Photo Taken: 30th October 2007
Photo Location: Beverly Centre, Los Angeles, California
In 2007 we holidayed in the USA, staying in Los Angeles around Halloween.
This photo was taken at the California Pizza Kitchen, at the Beverly Centre. According to their site, the California Pizza Kitchen (http://www.cpk.com) serves “Authentic California-style cuisine at all CPK locations. Try our innovative pizzas, distinctive pastas, salads, soups, appetizers and desserts.” According to me, they serve good, inexpensive food.
I’m not sure what was happening in this photo, but it looks like Jackson was getting a smack, which he certainly would not have been.
Hooray, finally the big day was here… After ages counting down to it, there were no more sleeps! Jackson was very excited to have had Santa come visit & Kylie and I were excited that we were on holidays!
The plan for the day was to travel from Brisbane to Los Angeles (depart 12pm) and then have a short stop in Los Angeles before flying to Las Vegas. Once in Las Vegas we’d transfer to the hotel and kick off the holidays. I’m glad to report things went pretty much to plan…..
Best change of the day was the upgrade V Australia (web www.vaustralia.com twitter @vaustralia) gave us for the flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. We were booked in Premium Economy, but to get upgraded to Business Class was aewsome. The seats lay all the way down to beds….. freaking awesome!
This is the view of the roof, when you’ve got the bed kicked right out and you’re stretched out… ah, nice! (Is that the Southern Cross?)
Our transfer through Los Angeles was fairly uneventful, the flight was delayed about an hour and we ended up sitting around in LAX for about 4 hours…. seriously, could they make that airport any more boring? People were pretty stressed about being at the airport, one lady who was in front of us was evidently going to miss her flight home on Christmas Day and was pretty upset. The whole check-in, then clear security thing in the states is pretty stressful, you have to unpack electronics from your carry-on, undress yourself (of belts, shoes, jackets, hats and anything else metallic), clear security and then grap all your crap on the secured side and get out of the way of everyone going through security as quickly as possible… Even with all the security you hear stories about Nigerians trying to blow up planes on the day you’re travelling… -> link to the story. The TSA do a great job, I’m sure but it’s still disconcerting to see those type of stories.
Probably the most interesting stat / piece of info about our stay in Los Angeles was that we had to line up for nearly as long to clear security as our flight was from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Seriously….. this photo doesnt do it justice, but the line up to clear security goes for a long way outside the terminal. This isnt the line to check in, this is the line AFTER checking in, to clear security…
So, we’re now in Las Vegas and we’re staying at the Palazzo (www.palazzolasvegas.com & @PALAZZOLASVEGAS. This is a very nice hotel, good choice – thanks tripadvisor! We stay here until the 30th of December and then switch over to the Signature MGM. We arrived at the hotel but our room wasnt quite ready when we arrived, but we were told we had a great room with a great view of the strip, up nice and high (41st floor) and was just what we’d requested. So, we said we’d wait and went for a bit of a walk and had lunch. Around 3pm we checked back at reception if our room was ready and we’d been swapped to a different room on a lower floor, but after some “discussion” we were moved up to a great room on the 31st floor… It’s great!
We didnt do too much after lunch and checking in….. unpacked and rested. Fell asleep pretty early, though I woke up after a couple of hours sleep thinking it was morning, so have uploaded some piccies and types up this quick update. It’s now approaching 1am on the 26th, so I am going back to bed now & that ends the 29 hour Christmas day, which included travelling nearly 12,000 kilometre’s, a lot of time spent in planes / airports and two christmas breakfasts & lunches….
We’ve started planning our holiday at the end of the year. We’ll be heading back stateside for some New Years fun in Las Vegas and then skiing Telluride with Kim and Ian for a few weeks. I’m not going to say this will be our last trip to the states, I’m pretty sure we’ve said that the last couple of times now . Instead, I’ll say it’ll be our last trip there for 2009 / 2010….
Our plans are to be in Vegas for just over a week and then, early in the new year we’ll head to Telluride, CO, for a few weeks. Already, we’re very much looking forward to getting back to a couple of our favourite places.
Jackson is turned off by the long flights of the plane with the kangaroo on it and Kylie and I were turned off by the large price difference between QANTAS and V Australia on the dates we’re travelling. Of course, Kylie and I realise that the flight is the same length, but as least it will help get Jackson on the plane if he knows we’re not flying QANTAS.
