Em and Jon’s Wedding

Blimey Charlie, that’s the furthest I’ve ever driven in one day. LA to the Grand Canyon National Park - 480 miles or so. We feel achy from sitting in the car for too long. We set off first thing Sunday morning, about 11am which is first thing when your body clock is still confused, and headed for the Grand Canyon. Great fun on the whole, with a few brief stops along the way, we’ve made it here to the El Tovar. Instantly (once we found it: Tom Tom didn’t guide us right to the door, since things are kind of relaxed up here when it comes to zip codes and intersections) we liked the place so much we asked if we
could stay another night. Nancy on the desk - she’s lovely - told us that usually the 70-odd rooms they have here get booked up about 8 months in advance. So the fact I managed to book the place a couple of days ago just means I was probably lucky with a cancellation. We’ll ask at the front desk tomorrow morning if there are any more cancellations so we can stay, because it really is gorgeous.

Sorry if I’m rambling, but I’m just exhausted. It might be that the half a ton of Sour Skittles I’ve consumed on the journey didn’t help either.

Kudos to Em for spotting the vantage point for my favourite photo of the honeymoon so far: as she said, she’s the scout and I just take the shots.

This is my first proper play at doing HDR Photography - I’ll do a cleaner version with more careful masking and with source images corrected by DXO when I get home, but you can get the general idea from this rough version. –>

We ate yet more sushi and I bought yet more Origin products. The girl in the shop was so nice and gave me lots of miniatures…oh yes!

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was so busy you could barely see the hand/foot prints, but it was fascinating none the less.

Jon got snagged by the street vendors and bought a new hat. I think he looks very like the Edge in the ‘discotheque’ era, but he disagrees. Here is a picture of Jon in his new hat:

And so after a day of cheese here we are. Jon on the laptop and me doing the washing on a Saturday night. Rock and roll!

–>

It’s Saturday night and what am I doing? The laundry because we have no clean pants! But we (I) have had a fab time today. We drove up Beachwood Drive and saw the Hollywood sign:

Then walked along Hollywood Boulevard in the footsteps of the great and the good and Dick Van Dyke:

As you can see Jon does not care for the said Mr Van Dyke. Why? Because of his terrible “Hallo Maree Poppuns” English accent. Who gets a star is apparently is decided by a Walk of Fame Committee and there are more than 2000 stars filled with names, of which we knew about half. The interesting one was on Hollywood and Vine; they have honoured the three astronauts who first landed on the moon with a star at each corner.

We loitered in the Kodak Theatre trying not to listen to the excruciating singing from the local ‘talent’ academy - the girl in the Fossil shop said that they punished her ears every week. She took a photo of us wearing our new sunglasses:

–>

Me! I did! On the way from SLO to Hollywood, we stopped at Pismo Beach for a paddle. Oh, it was lovely. It’s a great place: fine sand on a relaxed, uncrowded beach with the majestic Pacific lapping its shores. It was off with the shoes, roll up the jeans and in true British fashion, we paddled. Arm in arm, basking in the sun, we paddled. Now, if you don’t know, the ocean round here is very cold (it’s what gives San Francisco and the Big Sur area its fog), so the first few minutes were a bit breath-taking, but after that it really was a case of feeling ourselves get more and more unwound.

Em collected stones(!), as per usual on a beach:

And we met Xena, Warrior Princess:

Isn’t she the cutest? She’s a teacup Yorkie, and weighs only 1lb. Made us miss Desdog and Badger, I can tell you.

Then it was onward down the coast, just managing to watch the sunset at Point Mugu:

Two things we noticed here: 1) The sun goes down very quickly at this latitude and 2) it gets pigging cold when it does.

Finally we cruised through Malibu, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills on the way to our hotel in Hollywood. Goodness knows what we’d have done without GPS, because driving on 12-lane highways, even outside of rush hour, is not for the faint hearted. –>

We didn’t get an opportunity to add to the blog yesterday because we spent some time in the car. Jon is a very happy bunny as we picked up a silver Ford Mustang rental (photo to be added) and drove from San Fransisco to San Luis Obispo to meet with his old work buddies. The road was long and winding along the coast but with breath-taking views of the Pacific.

So we are currently lounging around on the bed in the Peach Tree motel and getting ready to go out for some brunch.

