Las Vegas continued



CUDDLING A DAD EFIGY AFTER AN ALL YOU CAN EAT



It grows on you....

Like a leech.



You don't want it but sometimes it can do you good.

We've been to two shows so far: Greg London two nights ago and Vegas: The Show last night.... and they were absolutely brilliant. Best seats in the house right in the front row and neither of them cost more than $55 each (plus ruddy tax). We're off tonight to see something called Cirque de Soleil "O" which Liz says is a must-see. Big ask as the tickets cost twice more each than the previous two shows put together.

Found a brilliant pokie yesterday. Didn't lose once as every time we put in $3 we won a coke. Got bored.... .and a bit sick after a while so we tried another game.



NUMEROUS ATTEMPTS TO GET RID OF THE WRINKLES
WERE UNSUCCESSFUL

 Blackjack. $100 limit. I think the last time I played it was during lunch hour at Napier College between sleeps. Started with $100 and after half an hour of brilliant play ended up with $100. Mum said at one stage I had $145. Wish she'd told me at the time.... quit while you're winning is the best motto.

Within the next hour we've decided to.... gasp.... don't care if we lose so the $100 is up for grabs. Liz has decided to let me play with the cards this time.

Still cannot believe that we've managed to go right round the Americas without once being served Hash Browns for breakfast. OK we've missed breakfast the last 4 mornings since arriving in Las Vegas but ..... really.... America's best cuisine present to the world and none of the buggers serve hash browns?

You know that one where "Home is Where the Heart Is"?

Work it our for yourselves... we're off to lose $100.

Queue Las Vegas

We don't really like Las Vegas but are hoping it will grow on us!

Nobody seems to be particularly happy and we know why. We've always wondered what sheep must feel like.... and now we know.... ever seen a sheep smile?

From the minute we got off the plane we were herded through a disney-like lineup to get a taxi. It was hilarious. I made meh meh sheep-like noises all the way but don't think the rest of the sheep understood what I say trying to mmeeeesay.

After getting the taxi from the airport to the Fabulous Bellagio we fought our way through a long line-up of people trying to get taxis (probably to get "away") so that we could get to the check-in area. Took more than half an hour to check-in to the fabulous five star Bellagio where it appeared that most people in front of us were arguing with the check-in staff... probably trying to cancel their bookings! It's honestly the most impersonal hotel we've ever been to.

Got to bed at around 10.30 last night because of the stupid travel agent but got up early about 9.30am. It took nearly 2 hours to find somewhere to get food. Why? Everywhere we were recommended to go to had at least a 20 minute wait to get a seat (queue). We eventually found a place called Ed's Burgers (something like that) where the female who took our order wore a swimsuit and fishnet tights. There is nothing more designed to put off a 62 year-old male's breakfast than having a 20 year old bum stuck in your face while ordering.

Had to queue for the Bellagio Cafe for a coffee and when I told the female m'aitre de we'd find our own seats she told me to get back in line..... we went somewhere else where the queue was only 3 minutes.

The view from our room 14016 is ridiculous and at night quite incredible. There is a fountain show which hands-down beats anything you've ever seen before. We're looking directly towards an Eiffel Tower. To the right is Planet Hollywood and to the left is Caesar's Palace. The Rocky Mountains are shown between the two areas.

Mum and I are at this moment arguing about where to go tonight. I just want to go to bed and forget about the whole thing but Mum wants to go out. Mum wants to go to Planet Hollywood but I'd prefer to go shopping.

Just told Mum that there were lots and lots of folk our age walking along the strip with wine and beer in their hands having a great time. Mum said "I never saw that". I'm not surprised with that observation: Mum walked straight past a woman dressed as a chocolate and didn't even notice.

Tell you where we went laaaater.

Sitting in San Francisco airport

Here we are in San Francisco and really amused.
Arrived at 2.00pm and are waiting for the next flight for Las Vegas at 7.10pm. The twit of a travel agent didn't work out that there are two other flights 2 and 3 hours sooner: so I've just sent her an email telling her wonderful we think she is. She also managed to book the other 7 flights with seats right at the back of the plane where you feel every single bump of the plane and get to watch all the people with weak bladders charging past us and waiting to get into the bogs.

Last night was the final night with Beatrice and Ian and I'll bet they were happy to see the back of us. They took us to a place called Earls. On entering through the usual Canadian revolving doors we were greeted with the best welcome we've had anywhere in the Americas. Three dolly birds with huge smiles on their faces greeted us all. Didn't work it out until afterwards but it's pretty obvious they caught sight of Beatrice's Hermes scarf and decided we must all be rich.

