The Lonely Planet Guide, including the lonely planet guide in my blog, any mentions of the l0nely planet guide in my family tree and the lonely planet guide in Folkestone.

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Los Angeles

Sep23

So, we sadly had to leave Santa Barbara, and we drove on down to LA... Was a bit intimidated at the thought of driving in LA, I've only driven London once or twice before and that was a long time ago, mostly I've only done gentle village roads. The journey there was no problem, only had to swerve across lanes once, when we pulled into Santa Monica. Dumped the car at a hotel there ($5 a day for parking) and walked along 3rd, as our Lonely Planet Guide to California told us it was good. It's rubbish! Don't bother. One really bad thing about it that is haunting Clare to this day is a man in the street dressed as a clown. He wasn't entertaining anyone, no-one was even paying attention to him, he was just stood there looking really sad. Man, I'm welling up again just thinking about this poor guy! Anyway, Santa Monica, don't bother... We ate some rubbish food, got some pictures developed, and skedaddled.

The drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood was alright too, it's nice and easy driving around the cities, much easier than I expected. The only tricky bit I found (and it caught me out a few times) was the turn from Highland Avenue into our hotel, the Holiday Inn. That road is 8 lanes across, and unless you're coming straight off the freeway you have to pull right across some pretty fierce traffic. I messed this up a few times, queues of beeping Hummers behind me, and also messed up by NOT trying pull across it, ended up back on the freeway and had to drive up a junction and back again.

Next thing to piss me off, even though I knew about it in advance, was the $17 a day charge to leave the car at our hotel - is there cheap parking in Hollywood?

Stay tuned for not much, more pubs and darts, and near misses with Oasis, Sons and Daughters and Johnny Depp. No otters.

Hmm, didn't enjoy LA so much and can't be bothered to update this with much more. We went to Universal Studios, which felt very 80s... the Back to the Future ride is still their top attraction, along with the Terminator stage show. Opening soon, rides based on Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, and Dirty Dancing! Probably! One tip about going to Universal (other than don't, unless you are a child), ignore crooked hotel receptionists who tell you that the best way to do it is to book a coach trip through them. I think they were going to charge us something like $30 on top of the entry ticket price for the return coach ride - we looked into it and got a tube there and back for about $2 instead.

We drove up to Griffith Observatory but it was closed. We missed Johnny Depp doing his handprints by just one day, Clare was upset. We drove along Santa Monica and Sunset and things, and shopped in some supposedly great and unmissable part of town, full of bohemian wackiness - can you say poor man's Camden market? We went to a huge mall in the posh bit too, that was also rubbish, and we went down the street that's in Pretty Woman, also not very interesting. We nearly went to see Sons and Daughters, but couldn't quite be bothered. We did try to see Oasis, as our hotel was next door to the Hollywood Bowl, but the Ticketmaster telephone thing couldn't understand my accent, and when I got through to a real operater he said there was no such venue as the Hollywood Bowl. Mostly we went to The Cat and Fiddle, an English style pub, and played darts. It was good there, it was like a pub at home, but with everyone lounging around holiday style, and looking like tanned roadies. Apparently it's Morrissey's favourite pub in LA, but we didn't see him, or even find this out until we got back.

Probably just started to get the hang of LA when it was time to come home.

2005 :: Comment / reply

San Francisco

Sep21

So, part the first of my big holiday / honeymoon write up. Slight preamble, some experiences on the way there. Our flights were at nice civilised times, but to save any rush and extend the holiday a bit, we booked into a hotel at Heathrow. But it was rubbish - I don't recommend staying at The Comfort Inn Heathrow. The TV was fuzzy, the bar / restaurant looked crappy, and there's NOTHING in the locality, it's a ghost town around there. So we made do with crisps for tea, and didn't go in the only local "fun pub" we could find as it also looked rubbish.

Our flight was GOOD! I hate flying, so a ten hour or so flight is not normally fun, but flying with Virgin was OK. We had a full TV on demand system in the headrests, so I watched The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (don't bother) and House with Hugh Laurie and got some sleep. Also they didn't mess up my vegan meal, result!

