Italy Road trip part 1

First few days of trip going well :) I arrived in Rome on Sunday where I joined my friends who had already been there for a few days. Went to see the fountain at night but didn't have a penny to throw over my shoulder!

Next day spent the morning in Rome then got a train to Florence. I can't believe how big the Termini train station was - over 30 platforms about 10 min walk from one end to other! Tryst us to go to wrong platform! We then ran with all our baggage & ended up missing it! O well we had to pay a bit to change our tickets but made it to Florence late Mon afternoon. Went out for dinner that night & drank just a little bit too much wine lol! We all suffered a little bit this morning but had a good night. Today we started with a walking tour of the city and then continued ourselves. We walked up the hill to the Michealangelo Piazza statue at miday, very bad idea in this heat! The afternoon we wondered around the city & then went up the bell tower - 413 steps & no lift ;) views were totally worth it though! Few pics -










First thing tomorrow morning we are heading to Pisa & then hiring the car to drive to Lake Garda :-)


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Location:Via Bernardo Cennini,Florence,Italy

Reviving the old blog with new travels :-)

Wow can't believe it was nearly 2 years ago I put this blog together to record my travels across the North America... (which looks like I never actually finished writing either). It was an awesome trip and reflecting now I cannot believe how much we covered in such a short time! It really was an amazing experience and although at the time I complained a lot about the long tiring walks and trips I thanked my friends so much for putting up with my complaining as it really was an amazing experience (still have all my pics pinned up now!).

After re-reading some of these posts gives me the bug to travel again... maybe one day! But for now its short trips :-) Next up is a road trip through Italy. We are currently in the process of planning sights / travel etc but we have decided on our plan...

Rome -> Florence -> Pisa -> Verona -> Lake Garda -> North Lake Garda -> Venice

We will be staying in hostels along the way, most which have wifi so no doubt i'll be posting to this blog :) Trip planned for first week in June for 10 days so follow if your interested in hearing more!

Will post again soon!

Yosemite & San Francisco

Very quick update just to say we have now arrived at our final destination San Francisco!

We hired another car to drive from Los Angeles to Santa Cruize along a fantastic scenic highway winding up mountains, seeing some truely amazing views! We then drove to Yosemite National Park, although we had a few issues with accommodation (will explain another time since running low on time) we still had a fantastic time! I think this National park has overtaken Bryce Caynon as my favourite now but we did see a lot more of if since I was subjected to a 13 mile (yes you read that right!) hike up 3,200 feet (about 900 meters!) so we really did see soooo much! I'm surprised I made it and I definately suffered the next day lol.

Anyway got to dash now, will try & make one final update before we come back! Bye for now!

Leaving San Diego

We have now been here for 4 days and this morning we leave to head back to Los Angeles. We are stopping there one night & then hiring another car to drive the amazing scenic route from LA to Santa Cruise which should be awesome!

As always we have had a busy & awesome time with loads to see! Weve done San Diego Zoo, crossed the boreder to Mexico (Tijuana) for a day, gone to the beach (attempted to use body boards but forgot how to catch waves lol :p) & done a little exploring /shopping around the areas. My fav was def going to the beach - I finally got to relax a little (although spent most of the time in the sea! It's sooooooooo much warmer here!) but the Zoo was awesome it is massive! They even have an air transport where we got to sit in little boxes lol. My fav animal was def the monkeys they were soooo cute! (Although we did end up meeting a rather strange lady there who apparently can communicate with them and has many primate friends lol).

Anyway better dash as got to get breakfast & pack (yep as usual im still messy even here - think my stuff is taking up half the floor in the room atm good job its a private room lol). Will post again soon! Bye for now

San Diego

Hello again...

For our last day in Hollywood we actually went on a hostel ran tour of the Hollywood sign which was rather knackering! It took about 4 hours & we walked as close as possible to it & then hiked all the way to the top of the hills! Unfortunately I not only managed to break my flipflops but also got a thorn stuck in it without realising constantly stabbing into my foot everytime I walked so now my feet are suffering (along with all my muscles (hmmm I can't spell!) after going to the Venice Muscel beach the day before and attempting to do monkey bars lol.

