there was an easy transition from indoors to out, and I think Judy and Jurgen spend a lot of their time outside, looking at the fantastic view of downtown. The only problem there is the coyotes that have in the past attacked their cats – but coyotes are like foxes in London … attracted by the rubbish that we leave out, and probably impossible to get rid of.

Judy took us up into the hills of Griffith Park, near the Observatory (famous as the setting for some of James Dean’s key scenes in “Rebel Without a Cause”), from where we got a classic view of the Hollywood sign, and LA sprawled below us. She also came over to our home exchange house to enjoy the pool, and we went out for a meal in Los Feliz with her and Paul Demeyer, another friend from Barbara’s animation days, and their partners. Paul had worked on the “Rugrats in Paris” movie and was working hard on another project now, and his German wife Renate was a dog trainer, specialising in dogs with acute behavioural problems (a normal LA kind of job). Judy’s husband Jurgen is also an animator but was now working on a live action movie directed by Danny de Vito, who they had both met and found delightful.

They were all happy to be living in Los Feliz, and it was strange that we ended up in a home exchange so close to where they all lived. It is the sort of area that has a lot of history (well, about 80 years worth) but then became a bit neglected as other areas became more fashionable, and thus seems a bit more real than some other LA neighbourhoods with a mix of population and relative lack of pretension. It is now having a resurgence as people recognise its attractions.

Universal Studios

2005-10-07T20:50:00.000+01:00

Over the months leding up to our holiday, I had skilfully weaned the kids of the idea of going to Disneyland and got them excited about Universal instead, mainly cos I wanted to go there and cos we had already been to Eurodisney (albeit a few years ago). I had been slightly worried about this decision, as the original Disneyland is supposed to be really good, and it was the 50 year anniversary this year, with lots of special events …. but I am so glad we went to Universal. The kids loved the rides most of all, but Barbara and I enjoyed seeing the mechanics of movie-making – the studio tour, looking at the set for Psycho, Jaws, King Kong, etc., then the Special Effects show.

It was all very professionally done, and there was such a variety of things to do that we never got bored – and we didn’t even have to queue much, due to our early start (we arrived as the gates opened).

There were one or two dud shows – the Van Helsing “horror” walk-through was pretty pathetic, and I was left underwhelmed by Backdraft – but quite a few surpassed expectations, especially the Terminator and Waterworld. I got my photo taken with Stan and Ollie, and with Marilyn Monroe, which pleased me no end.

Miriam practising walking the red carpet, and looking the part.

Lights .... camera ..... action!

2005-09-30T19:16:00.000+01:00

Driving along Hollywood Boulevard in a convertible with the top down - that is how I'd imagined LA ....... and it did feel good, apart from the polluted air we were breathing in, and the hot sun burning our skin. We parked in the heart of Hollywood for an extortionate $12, and had a wander round. First stop was Mann's Chinese Theatre, where the Oscars used to be held, with actors' handprints in the cement outside. Having seen this on TV so many times, it was fun to to be there in person, putting our hands in the gorilla-like imprints of Arnie, and the like.

Jostling along the pavement with the camera-toting hordes we looked at the famous names on pink stars set into the pavement, finding the act of recognition oddly pleasing. We were, essentially, worshipping at the altar of celebrity - we all know these names, and we associate them with (mainly) pleasant memories. But I enjoyed myself - which I find surprising, and slightly worrying.

We were reminded of just why Hollywood has such a hold over us, when we went that evening to see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory . We are all fans of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, but didn't think the film could be a patch on the original. But it was fantastic, possibly even better than the original (except for the songs, most of which aren't as good), and had us singing all the way home.