On to San Francisco then! We had a car booked, but decided to leave it at the airport, save having to struggle round town with it for the four days we were there, and also save on the parking. I was nervous about driving in America at all, until just recently I'd taken something like a ten year hiatus from driving, was a fly drive thorugh California such a good idea..? Put it off for a few days anyway, we got a shuttle from the airport to our hotel at Fisherman's Wharf. It's a tacky sort of place, we were expecting that, but somehow we were the only people in the world who didn't know it would be cold and foggy. HEY, If you're going to San Francisco, forget about the flowers in the hair, wear a big jumper! Our hotel was the Holiday Inn, it was all OK, free drink on arrival, coffee percolator in the room, pool table in the bar, but kind of average really. Went for a walk around Fisherman's Wharf, it's more rubbish than we suspected, a faded fairground area like Southsea. We saw the sealions, and completely failed to book onto a trip to Alcatraz. I'm not so keen on the Sealions, maybe it was just that it wasn't warm anyway, but thinking about them just sitting there in the harbour on decking doing nothing made me feel colder, and a bit sad. Alcatraz though, we knew we should book onto it in advance, we thought perhaps just the day before so didn't do it right away... it was a weekend and it was booked up four days in advance, so we completely missed out. If you're going there, book onto a trip as early as possible... We got some food in the Hard Rock Cafe (hey you can mock, but it's good to have somewhere reliable) left the Wharf seafront bit, and had a few drinks in Kennedy's bar nearby. It's a proper pubby sort of pub, they have masses of beers on tap, scruffy pool tables, and DARTS. We have recently got WELL into darts, so this was great. There's an attached curry house to this pub too. We came back here again, though not to eat.

We mooched around town a bit, there are shops there, it is a city. The shops were OK, though I found myself looking at the same sort of things I would have done at home, like the Levis store, department stores, and various kitchen type things. One place that sounded ALRIGHT in the guide book was the Embarcadero centre, The Lonely Planet guide made it sound worth a visit, but it was rubbish. One place we found by ourselves that was very nice though was the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building. Not sure you'd call it a real farmer's market, but it had lots of nice food and drink stuff all in one place, including the biggest selection of wild mushrooms I've seen...

We found getting around San Fran to be quite easy, it's not all that big, so we walked quite a lot of it, and got a cable car and trolley bus a couple of times. Food was alright in San Fran, though there weren't as many vege places as I expected. One delightful exception was Millenium, a full on vegan restaurant in the Savoy Hotel. As a birthday treat Clare took me to dinner there, and we had the full tasting menu - many courses, plus a different accompanying wines with each one. It was quite amazing, it's pretty much unheard of for me to go to a fancy restaurant at all, but to be able to eat everything there made this feel like a total one off. We got pretty squiffy, even though were being given half glasses of most of the wines (as there were so many) and it was a really great night. I can't recommend this place enough, helps if you are a vegan, but Clare liked it too. If you're going there, look out though - when we were trying to find the place at first, we stumbled into the Tenderloin San Francisco - didn't expect San Fran to get quite so grim so quickly, lots of homeless mental health issues, crack being smoked on the street etc. Lots of cities have this, but it's how close it was to such a fancy place that got me. Reminds me of Buffy "The bad part of town is just half a block from the good part of town - we don't have a whole lot of town"...

We also took a walk (past lots of NICE houses) to the Exploratorium, it's like the play and learn bit in the basement of The Science Museum here... there are lots of workshops and things, but also STUFF to try out. It's perfect for kids, the place was crawling with them in fact, but it was quite interesting for us too. Some of the exhibits / demos / toys there felt a bit shabby, but that must be just because of the thousands of tiny hands doing their best to break them each day. It's all in a nice park too, which you can probably see in a few of our pictures of San Fran.

Possibly from our pictures you can't tell just how steep the famously steep roads of San Francisco are. Man they're steep, feels like 45 degrees or more. If you can't do hill starts, don't try and drive there. Seems an insane place to have a bike race, but that's what they did, the San Francisco Grand Prix closed down the town while were there...

A final highlight of our trip to San Fran (I didn't think I enjoyed it as much as this!) was our fire engine tour of San Francisco. We got to put on fire-fighter uniforms and see the sites of the city (including going over the Golden Gate Bridge) on a Big Mack Shiny Red Fire Engine. Much recommended, the people who run it are a bit eccentric, and they like to sing all the way around the tour. Anyway, pictures of what to expect at www.fireenginetours.com, and more in our pictures of San Fran.

On to Monterey!

2005 :: Comment / reply

"Edgy"

Sep17

The new Lonely Planet guide to London calls us "Edgy" apparently... not picked it up myself (not sure it's out yet, that's an older version there) but the Evening Sub-standard have and they report on it here.

Camden and Islington are passé, but that really should have been in any mid nineties guidebook I suppose. Primrose Hill is bigged up alongside Stoke Newington, but I'm glad to be out of the former, it's just not like the real world at all. Really enjoying Farringdon still.

Inspector Sands, are you out there? What is your view of what I say on what they say about what others say about what are the nice bits of this town?

2004 :: Comment / reply

Also there's an xml feed of the lonely planet guide, a JSON feed, and a KML feed of the lonely planet guide , the lonely planet guide on Your Folkestone.

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