My Bloggable Day

Berkeley and the baseball

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Bec

Apologies for the silence, we had no internet or cell connection for 3 days whilst in Yosemite National Park, which was actually pretty nice!

I left you after an epic day of walking around San Francisco. On Sunday we explored Berkeley, which is next to where we were staying in Oakland (across the bridge from San Fran). Oakland apparently has a disproportionately high violent crime rate, which might explain the sirens going all night long… But anyway!

We strolled around Berkeley for the morning, past the vegan friendly cafes, yoga and pilates studios, cinemas and bookstores. Berkeley is (well known as the) home to a University of California campus, and has a strong student culture.

On a wall in Berkeley

One of many cinemas

Bookstores

That afternoon we grabbed the car and headed up the hills to Tilden Regional Park, which spans over 2000 acres. On the way we spotted some adorable deer.

In the middle of the park is an adorable old Merry Go Round.

We sat in the park and read for a while before it got too freezing to sit still. We went for an early dinner at a New Orleans inspired restaurant called Easy Creole. It was our first experience of Cajun/Creole and we got to try a few samples before deciding on a plate of half bourbon red beans and half devil’s chilli. And a plate of chicken creole and thai chicken etoufee.

The chicken plate, it doesn’t photograph well

With any hot sauce you could imagine:

Quite a selection

A wall near Easy Creole

The next day was another epic day of walking, starting with Alamo Square:

Those somewhat familiar houses

To Golden Gate Park:

To AT&T Stadium, to watch the baseball:

These things aren’t close together, we certainly covered some distance.

So we indulged in some ball park sustenance.

Nachos

It was my first experience of queso dip- a bright orange hot cheese sauce. It was pretty darn good, however fake.

Pretty sure you can’t not get a hotdog at the baseball

Washed down with a couple of cold ones.

Just $10.50 a pop… ouch!

We saw the San Francisco Giants take on the Pittsburg Pirates.

We paid only $8 for standing room tickets, so we didn’t feel obliged to stay until the end. San Francisco were losing anyway.

The next day, after an obscenely large diner breakfast, we hit the road to Yosemite National Park.

Posted in Travel | Tagged America, California, Travel | 1 Comment

San Francisco

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Bec

A photo essay (which really just means I’m too lazy to type words):

The Coit Tower

Fisherman’s Wharf

Cable Cars

Lombard Street aka The World’s Most Crooked Street

The prettiest house on Lombard Street

San Franciscan architecture

Alcatraz

The Golden Gate Bridge

On Saturday we walked for 18 kilometres (11 miles) around San Francisco. Along the way we saw many of the Fog City’s famous landmarks. I was pretty happy to see the Golden Gate Bridge, I was here 5 years ago (to the date!) and this is what I saw of the bridge:

You can just see the bottom stumps of the bridge on the left (wish my hair was that long though…)

Praise for blue skies, what a treat. Apparently the fog is called Karl. Karl has his own twitter account. You’re welcome.

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, San Francisco, Travel | 2 Comments

Monterey to San Francisco

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Bec

Andrew and I had two nights in Monterey and agreed unanimously that while we had a great time, we probably wouldn’t recommend it to friends. They have world class aquariums in Monterey, but ever since I felt a wasted a day (and $40) at the San Diego Zoo five years ago, I made a decision not to visit attractions that are done exceptionally well in Melbourne. And Melbourne just happens to have an excellent zoo and aquarium.

We enjoyed strolling along Cannery Row to see the now highly sanitised and commercialised street immortalised in Steinbeck’s novel of the same name.

Monterey used to be a thriving sardine hub

We grabbed bikes and took them for a spin 6 miles (10km) down the road to the lighthouse, which was surprisingly inland and barely visible from the road.

It was really fun though. I hadn’t ridden a bike outside a Spin room for a very long time. It sure beats walking.

Shame about the weather

After our bike ride we drove to Carmel and sat on the beach for a bit, but it was pretty cold.

The back of Fisherman’s Wharf

We had a great night out at a bar called Carbone’s and met some locals that we later partied with in San Francisco. One of them lived in Melbourne for a year and worked at the MCG, just like I did. What a world.