City of Angels

2005-09-16T22:33:00.000+01:00

I never thought that I would say this, but ... I quite like LA. I had been expecting a smog-bound, gridlocked, over-heated, never-ending expanse of low-rise buildings interspersed with gaudy advertising, and inhabited by loud and superficial people. Friends who had been to LA before as visitors had not really enjoyed the experience and went on in raptures about San Francisco and how much more compact and cultured it was. I still wanted to go there, but more to experience a city that dominates our cultural landscape, rather than in expectation of actually enjoying it. But for us, ensconced in our exchange "home away from home", LA seemed manageable, its attractions accessible, and even, at times, beautiful.

We could tell how close we were to LA by the number of lanes on the freeway - the one or two lanes of Highway 1 gave way to 4, 6, even 8 lanes (in each direction) as we entered the land where the car reigns supreme. We could have stayed on the freeway until we reached close by the exchange house, but we had some time, and decided to take the scenic route, threading our way along the edge of the Hollywood hills on Mulholland Drive, in homage to the great but bonkers David Lynch film and for the views of the Los Angeles basin. After a mile or so this petered out into a dirt track, but we joined it again later, after a detour through Encino, one of LA's western suburbs. The road was very winding and pot-holed, but it followed a ridge which afforded us great views of the San Fernando Valley and mountains in one direction, and the flat expanse of greater LA spread out in the other. We followed Laurel Canyon (another road that is also a movie) down from the hills and into Hollywood, then drove for a few miles along Sunset Boulevard (another movie, a real classic), gawping at the mix of glamour, poverty and points in between that make up Hollywood.

Barbara's excellent navigation skills took us through the tree-lined backstreets of Silver Lake and steeply up to the gated community where out exchange house was. After hearing our explanation of who we were, the uniformed guard raised the barrier and let us in, and we quickly found "our" house, next door to one with a white stretch limo parked outside. We let ourselves in and had a quick look around, before heading out the back to check out the pool. To our delight it was even bigger than we'd imagined (from the photos), and the backyard also had an amazing view of the island of skyscrapers that marks downtown LA.

We (well, not the kids) thought we should heighten the pleasure of jumping in the pool by getting the taks of unpacking the car out of the way first. It was a real relief to take everything out, knowing that we wouldn't have to pack up again until we left for home. The house had lots of space to spread out, a real luxury after a week or so of effectively living out of the car. We thought we should check for ansafone messages - there were a couple of minor ones for us, but the best one was for Brett and Mary (our home exchange hosts) from a very familiar voice, with a distinctive Austrian accent. Yes, it was the voice of the Teutonic Terminator, the muscle-bound mountain of manliness, none other than Arnold Schwartzenegger, who for the past year or so has been, incredibly to us Europeans, State Governor. His only-in-California political success story, as a Republican with a strong environmentalist stance, has turned a bit sour of late as he has cosied up to polluting energy companies for campaign finance, and his message was to canvas support for a special election in November. Hearing his voice out of the blue like that was highly amusing for us, especially as we would see and hear more from him in the next few days.

We eventually got in the pool where we would spend many happy hours over the next two weeks. We also got the hot tub warmed up (following Brett's meticulous and invaluable instructions, complete with photos of the switches and which way to turn them) - lying in the hot tub was very pleasant, but I think that was the one and only time we used it, as we never felt the need to warm up, as we had done in Santa Cruz after afternoons in the cold sea.

The next morning, the girls made full use of the pool, and Barbara full use of the washer and drier, whilst I dropped off the hire car, and after doing so I took the opportunity ot have a wander around downtown LA. At first it seemed pretty faceless, with little in the way of streetlife - like the City of London on a Bank Holiday. But the place started to come to life as I headed east, where English gives way to Spanish, people talk and trade on the sidewalks rather than cossetted away in their air-conditioned offices, and colour and noise abound. I'd come to look at the facades of some of LA's first grand cinemas - including the Los Angeles Theater, which was built in 90 days in order to host the premiere of Chaplin's City Lights in 1931. Sadly, their former glory is long gone, and they are either abandoned, or host events like Parking Task Force meetings.