This morning I was looking at the V Australia YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/flyVAustralia) and saw their safety video, which is embedded below
Jackson enjoyed the video, especially the bit with the dad having the oxygen mask on. Congrats to the V Australia team on an entertaining approach to the production of a safety video.
We spent 6 nights in Hawaii, which was the last leg of our 6 week long holiday in the USA. Hawaii is a great stop on the way from the USA to AUS, breaking up the 14 hour flight home. In a story which will be shared later, our attempt to circumvent the high baggage fees US airlines charge we upgraded to Business Class for the flight from Montrose (Telluride) to Hawaii…. the plan was foiled, but the upgrade was nice.
Kylie’s Mum and Dad joined us in Hawaii. We hope they had a great time, it was nice to have them join us.
Highlights of Hawaii ?
* The drive around the island * Taking a submarine ride off Waikiki, to the depth of 100 feet * Visiting shops like WalMart and seeing fireworks on sale * Yummy food & Honolulu Coffee Company coffee * Jackson playing on the beach
Here’s a slideshow of pictures, which includes captions & info
This weekend I’ve worked my way through another big chunk of the 2,600 or whatever photos we took and have now picked out my favs from the Disney Cruise.
Click this link to see a nice big slideshow (you know you want too!)
Some of my favs from this lot: Photographic evidence of Jackson having a doughnut for breakfast The shots of Kylie and I’s toes with the Caribbean waters in the background The price of water vs beer in the Caribbean
For some reason, in spite of me knowing full well Yogi was from JellyStone National Park, whenever I think of Yosemite National Park, I think of that great Yogi Bear line “Smarter than the average bear booboo….”
I can’t explain how beautiful the Yosemite National Park is. This pictures do go part the way to showing you and I’m glad we did get a couple of great shots to share.
The tour to the Yosemite NP was a long day, we were up and getting ready at about 5am and we didnt get home until about 15 hours later. But, it was worth it.
We saw waterfalls – BIG waterfalls, beautiful granite cliff faces, dense forest, hiked to huge sequioa trees, stopped at magnificent look outs and had a lovely pickernick lunch by a creek.
A top day – worth the 6 hours travel on a bud for sure!
Click this link for the big slideshow with the cqptions and descriptions:
One of my 2009 goals is to make sure that I do get the photos from our 2008 visit to the USA up onto the information super-highway and share them with family, friends and anyone else who wants to take a look-and-see.
We took 2,183 photos while we were away. Not anywhere near all of them are good, but there are some great ones. The plan is to get them all tagged in an orderly manner and sorted into sets on flickr and then post slideshows here on the blog. I’m then going to pick 42 photos (1 for each day we were away) and put them into a slideshow.
After that’s all done, I can start on 07’s trip…..
Without further delay, here’s some happy snaps from the Napa Valley!
You will get a better view and captions / descriptions if you click this link
I have also set these up like a slideshow, press play to activate and then the left and right keys to scroll through the photos. But, it would be better if you clicked the link above as the slideshow below does not have captions or descriptions…..
We had a great day out there. Thanks Rick from Blue Heron Tours for his hospitality on the day.
This update is being written from Row 48 of QF4 heading from Honolulu International Airport to Sydney. I’m glad to be heading home and am looking forward to unpacking all this stuff we’ve accumulated and having a week off at Casa del Chambers in downtown Wakerley before getting back to work.
I eventually got around to posting this note just now…
Hawaii was a very different kind of part of our holiday. One of the great things about such a long holiday is the many different types of places we visit and many different things we get to do. We also enjoy very different types of holidays within our holiday, in some way we had six holidays in one! Some of the Americans we met on our holiday were amazed at all the stuff we were doing. There’s a great stat about how few Americans own a passport. It’s in the single digits of percentage of the total population which own a passport. There’s a line there about them thinking that they are the centre of the world and the world doesn’t actually exist beyond their boundaries, but I won’t use it. I saw an even more interesting stat which reflected on how few Americans actually leave their own home state. If we didn’t know before, we sure realise now how lucky we are to enjoy such an amazing holiday and see such wonderful things!