On Friday we made our way up to San Fran.

Just outside Monterey we stopped at a roadside fruit stall because we saw a very exciting sign:

TAKE. MY. MONEY.

Coming from a place where $4 is a good price for one avocado, we could barely contain our excitement. There was so much delicious produce, we were like two kids in a candy shop. Except that we were two adults in a fresh produce market, which is pretty lame. I’m officially old.

Californian oranges

❤

We got a punnet of strawberries, two oranges, two huge roma tomatoes, a cucumber and four giant apples for $8. When the cashier told us to “have a nice day”, Andrew replied “WE WILL NOW!” with a huge grin on his face. He thought we were legit insane.

Moving on. We drove up the road to Santa Cruz where we stopped very briefly for Andrew to see the boardwalk.

I think we were in and out in 15 minutes. It’s pretty tacky.

I’ve been to Santa Cruz twice now and have only ever seen the boardwalk, one day I’d love to see what it’s really like.

We decided we should go and see the giant Redwood trees instead, so we took a rather large detour to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Within about 20 minutes we were winding through tiny quaint towns surrounded by pine trees.

The Redwood (or Sequoia) species contain the largest and tallest trees in the world. It’s impossible to comprehend how huge they are. The current tallest one soars 100m towards the sky.

Using Andrew for scale

Apparently John Steinbeck once said that no one has ever successfully photographed or painted a Redwood and I have to agree with him. Although I did give it a red hot go.

We took a short walk, unfortunately we didn’t have a heap of time, and marvelled at the 1000+ year old giants.

It smelt so delicious in there.

Just hanging out in a hollowed out tree

This tree was 1392 years old

Unfortunately our sojourn with the Redwoods put us right on track to hit peak hour traffic in San Francisco, but it was well worth it. More from the fog city to come.

Posted in Travel | Tagged Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California, Food, Santa Cruz | 1 Comment

Big Sur

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Bec

After leaving Hearst Castle we headed to Big Sur, making a couple of stops along the way. First we checked out the tiny town of San Simeon:

Cute pier

A couple of miles down the road was an elephant seal lookout. There were hundreds of them, sunning themselves on the beach:

They kind of look dead… but they’re not!

And frolicking in the sea:

But mostly they just bathed in the sun, grunted and occasionally flicked sand on themselves. What a life.

Love that they are smiling

There were also a few lonely birds.

After we’d had enough of the seals and the icy wind (don’t let that blue sky fool you) we continued on.

As soon as we reached Big Sur the stunning vistas began.

Sigh

I made Andrew pose on a rock

I was pretty relived not to be driving, we witnessed some daring over-takers and speed demons along the way. But we got to Monterey and bought a 6 pack of beers for Andrew to calm his nerves.

Posted in Travel | Tagged Big Sur, California, Travel | Leave a comment

Hearst Castle

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Bec

On Wednesday I fell in love with Hearst Castle. Which is kind of odd, considering I’d only heard of it for the first time last week. William Randalf Hearst was a US newspaper magnate in the early 1900s. In 1919 he inherited more than 250,000 acres of ranch land and decided to build a house on the top of the hill as an alternative to camping”

From Wikipedia, so this could be as fabricated as all Marilyn Monroe’s ‘famous’ quotes

What Hearst built with his architect Julia Morgan between 1919 and 1947 was a castle of 165 rooms, surrounded by lavish gardens, guest cottages, with an indoor and outdoor pool, a zoo (zebras can still be seen frolicking in the hills) and a tennis court.

So yeah, something a tad more comfortable than camping:

The castle on the hill

We booked a tour of the bedrooms, which took us through the guest quarters and Hearst and his mistress’ quarters. In the 1920s and 1930s, an invitation to Hearst Castle was the hottest ticket in town for Hollywood stars and politicians. We saw the room that Cary Grant stayed in. I think that’s why I loved this place so much, I was imagining vintage celebs draped over the chairs in the library or trotting down the spiral staircases to join a party in the gardens.