A bit further north, past a block of shops all specialising in silky white confirmation dresses, is the Bradbury Building, an architectural jewel that is so unprepossessing on the outside that I walked right past it - its delights lie within. It has a huge glass skylight, revolutionary when it was built in the 1890's, which floods the central court with natural light, illuminating the five floors of glazed brick walls, cast iron railings and liftshafts, dark marble floors, and polished wood doors and banisters. The effect is deeply pleasing to the eye, and although visitors are only allowed on the ground floor, I ask one of the lift attendants, Ricky, who doesn't look too busy, if he's take me up in his open-cage lift (sorry ... elevator). "OK, if you are quick". He explained that most floors were now occupied by the Interal Affairs Department of LAPD, who were not the kind of people who liked being kept waiting for an elevator. The trip to the top floor was all too brief, but further revealed how the soft light from the opaque glass lit the corridors and offices on each floor. The building has long been a popular movie location, with scenes from films as diverse as Citizen Kane and Blade Runner both being filmed here, highlighting the building's fascinating combination of nineteenth century origins and its rookie architect's futuristic vision.

On then to a 21st century architect's vision made manifest - Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall, it's riotous steel curves shining brilliantly in the midday sun. Though undoubtedly a triumph of design and engineering, its mint modernity, and position in streets devoid of life and people, left me cold. I rushed back "home" for a dip in the pool, before our evening trip to Hollywood.

2005-09-04T13:44:00.000+01:00

Julia Pfeiffer Burns beach

2005-09-04T13:43:00.001+01:00

Rugged Big Sur coastline

2005-09-04T13:43:00.000+01:00

B, M and C in front of JUlia Pfeiffer Burns beach, with its 80 foot waterfall that lands directly on the beach.

2005-09-04T13:39:00.000+01:00

Informal public art project, or village of elves?Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur.

2005-09-04T13:37:00.000+01:00

Coastal erosion in action - Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur

2005-09-04T13:36:00.000+01:00

Giant Jellyfish at Monterey Bay Aquarium

2005-09-04T13:35:00.000+01:00

HIghway 1, etched into the mountains that fall into the Pacific

Let's go Dodgers! - a trip to a Baseball game

2005-08-26T07:36:00.000+01:00

A few notes from our trip to see the LA Dodgers:

- setting - downtown skyscrapers, Hollywood Hills , distant mountains, greenery

- stadium ringed by huge car parks - 16000 parking places. 56000 capacity

- Enter at the top of the stands, playing field is in a valley

- Cheap to get in - from $6, $10, $12, $17, and up

- Hundreds of food franchises - speciality - Dodger Dogs. Had a veggie one

- Brilliantly floodlit. LCD hoarding, TV screen, scoreboard

- 30 Japanese girls next to us, outfitted in Dodger gear.

- Most diverse group of people we've seen in LA. Black, hispanic, Asian, white

- TV screen - between innings, focus on crowd - we were on screen briefly (cos near Japanese girls)

- Food sellers - throwing Crackers, peanuts, ice cream sandwiches, then collecting money later - all part of the game

- Organ player. Different tunes for different players. Good music - Hendrix, Snoop Dog, 50 Cent, DJ Otzi!

- Lost 5-4. More interesting than I thought. But it is not a patch on football, with its constant action and possibility of goals and brilliance. But it's faster than cricket.

- Best thing was the crowd - Mexican waves, loads of kids, the TV scan, catching the ball, the beach balls

Big Sur - heading south

2005-08-21T18:09:00.000+01:00

We had one last night in Santa Cruz before we headed south. We had planned to go to the Boardwalk again as Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees was doing a free concert there, but we had so many things to do to get ourselves ready, and to tidy up the house before we left it, that we missed this. We picked up our hire car in the morning and realised we would have to do some creative luggage packing to get all our bags and the camping equipment in there. Tara and Jason, our exchange partners, had very kindly agreed to let us borrow their camping equipment so we could camp on our trip south to LA - we would then drop it off with a friend of theirs in LA who would get it back to them when they headed north. This was great for us in that it allowed us to stay in a national park, and keep costs down, but it meant that our hire car ( a Chevy Cobra) was packed to bursting, and the girls had things stuffed below their feet and between them. Memo to self - when hiring a car and intending to camp, don't go for the economy size one!

