Catching Up

Why are we waiting
England football team 2007!

Well, we've been here 5 days and I haven't done a thing about the blog.
We've had all sorts of technical hitches since we arrived which has meant that time for blogging has been zero.
Here's a quick precis of what's happened to date.

Day 1. Weds
Arrived early evening after a long flight but a surprisingly quick turnaround through Los Angeles airport. Strangest flight ever in one way. Less than 10% of the passengers were female.
The plane was full of Ricky Hatton fans on their way to Las Vegas for the fight. All well behaved though. Shame about the result.
Booked into an airport hotel which we had booked online. Looked dodgy from the outside but was surprisingly good. Best Western Airpark at LAX if anyone wants a recommendation.

Day 2. Thurs
Picked the car up from the rental company who were surprised to find that we had booked for 62 days as their max rental period is 28 days. No problem though and they gave us a brand new Dodge Avenger to look after. I omitted to tell them that I re-arranged the front end of the last car I rented out here.
Went off to find our hotel in Eagle Rock (actually we left the 'finding' bit to Kate who is the lovely lady who lives in our SatNav and knows her way everywhere).
Booked in with no problems and once again our blind guess from the 'net had come up trumps. (We did look on 'Trip Advisor' to see what other people thought of it before we booked)
After we'd unpacked we legged off to La Crescenta to see our dear friends Nancy & Michael (photo later). It was so nice to be back with them again and catching up took a long time.
Early night that night as we had still not acclimated.

Day3. Friday
Not much happened today as we are still settling in. Spent some more time 'chillin' with Nancy and Michael.

Day 4. Saturday
Retail therapy day. Went to the Citadel outlet mall which was just as disappointing as the last time we went. Got a new SIM card for Val's phone as her Vodaphone one wouldn't pick up a signal unlike my O2 card which worked great.
Went to a Barbershop show in Fullerton which is in Orange county. According to the satnav it should have taken us 45 minutes so we gave ourselves a 30 minute buffer on top of this and arrived 10 minutes late! Highway I5 was a nightmare; 6 lanes of solid traffic moving at 25 mph!
They didn't wait for us to start either!
It was a 'cabaret' dinner with singing waiters and a show to follow.
Great format and a brilliant money-spinner.
Here's the figures:-
35 tables with eight at a table paying $25 a head. I make that $7,000 for one night BUT, they had already done one on the Friday and another on the Saturday afternoon!!!
See what I mean about a money-spinner?
They did a great job with the show too.
First half was all Christmassy and the second half was all done in Hawaiian shirts and some wonderful parody/comedy numbers.
All ending up with a hilarious rendition of the 12 days of Christmas.
Great night. Cheers guys.

Day 5. Sunday
We spent the morning looking for a hotel to return to after our trip up north.
Found a few possibilities on the 'net but after looking at the first one in Pasadena we didn't bother looking at the rest it was so nice.
We left the car at the hotel and had a good wander round the area and ended up in the supermarket across the street from the hotel. 'Whole Foods' it's called and it's the most wonderful food-store we've ever been in. Everything is organic, sustainable etc. etc. but it just looks so wonderful. We took some photos with our phones and if I can ever work out how to upload them to my laptop, I'll post them here.
All around the shop are eating areas where you can find almost anything. The guy behind the fish counter for example told us that if we bought a piece of fish from him, he would cook it for us to eat there at no extra charge.
I'd almost decided on having lunch there when Val discovered a 'freebies' queue. They were giving away samples of their cheeses from around the world and you could take a plate and help yourself to any of a dozen different varieties. They also had bread, crackers, salad and coffee to go with it! Needless to say we tried them all.
Further along at the meat counter they had huge plates of Prime Rib and Peppered steak samples which followed the cheeses down the hatch. By this time Val had filled up so she was passing her samples on to me! Just when I'd reached saturation point another nice young girl was giving away samples of Irish Ham to try. I thought she might be offended if I refused so I waded in again.
It was about this time that I realised that I didn't really want lunch after all
We're certainly looking forward to going back there!
After lunch we went back to Nancy & Michael's and met up with some more old friends, Jane & Bob who had us in fits of laughter as usual.
On our way home we went through Montrose to see the lights. The town council/traders do a wonderful job of lighting the high street as you'll see when we go back to take some pictures.

Day 6. Monday
We're up to date now.
We left LA this morning and have travelled north on our way to Santa Rosa.
For the first leg we have come as far as Mariposa which is on the edge of Yosemite National Park and also on SR 49 which is the scene of the California gold rush in 1849.
Most of the day was spent travelling but tomorrow we will take a more leisurely ride up 49 to view the attractions.
Catch you later.