So here is where you’d be staying as a married couple:

Quite nice

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt stayed here. One touch I really loved was that vintage clothes were draped over furniture in the bedrooms, as though laid out by staff for their occupying starlet or politician to slip on later.

The view from the guest sitting room

The guest sitting room

The ornate ceiling in the guest sitting room

Where a single or unmarried lady would have stayed:

That dress!

The other incredible thing about the castle is that none of the artworks or ornaments are recreations. That urn in the library that looks 1000 years old is exactly that. The sad thing is that most of these artefacts went missing/were stolen and were sold during the First and Second World Wars, so little is known about their origin. Our tour guide told us that if people can prove an item was stolen from their family or ancestors, Hearst Castle will give it back. Which has happened on a few occasions.

The library:

Mr Hearst’s bedroom:

The photos were later added by California State Parks

The view from Mr Hearst’s bedroom

Across the hall is the room where Mr Hearst’s mistress, actress Marion Davies, stayed. Mrs Hearst apparently stayed in New York raising the 5 Hearst sons and rarely went to California. If she did happen to make an appearance at Hearst Castle, or ‘the ranch’ as they called it, Marion would go and stay at Mr Hearst’s abode in Santa Monica. Easy!

Marion’s room, the shoes under the bed!

Another guest bedroom:

Mr Hearst’s office:

From here he ran his newspaper and movie empires

While the inside was jaw dropping, it was really the grounds of Hearst Castle that won me over.

A guest house

I was kind of devastated the Neptune Pool wasn’t filled was water. Apparently there is quite a large leak and with California being in a massive drought, they can’t keep it full until the leaks are repaired.

The Neptune Pool and the indoor pool are where Lady Gaga filmed a music video recently (watch it here, perhaps on silent…) and it just looks beautiful with water in it. Apparently Andrew and I are on an unplanned tour of Lady Gaga music video sets, because we’ve also been to Universal Studio where scenes for Judas were filmed. Bizarre.

It looks ok empty

The stairs leading down to the Neptune Pool

Another guest cottage

Rose gardens

I love the pastel tennis court.

Care for a hit?

And behold, the Roman Pool:

Amazing

It was just so incredible, all the tiles, detail and intricate work.

I’m starting to run out of adjectives.

One of the castle’s towers

You can see the ocean from here

Damn scaffolding

Triumphant cherub

Apparently Hearst Castle does twilight tours where people dress up in 1920s-30s style. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do more! Seriously if you’re in the area, definitely go for a visit. I really didn’t want to leave.

Sorry for all the photos, but there could have been about 20 more, so count yourself lucky!

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, Hearst Castle, Travel | 1 Comment

Santa Barbara, Cambria & San Simeon

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Bec

On Tuesday we departed Los Angeles to kick off our road trip. We were pretty sad to leave, having had a wonderful 10 days with Andrew’s family. But we jumped onto the 101 and headed north, stopping in Santa Barbara for lunch.

I visited Santa Barbara back in 2010 with my friend Kate, so it was interesting to go back. Unfortunately we had better weather last time.

Santa Barbara really turned on the weather for us!

We grabbed lunch at Norton’s Pastrami & Deli, as suggested by Andrew’s uncle Eric. We were not disappointed. Andrew had the chilli dog with a side of onion rings that we shared:

I had half a pastrami sandwich and pickles:

Highlights of Santa Barbara include watching a young woman walk down the street with a large python sitting on her backpack (ew) and a visit to the 99 cent store for some shower gel.

We drove on to San Simeon to pitch our tent before grabbing dinner and taking in the sunset at Moonstone beach at the neighbouring town of Cambria.

It was pretty spectacular.

And quite cold, I might add. We seem to have brought the Melbourne weather with us.

There were still plenty of people out surfing, so we watched them riding waves for a while.

This dude just naturally posing

For dinner we ate at a place in Cambria that did pizzas, burgers and some Mexican food. So we branched out and got Mexican. I had tacos and we shared jalapeno poppers, only because they were creatively named ‘armadillo eggs’. How could we say no?