 

Whistler

This pictue is in Vancouver. It appears that Ian and Beatrice wanted to show us the Roger Bannister statue. We never actually found him but the totem poles in the background were all oddly enough called Roger Bannister.

We are all up here with Beatrice, Ian, Mum and me.

Took just over 2 hours and Ian didn't crash once. Did I tell you about the bears?

They are all down in the Fairmont Whistler Pub while I'm doing the hard work writing this blog. Actually I left them there an hour ago because I was stuffed after today's fun. Oddly enough the adrenalin is still going which is why I'm not asleep.

We've had a funny time in Canada because the ski season has just ended and the summer season hasn't started so most places are closed. I wanted to try skiing again and after my last disastrous attempt 35 years ago wanted the practice slopes. They're all closed because the snow is melting.

While Mum and Beatrice and Ian all went shopping I found an adventure. Canoe 9km then bike back. What a fabulous time. It was advertised as intermediate and is probably easy peasy for buggers like Eric and Danny. The canoe was reasonably stable, ie I wobbled a bit going over the choppy lake but I'm rubbish at balancing. We went through rapids, small waterfalls (2 metres high but so what), ducked under low lying trees and chased two ducks who decided to be our guides.

Two hours for 9km? Doesn't seem much but some of them we were going about 14k an hour (verified by the guide).

Tonight Mum and I went into Whistler Village where we had the most disgusting Fondue ever. Sat at the Amsterdam Bar and people watched until the waitress asked us "how was your meal?" Revolting said Liz. She took it away and came back and said "the Chef tasted it". "Yes?" said Mum; "Chef said it was utterly disgusting and he was taking it off the menu forthwith". Later... Mum had foccacio and I had salad.

These are the weird folk you tend to meet in Whistler.

Calgary and Vancouver

We're at Whistler so a quick precis.

Calgary for 3 nights with Beatrice's (Liz' cousin) daughter Julie and they took us to the Canadian Rockies. Beautiful beautiful area. Lake Louise is usually a lake at this time of year but of course was all snow.

 I had a walk past the lies about thin ice but got stuck in a 2 foot snowdrift. Noone else saw that embarrassment which was good as I looked like a prat trying to scramble my way out.

Mum had a great time looking after Julie and Paul's children then going shopping.

Later they all decided to go onto a "gondola" which is nothing like the ones in Venice. The Venice ones stay round about sea level which is good. The Rocky ones don't which is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. They go upwards. A lot upwards. Any awfully lot upwards. It looked simple at the beginning so I said that was going to be easy peasy so "I can do that". It started to go waaaay above tree level. Gripping onto the bars on either side didn't help so for the second time in my life I prayed.

Didn't work this time either.... I'm still not a millionare. We got to the top eventually - 8 minutes is a long time when you're near death - so of course Mum and Julie and the sprogs charged off to get even higher: while I cringed against the furthest wall from the windows.

For all you people who are scared of heights; I've found this brilliant way to get around that fear.

That may look like a smile but my teeth are 5mm smaller than when we started.

At the moment we are at the Four Seasons in Whistler which is where the Winter Olympics were held last year.

On the way up Mum saw a bear; 400 metres later Beatrice saw one too. We did a u-turn and went back to see this one and he was only 20 metres away from us. Unfortunately the only film I got was video and black bear was behind trees. I wanted to get out but wasn't allowed to in case it ate us (since found out that it's a load of crap and only one person has been attacked by a bear in recent memory and that was because it was protecting it's cubs.

This is the so-called hot spa in the Rockies (canny remember the place). Hilarious. We all expected a hot spa dug into the mountain or something like that. All these folk probably went back home and told their mates they sat in a hot spa in the rockies.

The Emperor's New Clothes story is alive and well wherever you go.

Calgary

Where were we?
What a fabulous city Toronto is; so much to say about it, so much to see and do.

Right that's enough about Toronto. We are now in Calgary.

Toronto is brilliant: it is close to Niagara Falls for one thing. It's also, I believe, close to Canada but the city fathers got lost and turned it into a big financial centre. It's a weird weird place. We spent more than a day looking for a decent place to have breakfast and walked all the way down to the harbour on Lake Ontario (about 2km) with few shops and no restaurants. Turns out that Toronto is all underground. No really.... there are hundreds of kilometres of walkways and they are all about 20 feet below street level.

I've known Andy for about 11 years but never actually met him in the flesh. He was really the reason we came to Toronto.... and is the reason that we ended up liking the place. Great guy and we really really don't hold it against him that we all went to the Canadian Hockey Museum which must be the most boring museum in the world and well worth the fee to get out.

We had a brilliant meal with him and Rhoda and I'm really really really fed up that I didn't take any photographs there. Camera on the table but we had such a good time that photies were forgotten.
 