Then we head off down the 101 to Hollywood. Maybe stop by for a cup of tea and a chat at Posh and Becks’ place…. –>

We waved goodbye to the Carlton and got a shuttle to SFO (word to the wise, this is by far the best way: cheaper than a cab, less effort than dragging all the bags to the BART) to pick up the rental car. Jon had been pretty stressed after booking it through eBookers before we left, because it seemed like me might not get what we asked for - but we did:

Pure American cheese. Makes a lot of noise when you put your foot down, but doesn’t actually seem to accelerate. Drinks petrol. Feels in places like it’s made out of cream cheese. But it’s a once in a lifetime trip, and we wanted something quirky and American. I think we’ve got that out of our bloodstream now, and we might go for something a bit more practical on the East coast.

We drove down Highway 1 through the beautiful country around Big Sur and so on, down to Jon’s old stomping ground of San Luis Obispo. No accident that we’d arranged to arrive on Thursday, so we could visit Farmers’ Market. We met up with old friends there: Nick & Elaine, James & Jen, and had a great time catching up with them.

Mind you, the return to SLO was not without its dark side: they’ve knocked down McCarthy’s! There’s nothing left of the old Irish pub that was nothing like an Irish pub. Yes, it sold Guinness, but nobody drank it: everybody had cocktails. McCarthy’s was the home of the Bomber, invented by our old mate Adrian - that recipe again: light rum, dark rum, brandy, cranberry juice and a splash of grapefruit. Cheers! –>

Yesterday was another hoot. Breakfast was hearty to say the least: I think we over-ordered a bit. The breakfast burrito at Nob Hill Grille is fantastic, but massive.

Having scoped out all the Origins cosmetics goodies she wanted by careful planning overnight, Em went and bought the entire shop at Macy’s. Also we went back to Old Navy and bought the other half of the shop we didn’t buy yesterday, plus of course I bought yet more consumer electronics.

After a bit of a kip (still not on local time, really) we set out on the Muni buses to the Golden Gate Bridge. Got there just after dusk and it was a great sight. We wandered out into the middle and stayed for a while, taking photos, and feeling the whole thing move as the trucks went by. Then it was back on the buses to Japantown for sushi at Isobune - mmmm. Strange, though, that they were shutting up shop at 9:30. Mind you, when they close, you get free sushi. Mmmm. Sushi. –>

Pppththththt? I dunno. Anyway, I just cancelled the alarm on my phone for the weekly Core Group meeting.

Big smile :-> –>

We were up and out reasonably early for a breakfast at David’s of blueberry pancakes for me and franks and eggs for Jon. We decided to take a photo of every meal that we have in homage to Jon’s Dad, Dave who remembers where he was and when by the ‘lovely meal’ he had. Eventually Jon will add the photos to this website.

Anyway the shopping is fab in San Francisco. We bought another suitcase as we will definitely be coming home with more stuff. We went to Old Navy and bought clothes plus matching dog collars for Des and Johnny Badger (how sad are we?). I bought a mobile phone for £20 and a pair of Doc Martens for £30! I scoped out the Origins range of facial products in Macys - in the UK they are double the price. So tomorrow we return to buy toiletries. Oh heaven!

We have walked miles today and had some fab rides on the cable cars up an down amazingly steep hills. I loved hanging off the trolleys - it’s a bit scary!

At the top of Coit tower the view was fantastic across San Francisco with a good clear view of Alcatraz Island (Alcatraz being Spanish for pelican of which you can see many alongside some very playful sea lions).

We walked along Fisherman’s Wharf past many tourist shops full of ‘beautiful’ gifts (Ed - a statue of the Golden Gate bridge is in the bag!) and unfortunately I couldn’t persuade Jon to go in to the wax museum….

This looks nothing like Les Dawson. –>

What did we find when we got back to our room after a very full day of sight-seeing? Rose petals laid out in a heart shape, with a cake, a wedding card from the hotel staff and another bottle of great wine. Fantastic.

As Em just pointed out to me, not only is it really nice in its own right, but it’s more than the Gonville did even though we handed over thousands of pounds for the reception. We British really need to sort out how we do business in the service industry - the Americans have a lot to teach us.

Also we have our next day’s journey sorted out thanks to Theo: he’s scoped out our bus routes for Haight and Golden Gate etc. I think I’m going to ask to talk to his boss, and start a “Theo needs a raise” campaign. –>