Tasty

Armadillo eggs

Tacos

We had a pretty good night’s sleep. We met two grey nomads who leant us some of the power from their giant trailer to inflate our air mattress, which was much appreciated. Camping for the night was totally fine and also very cheap.

The campground offered no water because California is in the grip of a serious drought at the moment. So the campground, as well as other major tourist destinations in the area, has portaloos only. Despite the major droughts in Australia I don’t ever remember toilets being shut off, so things must be pretty dire.

I won’t be able to blog much along the road, but I figure while I have free wifi and a quiet night in I should make the most of it. How’s life treating you?

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, Road Trip, Travel | 2 Comments

Hiking in the Angeles National Forrest

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Bec

On Sunday we rose bright and early to take a hike in the Angeles National Forrest, just 30 minutes from bustling LA. It appeared overcast at first as we drove up the moutains, but then we suddenly broke through the clouds and were treated to spectacular view. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

We hiked with Andrew’s uncle Eric, aunt Adrienne and their gang of hiking pals. To me it is astonishing that all this exists so close to the city. Feast your eyes:

Sigh

#thatview

Our hike started from the Chilao picnic area, which was marked with a wonderfully vintage sign. It kind of reminded me of being back at Disney California Adventure. Except everything was real, including the delicious smell of the giant pine trees.

>Insert pine smell here<

We did a non strenuous 6 mile hike, which is about 10 kilometres. I still can’t wrap my head around miles… Or ounces, gallons, feet and pounds.

Adrienne, me, Andrew (standing on a rock) and Eric

How is this real?!

Everyone on the hike was super friendly and imparted a lot of travel wisdom for our road trip.

I also got to break in my brand new (and first ever pair of) hiking boots from REI. They went well, no blisters.

Mountain lions and bears and rattlesnakes, oh my!

Andrew hiking

Those clouds

After the hike (about 3 hours) we went to exactly the kind of place you’d want to go to for lunch:

Newcomb’s Ranch was built in 1939 and serves hearty meals for hungry hikers. And bikers too, it seems:

I was absent during ordering, so Andrew got me a burger. So good.

I love these names, so American!

After lunch we wound our way back down the mountains and back home. A perfect way to spend a sunny Sunday.

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, Travel | 1 Comment

Disneyland!

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Bec

So I was pretty tired at Disneyland last Thursday having hardly slept the night before due to sheer excitement. Yes, I know there is something wrong with me. But it’s Disneyland! The happiest place on earth!

It was spectacular, here’s what we did:

Saw Sleeping Beauty’s castle

Bought Mickey and Minnie ears and took a really bad selfie of us wearing them:

Whoops

Met with Mary Poppins (politely ignored her confused accent) and Bert.

Chim chiminy

We bypassed the teacups…

Getting dizzy just looking at this

But had a photo taken in one:

We were the only childless people to line up for 15 minutes to meet Mickey:

Worth it

Appreciated the accurate mining references in the Thunder Mountain ride (well, Andrew did).

Thunder Mountain

Had the mood of the creepy Haunted Mansion ride interrupted three times (it just stopped randomly and a message came over the loud speaker?):

I still loved it!

~~Endured~~ Enjoyed the slightly repetitive soundtrack on the It’s a Small World ride.

It’s a small world after all

It’s a small world after alllllllll

And we took some hilariously awful ride photos:

Seriously, what is this?

We also managed to skip the line for the Indiana Jones ride after it reopened for the third time following numerous break downs, got slightly freaked out during the Pirates of the Carribean ride (or maybe that was just me, it’s so dark in there!), loved the Space Mountain roller coaster and got completely drenched on our second time on Splash Mountain (I blame our heavier set log companions…).

Overall a fantastic day.

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, Disneyland, Travel | Leave a comment

Disney California Adventure

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Bec

We’ve officially been in the US for over a week now! It’s gone so fast and we’ve done so much awesome stuff. On Tuesday night we went out for dinner in Hollywood with Andrew’s uncle Eric, aunt Adrienne and cousin Corinne before seeing Motown the Musical. It was so great, the singing, the dancing and the sets were some of the best I’ve ever seen.