Day before we went for a meal in a place called 3 breweries where I managed to leave both my Amex card and my Scottish hat. Needed that is because it was so ruddy cold. Naturally the day we left Toronto the temperature was 16 degrees where it had been 6 for the previous 4 days with lots of rain.
 
Mum just went on to Facebook where Tash was raving about...... wait for it..... how she'd just been to Niagara Falls. Unbelievable.... we were there the day before. It rained all day..... it was 3 degrees Centigrade. The Maid of the Mist boat didn't start until the day after..... and we missed Tash. What is the chances of that.
 
Off to meet Liz's cousin Beatrice's daughter Julie so better go.
 

Elvis Wasn't So Great

In fact he was quite small compared to what seems to be the average size in Memphis.

Have I mentioned the fat people? Some of these folk are not just fat..... these people are huuuuuge. It's the female of the species mainly. The Australian idea seems to be for young girls to get as thin as possible. There is obviously a competition down south ..... major prizes to be won if you can get to 120 kilos before you're 21. We've never seen anything like it but when you see the restaurants in Memphis you begin to understand. The fast food industry has a lot to answer for.

Here's the winner of Miss Memphis Slim 2011.

Had a great day chasing Elvis. Not as tacky as we expected and it was worth the extra 2 dollars to go as VIPs.

Tomorrow Toronto where on Wednesday we'll meet a Scottish friend of mine whom I've never met in person. It's 7 degrees celcius and the silly bugger is talking about a barbecue. He says he's rubbish at BBQs and wants me to look after it. Heh heh heh heh heh heh.

Mum in front of some dead person.

Memphis, Tennessee - this one goes into the annals

Here we are at last. Home of Elvii. Took a bit of doing though.

With typical brilliance we've arrived when there is a major music festival starting. You may think this is a good thing....... but it's ruddy well not. Most hotels booked out so I went with Trip Adviser and booked a Best Western, Olive Branch which said it was close to Graceland.

Oh no it's bloody well not.

Cost us $50 for a taxi. The buildings got less and less and less and less until... literally standing all on its lonesome with nothing but a garage in sight was our wonderful motel. Liz was almost in tears. Walked in at 1.00pm and they telt us that checkin wasn't until 3.00. Stow that for a game of soldiers. I cancelled. Cost us $90 to do so. Waited for around 30 minutes for a cab which eventually came. $80 to get back to Downtown Memphis. God how rubbish was that. The hotel is a bog standard 3 star so checking in was a bit depressing. Joy oh joy the room is excellent.

Beale Street is famous. Nuff said. Cop cars and massive big fat poleece everywhere. An hour was enough and we ended up at some famous restaurant called The Majestic. The other punters were brilliant and joking all round when they discovered we were Scottish.

Tomorrow it's Elvis and we've got the VIP tour. Liz is ecstatic.

God help me; I'm just along for the ride.

San Francisco the 3rd

Can't remember where i left off but I think it was Yosemite.

Picked up at 6.15am from the Nikko for a 7.15am start from Fishermen's Wharf. As usual there was the "One" who turned up 10 minutes late. I glared at her but she was too busy drinking coffee.... all Americans drink coffee..... everywhere.

We were first in line this time and got the best seats which are the ones right at the front. The driver was a laconic chappy from Noo Jersey who made many cryptic comments about the previous day's driver. He only talked when necessary and had some good stories.

It's all very touristy of course with paths, restaurants, signposts etc. etc. so of course no self respecting bear would go anywhere near these places. I decided to go in the opposite direction to the recommended one. It was brilliant. I climbed up through rocks and forest and found heaps of caves where there should have been a bear. I actually sat for about half an hour without making a sound in the hope that a bear would pop up singing about the last time he did a number 2 in the woods and no-one was there...... sigh.

Back at 9.30pm and decided not to go out on the town so went to bed early.

tomorrow we're off to Alcatraz so have a lie in until 11.00am.

San Francisco the 2nd

No idea where this is going to end up so you're going to have to be on your toes folks. The picture of Jacob on the right isn't the same as the one last year incidentally. He's just as shy as Danni.

Baggage eventually arrived at 2.00 on the 22nd San Fran time. Freezing here so had to buy long jeans anna jersey which is annoying as they were both in the suitcase.... rats rats rats.

First day we got one of the tourist buses. Brilliant as the one we chose didn't have those awful headphones. We got a local who kept us entertained with stories. He sang songs, he looked after everyone..... and this on one of the open topped buses. Best 30 dollars ever. We got back in the evening in time for the second wine and cheese party at the Nikko.