We managed to leave more or less when we planned, having left the house in a reasonable state - Tara, Jason and family were returning that day. We never actually got to meet them, which is a bit strange really as we have been in correspondence with them since the beginning of the year, have lived in their home for 2 weeks, we appreciated their taste in home decor, music, books, and our friends in England have spent time with them. We felt that we know them quite well in some ways, and it would have been good to meet up, but we had a plan to move on and more sights to see.

It was sad to leave Santa Cruz - it is a really laid-back place, dedicated to surfing but offering much more, and beautifully situated. We drove along the coast road, watching the wet-suited surfers waiting for their waves under a typically grey morning sky. We drove past Monterey, where we had spent a great afternoon earlier in the week in what is perhaps the world's best Aquarium. The highlights there were the jellyfish, and the unbelievably cute sea otters, which float around on the backs and have the softest fur of any animal (hence they were hunted almost to extinction). We stopped for lunch in Carmel, an arty little town on the coast which is famous for having Clint Eastwood as a long-term resident and one-time Mayor. For some reason, it is a very popular visiting place for dog-owners, and there are a number of "pet emporiums" amongst the art galleries and chi-chi restaurants. We browsed in one, Diggidy Dog, looking at the expensive gourmet pastries and cakes made specifically for dogs, moisturising shampoos, tie-dye pet clothes, tiny caps with spaces for canine ears, and designer carry-bags so you can walk around with your little chihuahua with its head poking out. A stilettoed blonde and her paramour walked in, with their matching dogs, both Afghans, white for her, black for him, and started dressing their dogs in dog jackets. They decided against buying one, a Gucci design, because "you can't even tell that it is by Gucci".

We escaped from the excesses of civilisation to the beauties of nature, with an afternoon at Point Lobos State Reserve, which bills itself modestly as the "greatest meeting of land and water in the world". It consists of a craggy protrusion of rock sticking out into the Pacific Ocean, where the constant force of the crashing waves has formed coves, rockpools, and steep cliffs. It is wild and spectacular, and we spent much longer there than planned, walking over the trails from cove to cove, and out to see the hundreds of sea lions noisily basking on the rocks. This was our first taste of the wild beauty of the central coast, and it is a far cry from the traditional view of California of palm fringed beaches. As we were leaving, we overheard some other visitors say that they had seen blue whales swimming off the coast. Having never seen whales, we were so jealous, but made a mental note to keep our eyes peeled for spumes and fins as we made our way down the coast. We had to keep moving down the coast road in order to be at our campsite before dusk, to allow us plenty of time to put up the tent at the Big Sur campsite. This was a huge place, but well laid out along a mile or two of riverbank, and our pitch was a bit stony, but in contrast to Yosemite, flat. We had two nights there, giving us a full day to explore the area, and the highlight of our stay was Pfeiffer State Beach, hidden away along an unmarked single track road. Like much of this central coast, it seemed like a landscape still in the process of creation, with the sea battering away at the land with all its might, and the land offering stoic resistance. Huge lumps of rock stand in the ocean, pierced by fissures through which waves explode; stumps of trees, bleached white by the sun and saltwater, lay marooned on boulders; the beach is backed by cliffs made of sandstone which time has yet to fully compress, and which has been carved by rivulets from winter storms, and by the artistry of summer visitors. Massive growths of seaweed, slippery green whips 4 metres long tangled together like alien lifeforms, litter the beach. Where the sand recesses into a wooded valley, little artworks of rocks, seaweed and driftwood have proliferated, which we and other visitors delightedly added too. The result looks like a village created by tiny creatures. We had our binoculars with us, and my endless scanning of the waters for whales was rewarded by a glimpse of black, curved fin. This wasn't enough to be sure that we had seen a whale, but the slightly intense, fiercely independent-looking Park Ranger told us that she thought it was very probably a killer whale, unusual in these parts at this time of year, as they are normally off the Mexican coast in summer. I felt an inner glow of satisfaction that I had actually (well, probably) seen a whale.