On Wednesday Andrew and I took off to Anaheim so we could go to Disney California Adventure followed by Disneyland. To say I was excited is a gross understatement. Having never heard of California Adventure I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was just an additional (and completely separate) theme park to Disneyland with a distinctly Californian focus. I really loved it.

We came in through the hotel entrance and found ourselves in Grizzly Peak, a kind of retro national park/outdoorsy area.

Me at Grizzly Peak

We immediately got in the line for the Grizzly River Run, a rafting style water ride.

The Grizzly River run

Yeah we got a little wet.

Andrew and Grizzly

In this area is a really great simulator ride called Soarin’ Over California. You basically take flight over stunning HD footage of the state, which got us really excited for our upcoming road trip. Smell was also incorporated, so when you fly over the orange fields a delightful orange scent wafts past, as well as a pine smell in the forrest areas. It was a definite highlight.

We then meandered over to Paradise Pier to ride the roller coaster.

Paradise Pier

The difference a filter makes

On our way to the roller coaster we saw an adorable nautical Donald Duck. So I got in line to get a photo.

The roller coaster, aptly named California Screamin’, was pretty fast and went upside down. I loved it, Andrew did too after getting over his initial fear.

After that we stopped for a nutritious lunch:

Onion rings

And made our way to Cars Land.

I’ve never seen Cars, but the ride was awesome.

We then made our way over to Hollywood Land to go on my favourite ride for a second time.

Hollywood Land

The Hollywood Tower Hotel. The theme is from an episode of The Twilight Zone set in a hotel in the 1930s. A bunch of people step into the elevator and crazy things happen.

The scene is really well set as you enter the lobby of a dusty abandoned hotel.

You then get into the service elevator and it’s a Tower of Terror style ride, with the lift flying up in the air before dropping suddenly. So great.

At 6pm the park closed so we moseyed on over to Downtown Disney for dinner, Mexican food, just for a change.

Salsa

Guacamole made at the table

An enchilada and a pork thing, with beans and rice

Sunset

We went back to the hotel to get some sleep before Disneyland the next day. Except I was so excited I could hardly sleep… It seemed a had regressed to the mind state of a 6-year-old on Christmas Eve. Oh well! More to come…

Posted in Travel | Tagged California, Disney California Adventure, Disneyland, Theme Park | 3 Comments

Universal Studios

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Bec

On Monday, Andrew braved the 101 and drove us to Universal Studios without fault. Needless to say I was pretty excited to see where movies are made.

Me with a NYC taxi

Surprisingly the lines weren’t bad at all and soon we were sitting on the Jurassic Park ride. Andrew was sitting on the edge and got kind of drenched. The first ride got us really pumped for the rest of the day. After that we jumped on The Mummy Ride, which scared Andrew stupid as a child. He was stressing out pretty bad by the time the roller coaster took off, kind of adorable! He was fine though. Things always seem bigger/scarier as a kid.

After that we went on the Transformers ride, which is a simulator style ride for which you wear 3D glasses. Then we went on the Studio Tour, which I had been really looking forward to:

Does this look familiar?

It’s the set from Psycho! Doesn’t look quite as terrifying in the sunny California daylight. We watched Norman dump a shower curtain clad body in the boot of the car before he came over to say hello. With a huge knife in hand.

Check out the mothers’ house on the hill. Looks much closer in real life.

This is the set from part of the War of the Worlds movie:

Amazing

There was a full size, deconstructed Boeing 747 on set:

Insane amount of work!

Does this street look familiar?

It’s Wisteria Lane! Having been thoroughly obsessed with Desperate Housewives as a teenager I started to fangirl pretty hard…

Gabrielle Solis’ house, which looks way more yellow on the show

Ida Greenberg’s place

The sets looked really simple in real life, I guess that shows what lighting and camera angles do.

Hanging out with Marilyn

Universal has an area dedicated to The Simpsons, which I loved. I can pretty much quote every episode from the early seasons and since I was a kid have wanted to visit a Simpsons theme park.

There was the Kwik-E-Mart.