This time we were flying from JFK airport in New York, which meant we needed to get the metro followed by the AirTrain into the airport. We didn't know that there was a charge for using the AirTrain until we arrived there... but there was no information about how much the AirTrain cost. We ended up wasting some money on New York metro cards, free to a good home if anyone's heading that way.

It then transpired that our flight to Minneapolis was delayed by two hours . We were assured that we would make our connecting flight to Los Angeles, even though this left before we were due to arrive. After another trip through the naked scanner (yuck) and a three hour flight, we found that the company was true to its word. We stepped off the flight in Minneapolis, went to the gate next door, and stepped onto our flight to LAX.

This was another four hour flight. We arrived in daylight in Los Angeles, but for us it was already past our bed time because of the time zone changes. We sought advice from an information desk in LAX airport and spoke to a lovely man who was about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and took a free shuttle bus to a bus station for onward connections into LA. Here, we were assured, there would be an information point and someone to ask about connections and buses. Such a thing did not exist. We tried to work out the buses from the posters available, but none went anywhere near our hotel and we had no information about connections. Eventually, we gave up, and resolved to get the metro instead. First, we had to get to the metro... which required a bus ride. This all took a long time but we eventually got the right bus, and got to the metro station. Phew.

Having purchased a metro card and topped up, and been delayed by a broken metro, we had to change lines twice to get to our stop. Four hours after arriving in LA, we made it to our hotel.

The hotel was great! It was the most reasonably priced of all USA hotels, barring Las Vegas, though unfortunately this was still expensive . It had a free comprehensive breakfast, two double beds, good en suite bathroom, swimming pool and gym. It was near the Hollywood area of LA. Los Angeles does not have a 'centre' but instead appears to be made up of several cities in a giant urban concrete sprawl. We were staying near Hollywood, with nearby metro connections which helped us to get around.

On Thursday 3rd, we spent some time planning before heading out to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This is the famous avenue of stars with people's names on. It was a long street, with another bisecting street also with stars and famous people's names. We saw lots of famous people's names who we knew, and a lot more we didn't. We don't know why but there seemed to be some repeats - Mickey Rooney's name came up four times. And we didn't even walk the whole thing.

On the way, we stopped into a distant viewpoint for the Hollywood sign. We then realised that it would occasionally appear through gaps in buildings, or at the end of roads, so we saw it a lot . On our walk, we stopped at the TCL Chinese Theatre, an old building and one of the oldest in the area. Here, there were a lot of touts on the streets and people in costumes, plus glitzy lights that smacked of Vegas and fakery.

The Chinese Theatre is renowned for film premieres, including Star Wars, and has hosted Academy Awards in the past. Outside the theatre there were people’s hand and footprints set in the concrete pavement, from stars such as Marilyn Monroe, the Harry Potter main characters and Arnold Schwarzenegger. We bought tickets to watch a film, Jurassic World, and went for a drink down the road until it started. When inside the Chinese Theatre, we took in the original costumes, such as Marilyn Monroe’s golden dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the decoration of the theatre.

The Jurassic World plot was a predictable Jurassic Park theme – here’s some dinosaurs we have under control, oh no we don’t, the dinosaurs are on the loose, oh no the children are in danger, some people die but not the main characters . It was dramatic and suitably gory. We emerged into daylight, checked out some more stars on the Walk of Fame, and ate good food at a vegan restaurant just a few doors away from our hotel.

On Friday 4th, we had a day off for rest and planning. It had been a pretty busy time and we felt the need for some downtime. The furthest we went was to the hotel swimming pool, where we had a lovely cooling swim.

On Saturday 5th, we took an hour long bus ride to Santa Monica beach and pier. We took a stroll along the pier, ate churros (it was nowhere near as good as in South America), dodged the crowds, and eyed up the rollercoaster. We decided to go for it – it was not as rickety as the one in San Diego and was disappointingly tame. Still, we had nice views over the beach and surrounding area from going on the ride, and decided to go for a walk along the busy beach. There were lots of people in the water but we hadn’t taken our swimmers, so enjoyed our stroll instead .

We took another long bus ride back to our hotel, walked up the road a little, and took a bus to the Griffith Observatory. This is a museum with telescopes, and features in many films, including the Terminator and Charlie’s Angels. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that entrance was free, so we wandered around and looked at the exhibits. These ranged from information about meteorites, to the cycles of the moon, to 'stand on these scales and see how much you weigh on pluto’. It was chock full of information and geeky astromony related stuff. Naturally, we loved it and took in as much as we could. We watched a twenty minute film featuring Leonard Nimoy on the history, renovations and exhibits of the observatory. We watched a Tesla coil in action. We didn’t watch a show in the planetarium due to a lack of time. We did go to the roof and joined a long queue, to see Saturn and its moons through a telescope that’s over 100 years old. That was really cool .