We returned to the campground to prepare for a slideshow presentation about the national park and surrounding area by a Park Ranger in a small outdoor theatre hidden in the forest. These Ranger Campfire Programmes are a part of the Californian National Parks experience. The presentation was lightened with a few songs of the Scout camp variety, plus one Dylan one, and competitions to win souvenir pencils (we were narrowly pipped to the "who has come from furthest away" prize by some people who alleged they came from China). Not the best evening's entertainment we've ever had, but all good clean fun.

The Central Coast fog had been, and would be, unusually persistent during our trip - it normally clears by midday, but it stayed with us all the time. This didn't really bother us, but we could have done without the 20 minutes of rain (the one and only precipitation of our whole trip) as we were taking the tent down. We were heading south again - for some reason I got extra special enjoyment of this day. I think it was the fact that we could really take our time. We hadn't booked any accommodation, and were going to stay in a motel wherever we ended up. The girls had been fascinated by this unknown element to our trip for weeks (this was to the only night of our trip where we weren't in our home exchange house or hadn't booked accommodation in advance), and the liberation of not having to be somewhere at a specific time was infectious. We stopped for a leisurely coffee and breakfast at the outdoor Cafe Kevar in Nepenthe, admiring the stunning views and the beautiful blue-chested and mohican'd Steller's jays hopping along the wall. We browsed in the New Age-y shop below, all wind chimes and incense, and stopped again after 200 yards at an art gallery, where the curator with a mid-Atlantic accent skilfully, but disinterestedly (we were never going to buy anything), infected us with his enthusiasm for the glass, steel and wood sculptures by a family of artists. After another 10 minutes in the car we were out again, this time for a sight that I'd been looking forward to seeing - a 100-plus metre waterfall falling directly onto a beach, at Julia Pfeiffer Burns National Park. You can't actually go down onto the beach - it is too steep - but in any case its perfection would have been spoiled by day trippers like us having a shower underneath it (... would've been good though!).

We drove on at our leisure, along the road which is etched into the coastal mountains which fall steeply into the Pacific, marvelling at the views, and the effort involved in building the road (it was built in the 1930's, as a way of providing Depression-era employment). As we drove up towards one look-out point along the route we saw people looking more intently than usual out to a particular point in the sea. We stopped, and were rewarded with the sight of 2 or 3 killer whales frolicking in the ocean about a kilometre out. We saw their fins and tails and spumes of water, and then one actually rose out of the water and we (well, I, who had the binoculars at the time) saw its white underside.

After a few more stops, to see Elephant seals lolling on a beach like giant slugs, and collecting jade at another cove, we decided to stop for the night in San Luis Obispo, a smallish town that acts as a kind of capital for the wine country of central Cailfornia, where the movie Sideways was set. We considered a number of hotels - including some that said they had pools, which turned out to be barely bigger than a bath, so in the end we went for a "Rough Guide" recommended Travelodge within walking distance of downtown. We had adjoining rooms, each with a separate TV, which the girls loved, having been starved of cathode rays whilst we were camping. The town centre was compact and welcoming, and without the need to drive I could join Barbara in enjoying some of the local wine (a delicate Pinot Noir, much beloved of Miles, the oenophile main character in Sideways) with our Italian meal. We finished off a day when we had felt rich in time and choice, with a leisurely browse through a cavernous secondhand bookshop, where we found and bought obscure books by favourite authors (Thomas Wolfe for Barbara, Philip Roth for me).
Our final day's drive into Los Angeles took us through the heart of wine country, the sparsely populated Santa Ynez valley, and over a range of mountains down into Santa Barbara on the coast. This looked to be an attractive city that deserved more time to explore, but we wanted to head off after a short lunch stop so as not to arrive in LA in the midst of rush hour. And so we headed down the coast road to our final destination, Los Angeles.