Our last night in Hollywood we went to see X files rather than Bat Man & we ended up going to see it at the Chinese threatre (apparently where many premiers get held!) It was rather posh inside!

Then (hmmm I seem to say this a lot... you must be very bored of this account by now :p) this morning we got a 10am bus to San Diego, only took just over 2 hours so wasn't too bad. The hostel is in a nice location & seems good (apart from not having any air-con but I'm sure we will live, we have had worse heat!). This afternoon we had lunch in TGI (which handly is just across the road!) & then wondered down into the town areas.

ooohh I also forgot to mention the earthquake we had in Los Angeles! It was apparently 5.8 on the rictor (again bad spelling I'm sure!) scale! It was a bit random but didn't seem as bad as the news has made it out to be... well at least not what I saw anyways

It's not possible to get any photo's off my camera from the PC's here but will try get some in the next hostel. Will update again soon, bye for now

Hollywood!

Hello to anyone still bothering to read this!

I just read my last post & realised that I didn't actually finish telling the story of the mad off-road driving (was in a rush when writing it!). I forgot to say that we actually ended up driving 13 miles down this road - still continually expecting it to turn into a paved road, every corner we made we kept thinking "we must be nearly there" anyway after 13 miles & extremly worsening roads we see a fence shutting off the road to the visitor centre! Apparently closed for "Maintenance" so as you can imagine everyones faced dropped (I was still shaking! So sure we were going to topple over the cliff edge lol) we couldn't continue (god knows where it would go since our map was useless!). We thought it would be more sensible to turn around! 13 miles and another hours drive later we eventually made it back to paved roads! Thank god Mike was driving is all I can say he handled it VERY well, theres no way I could have done that! luckily we can look back & laugh (but certainly couldn't at the time!).

There were many more awesome times on the road trip but I won't bore you with the details on here. Anyway as the title suggests we are currently in sunny LA! Our first night we went on a tour with the hostel, wondered through the hollywood area & got fantastic view of the hollywood hills (& some stars houses and where they might hang out pointed out to us! although we didn't see any). The bar in our hostel then had a free comedy night so we went along to that... certainly needed a few beers to find it funny is all I can say! They were all upcoming comedians but it was a laugh! Today we went to the beach - YAY! Although I was only 'allowed' to sit for 15 mins on the actual beach since the others get "too bored", although there was plenty more to do in the area & we even ended up playing paddle tennis lol. We saw an amazing sunset on the beach (whilst eating take away pizza lol) but then had the joys of an hour and half journey to attempt to get back to the hostel lol.

Tomorrow we are going on another tour, this time to get as close as possible to the Hollywood sign (& hear lots of 'gossip' apparently). I believe Caroline wants to go see Batman at IMAX cinema tomorrow night so no dount we will all go, be nice to have a relaxing evening :)

Anyway better go, need to sleep since Caz/Dan will no doubt be waking me up at the lovely hour of 6:30am! Bye for now xx

Road Trip

9 days of road tripping & random motel hunting has come to an end! We had a great time (well apart from aching legs from the constant trekking! we literally walked about 6-8 miles up & down mountains everyday!) Although I'm suffering it was totally worth it!

We have been to 9 national parks and really have seen some fantastic views! My personal favorite was Bryce Canynon, although Grand Caynon was massive I think the stunning scenery was better at Bryce. I will try get some pictures online in the next couple days since I'm limited on time at the moment.

We were really lucky with motels found somewhere pretty easily every night & all were reasonable price, we did stay in one 'proper' American motel (very very cheap too $50 for all 4 of us!, rather rundown and probably a bit creepy (but we were too tired to notice). We also experienced completely empty highways (I had a picture stood in the middle of the road! ), 2 American Diners (Just like the films :p lol), saw a forest fire, saw many scary wildlife creatures & and had an extremly scary off road driving experience.

