I'm finally back in The Big Smoke.... hello!
This time I at least have an excuse for a late entry ... I have been completing another item from my list... take a trip round America :) with a friend of mine, Kelly.
The trip was made up of three parts... New York, a road trip across the desert, and Los Angeles..
Part One - New York, New York!
We left on the 29th December from Heathrow Terminal 4 .. I think someone must have been on our side as we only had a few hours delay, unlike the people before us who had flights cancelled for days thanks to the snowfall.
We landed at JFK in the afternoon and headed to our first hotel, Hotel 99 at the top of New York which had a pretty cool room.. As you can see from the photo, we went exploring in the snow.. which ultimately ended up in the purchase of some wellies thanks to the amount of snow!
Day two meant moving down to the bottom of New York to the East Village, where we were staying in an apartment of a friend of a friend. It was a lovely studio apartment, which I could imagine myself living in if I ever moved to NYC.
Once we'd moved, we headed to Central Park to board our tour bus for every girl's idea of fun ... a Sex and the City tour! Three and a half hours of sex, swearing, men, chocolate and cocktails.. what could be better? Followed by dinner near the flat where we met two local New Yorkers who took us for drinks afterwards, perfect end to the day..
New Year's Eve was good fun... we spent it at the AMC Theatre in Times Square. VIP Red Carpet Access and met some really nice people from across the globe. We also may have slipped our numbers to the hot barmen.. haha. Lots of drinking and dancing, and some rather good chocolate brownie to eat!
New Year's day we moved down to the Meatpacking District to Hotel Jane, which is probably my favourite NYC hotel that we stayed in.. as it's decorated like the inside of a train. Look it up : www.thejanenyc.com .. it's definitely worth a visit. They also have a cafe/bar attached to it which is lovely, and all of the staff dress in french stripes, my favourite!
That evening, we walked along the high-line which is an elevated park in the district that gives you a different view of the city from above. I can imagine it's beautiful in the summer with flowers and grass, but was still pretty impressive in the snow. We ended the evening by drinking cocktails at The Boom Boom room at The Standard Hotel. Expensive, but definitely worth it as the bar offers a 360 degree view of the city at night.. just beautiful.
We spent the next morning moving hotels to The Empire, a four star hotel next to Central Park... which is amazing but with rather pretentious staff. The rest of the day we visited Times Square and the surrounding areas before meeting a friend of Kelly's, Cameron, for drinks. We discovered the joy of Shake Shack burgers, which are officially my favourite American Burger, before sniffing out an Irish pub for beverages before heading back to the hotel to sleep our last sleep in NYC...
Our last day in New York consisted of Tiffany's, Serendipity's signature Frozen Hot Chocolate and a walk around a frozen Central Park. A great ending to a great week in the Big Apple before heading to the airport to catch a plane to Phoenix... or so we thought..
Part One A ... Houston, we have a problem!
So thanks to a joyful drive to the airport full of traffic and hold ups.. we arrived at the airport 55 minutes before our flight to be told that we were 5 minutes too late and couldn't get on it. At first we thought it was an amusing joke, but in fact it was reality. This meant that our night was spent in JFK Terminal 4 as the next flight was a connecting one the next morning...!!
Part Two - Jump in my car!
Once we finally got to Phoenix, we picked up our Chrysler Sebring and headed to the hotel to finally get some sleep! It's amazing how well Kelly managed to drive after only 20 minutes of sleep in the airport, she did a lot better than I would've!
Our route took us from Phoenix, through the desert to Yuma then across to San Diego and up the coast to Los Angeles..
En route to Yuma we visited Goldfields, a little Gold mining town in the middle of the desert next to the Superstitious Mountains. It was a great day involving a visit in the mine, panning for gold, riding on the Goldfields steam train and defying gravity in the Mystery Shack. Our stomach also defied gravity when we ate the most awful food at the Saloon... not something to repeat!
Yuma's excursion was the Territorial Prison, which was also an interesting day out.. nothing like a piece of history to keep the brain cogs turning :) We drove from here so San Diego, ready to check into the Hard Rock Hotel!
