Comfort Inn Cockatoo Hawthorne

... all the stars on the walk of fame. We eventually come across Michael Jacksons star , adorned with flowers. Apparently you couldn’t get near it weeks earlier. Sadly we also come across Patrick Swayze’s as he had only passed away days earlier.

It is getting hot so we decide to head back to our room and rest up. The rest of the day is spent with short trips out to the Highland Mall and back to the the strip.

Saturday, May 30th Joshua Tree, California Lots to catch up on!  Back to our last night at the Grand Canyon - we had a nice dinner out at the Bright Angel Lodge, then a sunset walk along the rim with the dogs.  Not a spectacular sunset, but good enough! Next morning, we headed out early, southeast towards Flagstaff.  Through scrub country and then through some lesser mountains down to Flagstaff, which is still at a fairly high elevation.  Walked around the downtown (in the ...

... lunch!), then a drive, at rush hour, back to Burbank airport. The drive was surprisingly easy ... definitely hit traffic, but got to the airport in plenty of time and was even able to get on the earlier flight. Paul had been working late, so I picked him up at BART, and we went to dinner at Uncle Yu's. Very good; very relaxing. I needed it to calm down, after a long day, no food, and a bad-news email (work related) that I picked up just before my flight.

... Dr Phil asked in his southern drawl "Now what the heck?" Brilliant. And that was the perfect end to our time in the US.    On January 22, we were up at 3am to drop the hire car off and check in for our early flight to Mexico. We had made the last-minute decision to head to Cuba and three flights and one overnight stay in a Mexican airport later and we were landing in ...

... of made mum watch it before we left, so she would understand. Baker is like the epitome of small town America, I think my fave moment was jumping out to have a cigarette at like 10pm only to realize the "street" (think more like row of trailers, with no wheels) that we had pulled into my as well have had a studio aside it to save Jerry Springer paying for all his guests to fly to his studio. Scary, but funny. We where some where around ...

... but we visited every casino along the Strip, had several excellent meals at some very good restaurants, and saw "Splash" and "Ka". "Ka" is by Circus Soleil and is a must for everyone who ever has the chance to see it. After another 5 days of fun we flew back to Los Angeles and the Hacienda Hotel. Before our flight back to Australia we went over to Marina Del Ray for a look. It was Halloween so we stayed for the party until we had to get back for our 14 hour flight to Oz.

... as the most unscary mansion ever is just that! Set in a beautiful New Orleans style home the main highlight was when we entered a pitch black room and 50 kids screamed in unison cos someone turned the lights out. In fact the ride was more amusing for being so bad and for the Spanish translations they put in for all the ghosts. I'm sorry but a Spanish accent just cannot sound scary and when you say something scary sounding in english, and then have it translated into Spanish ...

Well me and Al are hanging out at my brothers pad in LA having a few beers waiting to take off to LAX. Flight leaves in 5.5 hours and we are packed and ready to go. LAX to Taipei-Bangkok. Sounds like a pretty awful and boring flight, but we ...

... shots in Hong Kong and the film Psycho. The Studio Tour was brilliant -we drove past the set of the desperate Housewives film set - we have to be quite at this point as they were filming. In addition to this, we saw Jaws - he popped out of the water to taste us. We also took part in a staged film on the underground involving fire and an earthquake. I do not want to spoil things by going into too much detail - for all I know you may be jetting off to LA and ...

Sorry, I don't remember much of this trip. The area we were in is "The Valley." Ya know, like, valley girls. Like, oh my God! Day 1 (11-15-96) Spent the day hanging around Woodland Hills. Day 2 (11-16-96) Went to a California State University Northridge (CSUN) Football game. Day 3 (11-17-97) Drove home to San Diego.