More pictures from Yosemite

2005-08-20T18:04:00.000+01:00

Our campsite
Valley view

M&C on a fallen tree trunk
Barbara cycling from one swim spot to another

Catherine at Olmstead Point, a classic viewpoint
Tenaya Lake, on the way up to Tuolomne Meadows

Lembert's Dome - Barbara and I climbed this while the girls were horse-riding
Tuolmne Meadows view

America the beautiful - Yosemite National Park

2005-08-20T05:39:00.000+01:00

I'd been to Yosemite for just one night, back in 1983 when I was working and touring around the USA in university holidays, but it had made a huge impression on me, and I definitely wanted a trip there to be part of our Californian holiday. It is very well protected from any sort of development, and finding a place to stay there is very difficult indeed - we had to book space in a camping ground back in March, when bookings opened.

Our home exchange partners had agreed to lend us their tent and other camping equipment, so we loaded it all up into their (thankfully) spacious Toyota Sienna Minivan and set off on the long drive eastwards, firstly over the coastal mountains and then across the enormous, flat and fertile San Joaquin Valley, where most of California's (and a lot of the USA's) fruit and veg is grown. The drive was pretty comfortable, thanks to air conditioning, cruise control, and music. We flicked around the radio stations and found the Latino/Mexican ones most interesting (although the kids couldn't bear to let us listen to more than one song at a time) - they played one of two types of music - a cheery sort of Polka, with much emphasis on accordions, or a Ragga kind of hip-hop, words in Spanish of course. But our own CDs got most airplay, with "Is this the way to Amarillo" being particularly suited to the passing landscape.

As we began to climb up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, the views became more spectacular but progress slower, and we did not want to be putting up an unfamiliar tent in the dark. We made it to our campground as the sun began to set, and got the tent up without too many problems. The campsite was set in a redwood forest, with lots of room for each tent, with a picnic table, fireplace, and a "bear-safe" - a metal box to keep food and any fragrant items (including toothpaste and suncream) in so that bears can't get at it. As if there isn't enough to worry about in California (i.e. the possibility of cataclysmic earthquake), up here we had to try to get to sleep knowing that bears are wandering around the woods, breaking into cars or ripping through tents to get at any odour that takes their fancy. This thought, along with the whoops and shouts of the coachload of pent-up teenagers from the First Baptist Church of North Carolina, and a slowly deflating airbed, meant that sleep was hard to come by on that first night. Still, interrupted sleep gave an excuse to get up and see the starry sky framed by the redwoods.

We made it through to the following morning unscathed by bears, and after a leisurely breakfast with the sunlight filtering through the trees, we set off on the drive to Yosemite Valley, the very heart of the national park and the site of its most stunning scenery. The flat valley floor is 7 miles long and less than a mile wide, and the valley's sides are almost vertical 1000 metre-high walls of grey rock. It is very, very beautiful, especially on a day when the sky is cloudless, and the blueness of the sky is intensified by the fact that you cannot see very much of it due to the huge granite cliffs and domes everywhere you look.

We decided to hire bikes and set off on a 6 or 7 mile trail that took us from one stunning location to another. We had a really lovely day, mostly because bouts of cycling were interspersed with swimming in the cool Merced River which runs through the valley. We found a rock surrounded by deep water, that was perfect for jumping off - here I am in mid-jump:

We stayed there for a while as Miriam and Catherine got chatting to some American girls, but eventually moved on, cycling through the trees to another great swimming spot further down the river, where a strong current carries you along while you admire the scenery. Here is Miriam and Catherine and me fresh from one such float:

I keep wanting to insert pictures, but I think I will just do a separate post with a selection from Yosemite. It is such a photogenic place, and you just want to snap away wherever you look.