We're having a great time but had a few let-downs which is probably due to expectations rather than realities. eg

Second day we took the tour which incorporated Monteray, Pebble Beach (golf course), and other interesting places. The tour was quite good and was enlivened by a Filipino bus driver who had obviously taken lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of speed pills. He talked non-stop with the volume control set on high (to go with the pills) for the two bloody hours it took to get to Monteray. I kid you not but it was literally impossible to even talk between ourselves to comment on what he'd said because he was on to the next bit of information. When we eventually arrived at Monterey he got so excited that there was the possibility that we might see whales that it took 5 minutes to stop the ringing in our ears.

We got off the bus with me having to be restrained from bopping the driver.

Monterey was made famous by the writer john Steinbech who wrote a book called Cannery Row. There is no other real reason for Monterey being known apart from it having been a fishing village. There are posters of Steinbech and Eckhart and other folk made famous from the book but... that was it folks. No Information centre, no booklets, no interest at all apart from restaurants, big fat Americans, giftie places and tour buses. The sad thing is that few people seemed interested.... it was just a place to stop and tick off on the map of "places we have been to". The rest of the tour was spent going through Pebble Beach Golf Course which Stephanie should remember. We played it many times Steph... try to keep up..... "You're in the rough stuff"..... remember? We saw Arnie's House, Danny de Vito's House (small), de Caprio's house, the proper Psycho House, Tiger Wood's parent's house, another house, some other famous person's house, another famous person's house, George Clooney's house (we're collecting his houses: saw his house on Lake Como in Italy.) and also saw some Grey Squiddels which I was fortunate enough to have been captured on film throwing peanut shells at the nasty little buggers. Us Scots hate grey squiddels because they've eaten the local red squirrels out of home somuchso that there are few red squiddels left in Scotland.

On the way back we were supposed to go to a garlic wine tasting but because it was Good Friday it was closed. Instead the driver took us to a fabulous eating area where you had the pick of the sort of places which made America famous for fat people:  Macdonalds, Burger King, to name but a few. Luckily we found a remaindered clothes place where we bought some necessary warm weather clothes for the next day.... luggage still in Oz.

Got back at 9.30. It was a good day. Tomorrow we're off to Yosemite... pronounced yo.semet.ee.

Write a blog whined Suzanne

Write a blog whined Suzanne; we need to know what you're doing whinged Alison; Where are you going to again? said Steph.

No time left.

Up at 7.00 tomorrow Friday to go to Steinbech country... back at 9.00pm

Up on Saturday at 6.16 to go to Yosemite.

America 2011

It's all ratherodd with blogging. I've tried to start a new blog called America 2011 but it seems I can only add to the Europe one last year.

Notwithstanding that.... try saying that after 36 hours with no sleep. We are now in San Francisco an hour earlier than we left Brisbane... left Brisbane at 10.50 on the 20th arrived San Francisco 9.10 on the 20th. We arrived anyway which is more than you can say about our beautifully marked luggage which is probably still in Oz as it certainly isn't effing well in America.

Flight from Brisbane was late by half an hour as Suzanne and the sprogs will testify. We originally had 50 minutes to get to the Innernational airport in Sydney which now went down to 15 minutes so we ran like a Brendon on the way to school, ie a bit slow. Covered in sweat I got on the plane as I thought the second last... Liz (mum) turned up 10 minutes later having stopped for a lie down but this is normal. The flight actually left 40 minutes late because some other prat from Brisbane got lost. Mum said jokingly that we probably got there before our luggage.

She was right.

Our luggage hasn't actually made it to San Francisco.

We've had a wonderful start toSan Francisco going shopping for essentials.

We've been given an allowance from Qantas of $100 each for the inconvenience of not having luggage.

I got my emergency two bottles of beer costing 4 dollars almost immediately. Mum managed to buy basics for the other $196 before dark.

The Nikko in San Francisco is nothing like the one in Hong Kong Douglas and Janet so be warned. The first room in the Club Nikko costing $240 a night had a fabulous view over San Francisco building sites so we asked for another one. This one is better and affords a view over the Bay. We met a couple from london in  the Nikko Club room and had a great time with them whinging about tips and things. He plays rugby for Londonx Nigeria and we had good time hiding bottles of wine and plates of cheese before the waiter closed the place down. It was supposed to be free wine and cheese from 5.00 until 7.00 but he'd pretty well cleared the stuff by 6.30 until a loud Scottish voice told him to desist and restock toot sweet. The loud Scotsman got a clap from the audience and pats on the back. The maitre de did a bit of glaring. ..... The loud Scotsman was chuffed.... I wonder who the loud Scotsman was?

No photo's this time around.