As I mentioned, Hawaii was very different to the other parts of our holiday. In a laid back and warm way, it was great. We were joined in Hawaii by Kylie’s mum and dad for the six nights we were going to be there. They had been in Hawaii for a few days before we arrived, including being there for Christmas. It was great to see them.
We didn’t have an awful lot planned for Hawaii, except to have a car for three of the days we were in town and go for a drive around the island and see the sights.
On our first day we did a loop around the island, which took us to the “dole” (pineapple) plantation (think the Big Pineapple, but bigger and more Japanese), we went up to the North Shore for a walk on the beach and lunch and drove back down the coast of the island through Sunset and Waimea (sp?) Beaches.
Our second day Kylie, Big Al (Kylie’s dad) and I went for some retail therapy at a couple of the island’s biggest shopping centres. Kylie’s mum and Jackson went to the Zoo and beach. The third day we went for another drive, visiting Wal Mart, Home Depot (a hardware store like Bunnings) and Best Buy.
The other days we just hung out in the apartment and relaxed and relaxed.
We went to a Teppanyaki restaurant one night. Jackson’s been to Teppanyaki a couple of times, but it was mum and dad’s first time. It was very funny, despite Jackson being a bit tired, he sparked up once the chef started flicking knives around and smacking the hot plate with the salt shakers. Mum and dad were entertained by “Barry”, who was our chef, though Mum was very warry of the things Barry was throwing around and looked like she half expected the night to end with her having a lump on her head from a stray pepper shaker. Barry told some very corny jokes, showed great flair at the grill and generally entertained us and cooked a mean meal too.
The other highlight would have to have been “Senor Frogs, which served Mexican fare. The food wasn’t the highlight, though the Fajitas were pretty good. Big Al taking a shot of some type of alcoholic concoction from a drum banging, whistle blowing congo line of restaurant staff was very funny. I had the camera at the ready and snapped a shot of Al mid-gulp and put it straight up on to facebook.
Kylie and Jackson went to the beach a couple of times, but I didn’t set foot on the Waikiki beach once… just wasn’t in the mood for it.
We’ve got lots of photos and I plan on spending at least a little bit of the eek off in getting them all uploaded and into some slideshows and then posted to the blog. I’ll send out an email with some of the pics uploaded.
It’s been fun writing about some of the things we’ve been up too and I plan on using the momentum built up to continue writing updates here throughout the year.
Telluride has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. It just has to be! Set in a box canyon at the bottom of two rather large mountains this small town is a beautiful place to stop and spend time. In fact, by the end of the week we were wishing we could stay longer (though the warmth of Hawaii did beckon loudly)!
We had such a great time in Telluride. We were joined by friends, Kim and Ian from Boston, for a week which included my birthday and Christmas. A white Christmas! We enjoyed our week there so much and thank Kimmy and Ian for coming over to spend the week with us. Jackson loves hanging out with them and likes to joke with Ian about how silly he is.
What did we get up too? Well, the pace was not equal to the frenetic pace of our time in New York nor was it as relaxing as our time on the cruise. It was a week of fun in the snow, with a dose of good company, food and skiing thrown in.
To get there we had to get up and leave Disney World nice and early (5am) and fly from Orlando to Denver before transferring to a smaller flight into Montrose and then taking an hour and a half car ride to Telluride. It ended up being a day of about 14 hours of travelling…. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got into the car, so we missed out on the “spectacularness” of the scenery on the drive, though this meant we woke up the next morning having never seen the beautiful views and surrounding area of Telluride and we got a lovely surprise of magnificent scenery from the place we were staying when we woke up the next morning.
We hired a “condo” for the week, which had three bedrooms set over a couple of “floors”. Jackson was very proud to have the best room in the house, which was a loft like room. The condo was in a great location, right near the “Galloping Goose” bus stop (PUBLIC TRANSPORT!) which is a free bus which does loops of the town area. The condo was also in very easy striking distance of the main street, restaurants, the grocery store and the gondola / ski lifts.
Skiing-wise, Kylie and I had bought a cross trainer a couple of months ago to help us get into shape. The thing is hated by us both and received little use in the development of the athletic specimens we are . Though I am sure both Kylie and I have every intention of using it through 2009 to get fit and ready for the next time we go skiing and the spiders who’ve made their home webs there will be very mad to get kicked off.