We'd had a great day in the Valley, and could have come back for more, but we decided that we would go to a different area of the park the next day. We returned to camp to cook that traditional camping food - pasta and sauce - and got the girls collecting wood for a fire to toast marshmellows over. Worries about bears subsided a little - our Peruvian neighbours (now US residents) who come on holiday here every year hadn't seen any for some time - and we slept much better, images of the valley imprinted in our minds.

Our second and last full day in Yosemite was spent about an hour's drive north of the valley, in Tuolumne Meadows. This is a few thousand feet higher, and has different, but equally stunning, scenery, both there and along the way. Again we spent time by the river, but did less swimming as the waters were icy cold - we Brits were the only ones brave/stupid enough to plunge in, but we got out before we went completely numb. The highlight of the day for the girls was a 2 hour horseride, whilst Barbara and I took off to scale Lemberts Dome - here we are at the top:

We could have many more days in Yosemite, even more if the girls were keen on hiking, but our two days gave us a real flavour of the beauty of the park. It really is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and it was a real treat to spend time there. Having said that, it was good to get back to civilisation in Santa Cruz again after the dusty, no hot water, no showers, sleeping on a deflated airbed, worrying about bears and poisonous caterpillars, campground experience! We only had one night to prepare before we set off on our next expedition, leaving our first home exhcnage house and heading south.

Pictures from San Francisco

2005-08-20T04:30:00.000+01:00

Barbara met up with her 80-year old second cousin Eileen, who lives just south of San Francisco.

Miriam and Catherine with Alcatraz in the fog in the background

Barbara at the end of our walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, when the fog finally cleared enough for us to see at least some of it.

Some rules and regulations about the bridge - this country is full of signs posted everywhere telling you what you can and can't do - seems strange for a place that prides itself on being the "land of the free"

Lombard Street - so steep that hairpin bends were installed

So there is dissent in the USA - anti-war bumper stickers. After I took the photo I realised the driver was inside, and he got out for a chat. He thought that Bush had planned 9/11, and that maybe Blair had done the same with the London bombs - we didn't wait around to find out what other conspiracy theories he had.

One of the old-style streetcars of San Francisco

Old and new architecture struggling to remain visible in the fog.
On the beautiful Highway 1 heading back to Santa Cruz.
The Smiths fame has reached the Pacific coast! Incongruously, Morrissey lives in Santa Monica now, so maybe we will call in when we are down that way!

Pictures from Santa Cruz

2005-08-19T20:57:00.000+01:00

Enjoying the giant Redwood trees in a local forest up in the hills

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

Miriam and Catherine on the log flume at the Boardwalk

Sea lion relaxing under the pier
Catherine's surfing lesson pays off! And yes, that is me, in the moments before my excitement at standing up on a surfboard leads me to fall off!

Catching up

2005-08-19T20:01:00.000+01:00

A week and a half since my last post, as we have been camping, travelling, or preparing for these! Now settled in our fantastic new home exhcnage house in LA, and I shall have to drag myself away from the pool in order to write something in this blog.

Three main things to write about - Yosemite, the trip down the rugged central coast of California from Santa Cruz to LA, and La-la land itself.

Getting into the holiday groove

2005-08-09T05:41:00.000+01:00

I feel really we are are really settling into the holiday swing of things here now. We survived New York on adrenalin, and due to the jetlag we needed to relax a bit when we arrived here in Santa Cruz ... sleep a lot, take time to adjust. We have also had time now to get used to being together 24/7 as a family. It is very different from being at home, where we all have different lives for most of the day, and there is plenty of space to be apart when we want to be. We have found out what annoys and amuses each other, and we are starting to really enjoy each others company.