Once we'd checked into the hotel, we had a lovely visit to Victoria's Secret for about two hours... oops! Many dollars later, and we left the shopping centre vowing to not spend any more...! Instead we went to drink rather powerful cocktails and eat various chicken related snacks at a bar in the centre, which was gooood!
Our second day in San Diego was great fun. Award winning pancakes in the morning, followed by a trip to Mission Beach and the Marina, followed by tipsiness at a local bar.. Next came a makeover at MAC, before having a true 27 Dresses evening. We started off by drinking locally, before going to see a live band at a little bar not far from our hotel. After the gig, we headed back to the hotel to get our glam on and go dancing in the VIP clubs followed by a late night/early morning burger at Mary Jane's Cafe... yum!
Part Three - Hollywood here we come!
After our bender in San Diego the night before, we made the most of our 12 o clock check out time and left at midday. It was a lovely scenic drive along the coast, with a stop at Crystal Cove (they filmed Beaches there don't you know!) and an amusing attempt to find petrol in the middle of hillbilly land..!!
We got to Los Angeles by dinnertime, by which point we'd eaten nothing really, so went to treat ourselves to dinner at Asia de Cuba at The Mondrian Hotel (which is where we stayed, courtesy of some lovely people on X-Men). A snip at $200 ... for two starters, one main, one dessert and a bottle of vino (and we shared.. ouch!) but definitely worth it.
The next day we wandered along the Sunset strip and had manicures/pedicures before heading to The Comedy Club, which is where many great comics have started their careers. Three hours later our stomachs reminded us that we'd not eaten, so we walked further up the strip to a lovely italian restaurant which served the BEST salad I've had in years... yum!
The following day we had a fabulous tour of LA, courtesy of my friend Suzanne. We visited Rodeo Drive, saw The Ivy, and saw some incredible houses in Beverly Hills / Bel Air. This was followed by a lovely dinner and a game of ice hockey between LA Kings and Toronto Maple Leafs. We also met a group of crazy Canadians who sat behind us and bought us all drinks at the end of the game, result!
After the game we headed Chez Winther for a couple of days, during which we were taken for breakfast and had chance to look around Hollywood.. we saw the stars, toured the Chinese Theater, had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and ended our day watching Black Swan at the ArcLight Cinema. A most worthy choice to say we were in the land of film!
Wednesday marked our move to Santa Monica Pier where we visited Bubba's Shrimp House, walked along the Pier, rode the famous ferris wheel and sat on the beach for a little while... before hitting the famous 3rd Promenade shops..! What fun! This was followed by dinner at a sports bar, and dessert at a seafood restaurant on the seafront ... fabulous!
Thursday we moved to Venice Beach for our final leg of the trip. Two days in one of the most varied places I've been in LA... from street performers, to local stalls, to a whole load of stoned people. Never have I seen so much weed in my life... it's literally offered to you every few steps... there were definitely some characters to see/hear! We also tasted our first In and Out burger, of which Kelly was a convert, but I'm afraid I still prefer Shake Shack.. Sorry Americans everywhere!
The rest of our American trip was spent relaxing on a beach, watching skaters, drinking wine and generally winding down after a lot of walking and driving (for Kel) ... and what a lovely time it was!
So there you have it ... number 19 is complete... sorry for the cut down mini version ... I have a lot more to say, but right now it's staying in my little head and in the photos I will be turning into a rather fabulous album...!
I have to say I really enjoyed this book. Not only because I bought a 1p copy from Amazon, that someone had used for their exams and was full of annotations, but also because it's really well written. The story follows a young female socialite who slowly has a breakdown and is put into an asylum for treatment, and we live the emotional turmoil with her. Plath uses the rhetoric and metaphorical world to take us along the roller coaster that she lives through throughout her life. Having come across people with depression and mental insecurity before, it was easy to relate to her story which I think made it a lot more powerful to me as a reader. I would definitely recommend the book, but don't expect to feel great about life!