We didn’t let our poor fitness levels get in the way of some good skiing. The skiing was great, with Telluride offering a good range of runs for the varied skiing capability we have. Ian looked resplendent in his 1980’s Navy Blue one-piece ski suit and took a couple runs down black rated (harder) slopes, which he managed spectacularly, even managing to put a call in to us from his mobile phone in the condo as he started the run and half way down the slope so we could sit in the condo and watch him. True story! Kimmy mastered the beginners run, while I (Chris) got reasonably comfortable on the easier runs and even managed to work up to a few runs down the blue (intermediate) slopes, while Kylie managed a view runs down the beginner run.
Jackson didn’t enjoy the kids ski school too much unfortunately. We’d heard really great things about the ski school, but it seemed as though they were still working their way through some early in the season bugs and were a little disorganised. We had organised a lesson for us and left Jackson at the kids ski school, I think next time we’ll bring him along to the lesson and Kylie and he can learn and then we’ll meet up after the lesson and ski together.
Christmas day was a real hoot! Even though we have grown up with hot Christmas days, there was something very natural about being in a cold environment for Christmas.
We’d had organised for a Christmas tree to be in the condo and convinced Jackson that Santa would leave him a present or two under the tree for when he woke up Christmas Day. We convinced him by telling Jackson that Santa has a really big Google map with the Christmas Eve location of every kid in the world on it. The kids location is even marked with an information box for each kid with vital information about that child, including age, favourite toys, Christmas gift requests and of course the information box is coloured green or red to let Santa know if that child has been naughty or nice. Classic.
Jackson woke at a reasonable hour and came to tell us it was time to get up and open presents. We went downstairs and sure enough Santa had found Jackson in Telluride and left a bounty of good presents for him.
After the present session we made a snowman, complete with chocolate eyes and a carrot nose! A pretty good snowman apparently as the next day we saw a family stop to get their photo taken with him. Christmas lunch was a traditional Americano affair (burgers and chips) and then we had a rest in the condo before dinner.
Kylie managed to sneak in some shopping (of course).
Kim and Ian shouted me to a beautiful birthday dinner (thanks again team). I had a shrimp and calamari appetizer which had a few slices of deep fried lemon and lime – delicious! My desert even got served up with a candle…. Cosmopolitan is a nice restaurant if you’re ever in Telluride.
There was a lot of snow while we were there. The previous December snowfall record was 93 inches of snow, which was last year. This December they’ve already had 100 inches by the 26th! There was lots of lovely powdery snow for us to enjoy skiing on. Just in the week we were there they had a lot of snow, including a pretty bad blizzard.
On our last morning it was minus 9 degrees fahrenheit, which is about minus 20 degrees celsius! Yep, minus 20 celsius….
I hope the photos we have do the beauty of this place justice. Lots more photos to come
We’re now in Hawaii and have met up up with Kylie’s mum and dad for a week before flying home. It’s nice to thaw out and see more white powder (on a beach this time!).
We’ve settled in to Telluride quite nicely. On Saturday we were up nice and early for the coach transfer to the Orlando Airport for our flight to Denver, then another little flight on to Montrose, for a 1.5 hour transfer to Telluride. The driver of the car we had transferring us was Don. Don is coming to Australia for his second honeymoon next year and I made sure to let him know Queensland is THE place to be seen in Australia (wonder if that makes part of this trip a tax deduction now?). After being up and at ‘em at 5am we arrived at the condo in Telluride at a little after 630pm local time (2 hours time difference).
The condo is beautiful and has a great view of one of the ski slopes, lots of snow, big beautiful snow capped mountains and is pretty well located.
We had our first full day here yesterday and we took it very easy, no skiing yet. We went for a ride on the free gondola which goes up to the mountain village and had a look around, Jackson had a play in the snow and made snowballs and jumped in the snow, we had an afternoon rest, then went back up to the village and got fitted out for our skis and boots, Jackson had a go on a trampoline / trapeze thing (which he loved & I have a video of) and then out for dinner at a Thai restaurant (Jackson fell asleep).
We’ve run into a few Australians working here already. Apparently Tom Cruise is in town (I think his wife is stalking me).
Here’s a slideshow of some of the photos we took yesterday:
Here’s a video of Jackson trying out for a life in the circus. Aplogies it is sideways, just crane your neck for 60 seconds….
. Instead, I’ll say it’ll be our last trip there for 2009 / 2010….
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