Santa Cruz has been great, but we have only one more night here now before we head south on Saturday, as we are off to Yosemite for 3 nights tomorrow. Since my last post we have done a bit more exploration of the town. It is famous in the US for its Beach Boardwalk , a beachside amusement park which has oodles of faded charm, and which has California's (and the world's?) oldest rollercoaster, a rickety old wooden thing which might not be able to compete with the modern versions for size and speed, but which nevertheless was a lot of fun. We followed this (the other way round is not recommended!) with fish and chips at the end of the pier, watching and listening to the sea lions basking on the pier supports.
We'll be back at the Boardwalk on Friday, for a free concert on the beach by Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees - should be fun.

Up then into the hills for a quick spin around the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), possibly the nation's most radical university, which has no exams (the focus is on individual development and self-directed learning), has a surfing programme, and which is set in delightful forests with deer wandering around.

We finally got around to doing some surfing, after seeing the scores of wetsuited seal-like figures at every spot along the coast where there was any kind of swell. We had spent time at the beach with bodyboards (large polystyrene floats) but me and Catherine really wanted to try proper surfing on a full-size board. We had wetsuits (borrowed the adult ones from Tara and Jason, our exchange partners, and bought the kids' ones) - and they are vital here, as the water is really cold. We organised a lesson as we wouldn't have a clue how to do it otherwise ... David (a UCSC graduate) took us out for the princely sum of $220 - nice work if you can get it, given that it is hardly rocket science, but that seems to be the going rate for a two hour intro lesson for two people. After some warm-up exercises we were taken through the basics - where to lie down, how to paddle, how to stand up, how to balance - and we were off. The waves were good that day - not too high, just right for beginners - and incredibly, after a few false starts, both me and Catherine managed to surf, standing up! It is a great feeling when, after the instructor yells "paddle! paddle!", the wave surges you forward, and it is a wonderful feeling of achievement to float into the shore riding a wave standing up. I just hope Barbara got some good pictures! The only problem with it is that you have to paddle out again, which is really tiring - but it would be a much more fun way of keeping fit than jogging or going to the gym.

We tried it again today, without an instructor, but there were very few waves .. Catherine stood once, but not me. We will be doing it again though, in southern California.

We have just had a weekend in San Francisco. We spent most of our time there in Chinatown and in North Beach, which is an Italian neighbourhood and haunt of the beat poets in the 50s. On our full day there, we walked for miles from the Marina along the coast to the Golden Gate Bridge and then across it. Frustratingly, it was masked in fog that was whipping in from the ocean - very atmospheric, but not great for photos! We had got to area by a local bus, a tremendous ride up and down the hilly streets, and I thought smugly how clever we were using public transport rather than going on some tour. But after tiring our kids to the point of exhaustion we arrived on the far side of the bridge to be faced with a 40 minute wait for a bus back.

We did go on the cable cars, early in the morning to avoid the hours-long wait, but thought them a bit too touristy. But SF has a collection of wonderful old street cars from around the States and the world - all 30s and 40s designs, fantastic-looking.

SF is a really interesting city, full of peaks and troughs both in terms of hills and also socio-economically. We stayed in the Downtown Youth Hostel , which is in a touristy area, but this is only one block away from an area of sex clubs, homeless people sleeping on the streets, drunks, mentall ill people. This is a surprise because you don't see it so much in London any more, and not at all in New York. I have heard that New York has just moved these people away, rather than improving their situation.

Would've loved to have spent more time in SF, but we needed to come back here. On the way back we drove down Highway 1, the coast road, which was a delicious taster for the longer trip south of here next weekend, to Big Sur and beyond. The coastline was fabulously wild and rugged.

Must go and get ready now for our trip to Yosemite tomorrow. May not be able to post again for a while (until LA?), but there will be lots to write about by then.

Santa Cruz

2005-08-09T05:34:00.000+01:00

Here are a couple of pics from Santa Cruz

Our first sight of the coast here, looking south towards Monterey

John and Catherine bravely confronting the waves

Miriam and Catherine enjoying the hot tub in the back garden of our home exchange house