The driving experience is probably the one that will make u laugh the most! So here we were driving towards Canyonlands National Park and on the map it says unpaved road (but apparently leading to a paved one in 10 miles) so we were driving along and the road was fine at first and then it just continually got worse and worse! We were literally driving along the cliff edge & I would say the roads weren't even safe for a 4 x 4 ! Remembering that we are in a hire car & any scratch/damage we will get charged for we were all really scared (insurance didn't cover off-road either!) the car was rocking everywhere & we bumped it several times! We were sooo lucky that there wasn't any visible damage (no doubt there is some underneath though! - just keeping our fingers crossed it wont be noticed!).

There is soooo much more to say about the last 9 days but I don't have time now, will update again soon. Off to Hollywood tomorrow!

Hope your all well, looking forward to seeing you again! Bye for now x

Vegas done & now road trip has began

Vegas was awesome, it was actually a nice break from the hardcore walking! We had an awesome hotel (which cost us about $70 each for the whole 4 nights - such a bargain!!!) it even had a pool! We saw most the Casino's, watched a random pirate show, saw some AWESOME water fountain displays & boiled to death when outside!!

Caz tought me how to play the 1cent slot machines & I had good luck both times!! First time I went from $1 to $10 and then the second night I had another go and went from $1 to $15 - not just beginners luck :P

We left Vegas this morning picking up our car around midday....not just any old car but a GIGANTIC one!! seriously it is massive good job i dont have to drive it!! Bit posh for us as well :p even with leather seats! I think we look a bit odd driving to run down hostels & motels :p lol. Since we have no accomdation sorted for the next 10 days we (I mean Dan & Mike of course) are attempting to decide what to do tomorrow...is it Grand Canyon or Sedona??? I'll update once I know!! It's all part of the fun not knowing where we are going.... hopefully we wont die :p (cheery of course!!) Anyway will post again soon (I have faith in living!)

Bye bye for now, hope everyone is having a great summer (& enjoying the heat if i have any in England haha) xx

We are now in sunny Washington DC

We had a one-day stop in the city of brotherly love - Philadelphia! Again extremly hot & lots of walking with the main highlights being the liberty bell & the rocky steps!

We left Philadelphia on Thurs & the crazy (super cheap!) chinatown bus dropped us an hour walk (although Mike seemed to think it was closer :p & lied about exactly how far it was going to be!) with massive HEAVY bags & lots of lovely sweating & cursing we made it to the hotel in Washington...which actually turned out to be pretty good (with free internet & nice brand new showers!)

After an early start this morning to avoid the heat we have seen many of sights including Capitol Hill, the White House, the Library of Congress (which is apparently the biggest library in the world and where national treasure 2 was filmed), the air & space museum, the national gallery & of course the Washington monument. We also came across some presidential campagine where many people were ranting about "WE KNOW THE TRUTH"although we doubted that very much...just lots of people randomly agreeing! After having seen all that we then saw everything again by night (and now here I am sat on PC with very sore feet & need to sleep...but its the only time the computer is free!)

Tomorrow another long day planned ..will escape into museums to avoid afternoon sun, I think the plan is Hollocast museum & Natural History... Also the Pentagon & some Japanese thing... lol

Have added a couple more pics to facebook but it takes FOREVER so given up for now, might try add couple more tomorrow night before we leave.

Hope your all well, speak to you soon!

Boston

Just a very quick update as I'm running low on time. Everything still going well just extremly knackered from the constant walking in the heat (was 90 degrees today! not sure how I'm even surviving!).

We have just done lots of sightseeing, we saw Harvard, MIT & we also did a guided walking tour. Although it has been boiling here we actually got caught in a really bad thunder & lightning storm just as we arrived at Harvard & I was only wearing tiny shorts and strappy tops... thought might as well make most of the "shower" so did 'dancing in the rain'....don't think we quite fitted in lol.... and def looked like drowned rats when we arrived back at the hostel! haha

Tomorrow we leave got Philliadelphia and after this we are staying in motels so might not get internet access. If I can't then I wont be online for a couple weeks now.

Speak to you all soon!