On Sunday 6th, we decided to go out with a glitzy bang from the USA and go to the expensive Universal Studios Hollywood. Unfortunately, it was a weekend and so it was extremely busy. The queues for the rides varied from 40 minutes to 75 minutes when we arrived. After queuing to queue to get into the place, this was a fairly depressing prospect.

As soon as we walked in, an employee asked if we wanted to fill out a 5 minute questionnaire for a front of line pass for the studio tour. Seeing as the line for this was 70 minutes, we said yes. It really was a 5 minute easy questionnaire, after which we walked through the thronging crowds to the studio tour, and stepped straight onto the front of a tour bus. Ideal.

This was a 50 minute tour, which took us past studios where TV shows are filmed (such as The Voice), a giant outdoor blue screen, and sets of fake buildings used in filming – including the clock tower from Back to the Future . The tour also included several rides. With 3D glasses on, we were immersed in a very impressive King Kong ride. We were taken inside a ‘subway’ where an earthquake happened, followed by flooding from the burst pipes – when the ceiling came down it was genuinely a little frightening. We had more flash flooding in the Wild West, a setting used in an Indiana Jones movie. We were spat at by dinosaurs from Jurassic Park and saw the vehicles used in the filming. We had another 3D ride in Fast and Furious which was fast and confusing. We saw the mechanical Jaws, which swam and jumped at our tour bus as we were passing over a low bridge. It was a great way to start the Universal Studios experience.

Next up was the Water World show. We managed not to get wet, despite sitting near the front, and enjoyed the action packed show, which consisted of lots of jumping into water, jet skis, guns, explosions, fist fighting, cocky talk and water splashing on the audience . There was even a plane crash. Next we went to see the Hollywood special effects show, and watched an audience member’s arm being cut off (not really), King Kong grab someone, how a blue screen works, how perspective shots work, and an astronaut ‘fly’ around the set. It was mildly entertaining and we were glad to get a late lunch and figure out our game plan, now that we had exhausted all of the minimal queuing options.

We decided to go to the Simpson’s ride, which had the least queuing time. Unfortunately for us, it went up from 35 minutes to 55 minutes just as we arrived. D’oh! Still, this had the shortest queue so we went for it. We were entertained by watching clips of Krusty the Klown being shown on all the screens, so it wasn’t a bad queue experience. The ride itself was in a simulator, and involved a lot of being thrown around, including by a giant radioactive Maggie. It was about 5 minutes long, and was good fun.

Singing, "Duff beer for me, Duff beer for you, I’ll have a Duff…" we headed off to our next ride, Jurassic Park . This was basically a log flume, and took a mere 35 minutes to reach the front, rather than the 55 minutes that we’d anticipated. We got very wet. Not only from the log flume, but also from the old dinosaur models spitting at us. This was a ride that had clearly been going for a few years and looked past it’s best.

Next we went to the Mummy ride, which took about 40 minutes to reach the front. This was a rollercoaster and it was a bit rubbish and quite short. Our final ride was the Transformers 3D ride, which only took about 20 minutes to reach the front, and was 3D but with a moving carriage as well. It was cleverly done, so that we couldn’t tell what was actual ‘set’ and what was 3D imagery. The theme was rescuing the ‘all spark’. It was action packed and good fun.

We hadn’t exhausted all of the rides, with a Minions ride and a ‘meet the famous animals’ area that we hadn’t been to. However, we had run out of time . By the time we’d finished on the Transformers ride, it was after 9pm, dark, and the place closed at 10pm. We watched a velociraptor animatronic do his thing, before heading out and back to the hotel for the night. It had been a long, hot, queue filled day and we were glad to get back to our quiet nice hotel.

On Monday 7^th, we packed up, checked out and got ready for our flight to the next destination and the start of our Asian adventure – Taiwan!


What can we say about the USA? Don’t go there if you’re on a budget. Seriously. It was impossible for us to survive with our budget, with the cost of hotels alone on some days being more than we had in our budget. It was a diverse country and has a huge amount to offer a traveller. It is also vast, taking hours just to cross California. New York was our highlight, with so much to see and do, and it afforded us a great place to get married. San Diego surprised us by being a good travelling destination . Las Vegas was pretty bizarre, but an experience. San Francisco was frustrating. The Grand Canyon was great, and on future travels we would do more of the vast array of national parks that the USA has to offer. Los Angeles was sometimes difficult to get around, and a bit characterless. It would appeal to people who really like films, TV shows and famous people – something that we enjoy but is not a passion of ours.

In general, the country is expensive, has fairly terrible customer service, has less of the gun culture than we feared (we saw more guns in Central America, by far), you have to pay to get your money out of cash machines, the television is sensationalist and fairly awful, and pre-booking things like accommodation is absolutely necessary. Countered against the fact that the country has so much to offer and wonderful sights to see, it’s quite a place. It was a great few weeks. New York is fantastic and we cannot recommend it enough as a great holiday destination. Just make sure you have plenty of cash.