Las Vegas and San Diego

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Trip Start Jan 25, 2008 Previous
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  Los Angeles, California, United States
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Hello, I told you they might be more frequent, I need to do a bit of catching up! Anyway we left flagstaff by car and headed to vegas. It was actually not that hard as there is only really one road to get there so once we got on it it was easy but its long and straight and very boring so was finding it hard to stay focused (got very excited when I could see a corner in the distance) but the day before we had bought an adapter to let us listen to our ipods in the car so just had the music up loud. On the drive there though you go over the hoover dam so that was pretty cool although the traffic there was crazy cause everyone drives over it so slowly but we didn't want to pay for parking so kev just jumped out while I was going slow and took a few snaps and jumped back in. they are building a new bridge over it now though and it is huge, it is so high as well iv no idea how they are going to finish it as they have only done either side but it'll be very cool once finished. So once we got into las vegas itself we found our hotel relatively easily

All the traffic trying to get from mexico into USA

. As im sure you know all the hotels have there themes and ours was called the sahara and was supposed to look kind of deserty but just looked bit naff like most of the ones we seen. Anyway it was cheap and three stars and compared to the hostels we had been in it was luxury. So we arrived there around 5pm and had a lie around as was tired from driving which was a new thing for me. Then we headed out for a wander around and started walking down the strip after about ten minutes of walking I thought "why don't we take the car" as we only had the car till tomorrow so after a 2 second discussion we decided the car was the better option (not for the environment I suppose but if you have never been to vegas the strip is a lot bigger than you think and I wasn't walking it all, although did several times once I gave the car back) but also I quite fancied driving along it and it was pretty good fun although probably the most distracted iv ever been driving as everywhere you look there are flashing lights and stuff going on so I was struggling to keep my eyes on the road but I managed. I also managed to get a bit lost in what appeared to be a bit more of a dodgier part of town but luckily retraced our steps and got back on to the main strip. By this time it was pretty late and we hadn't eaten so went back to the hotel and signed up for their reward card type thing which by doing nothing gave us an all you can eat buffet for $6.99 and I made sure I got my moneys worth. Kev wasn't to keen but I thought the food was pretty good ( at least what I expected for the equivilant of £3.50.) and in a city that seems to give you nothing for free I thought that was a pretty good deal

Bit of a close up sorry, the strips behind me

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The next day we had to return the car by 10am at the airport so that took some more navigating but got there just in time even though as I was just about to pull in I realised I hadn't filled the tank up with petrol so had to rush and find a petrol station. Anyway once back at the hotel we thought we would check out the strip during the day and wandered down and went into a load of shops were I finally found some trainers much to kevs relief as I think he was getting a bit tired of me checking out every shop with trainers in it so far on the trip. at night after another visit to the buffet and feeling very full we went back down onto the strip to see it at night and it is pretty impressive in its own strange way. Lights and people everywhere. We walked about in a lot of the big hotels that we had heard of like the MGM Grand, Caesars Palace, New York, New York and the Bellagio. It's a bit strange that the main sights are hotels but they put things on like a bit water show outside the Bellagio and a pirate show thing outside Treasure island.
The next day we took it pretty easy (not that haven't been for the last 6 weeks) and just hung about and at night headed up a hotel called the stratosphere which is a massive tower and you get great views of the city. Also they have rides up there but once we got up there there was no way I was getting on them, one of them is a mini roller coaster which is a straight line tilted over the edge and you go really fast and it stops you right at the end of the track hanging 20 feet over the edge

Bridge being built over the dam

. The tower must be 400 feet high maybe. Not for me thank you!

Anyway the next day we were due to head to San Diego and for the first time we had to get a greyhound bus which was going to take about 7 hours and actually went relatively quick, this was to LA and we got a train to San Diego. We arrived at the hostel around 11pm and after staying up for a bit chatting to other people staying there we went to bed eventually. Once we got up we realised how good our hostel was as it was litterally on the beach and according to some of the guys we spoke to there it had only just started to get hot and it was really hot. It had a bit of a reputation of a party hostel and the fact it was on the beach we didn't really do much interms of leaving the hostel or the surrounding area ( so even though we stayed there the longest of all our destinations and it was one of the best places we we have been to theres probably not that much of interest for you the reader to read about) . On Saturday we attempted to get a repeat of the rugby in the afternoon as we didn't get up in the morning to catch the games live( scotland game was on at about 7am) we went into town with a welsh guy from the hostel who had a car luckily cause it was a fair distance to downtown. Unfortunatly we couldn't find anywhere to show the game but it gave us a good chance to look around town which is very nice.

Driving on the strip

We were actually due to leave on Sunday but decided we would add an extra day and leave on the Monday, then when Monday came we decided that we might stay until wednesday instead (there were guys there that arrived last august and still hadn't left, but i don't think i met anyone there that had stayed the time they were ment to it was always "one more day", it was that kind of place) MOnday we went into town again with this welsh guy again (Martin) and booked our trains/buses to San Francisco. Also had a wander around town but it was really hot that day so walking around was kept to a minimum.
The next day was one of the reasons that we had decided to stay the extra days as they did a day trip to Tijuana, Mexico. So one of the guys that works there, Chaz, took a bus full of us (about 18) to Tijuana. We stopped and paked in the US and then walked through the border. He does this tour every week so knew everywhere good to go and took us to lots of various bars and we got some pretty cheap and very tasty food (one place did the best tacos i'v ever had). We also walked around in a lot of small markets, unfortunatly it had quite a bit of poverty though and we had like 4-5 year old kids tugging on us and trying to sell anything they could get there hands on. Overall very good trip though and glad we stayed for it. As we had booked to stay in the hostel longer they had to put us in the common room which unfortunatly people were hanging about in till about 3am and we had to catch the train at 7am so we had about 2 and a half hours sleep or so and had to get a taxi which we booked in plenty of time but it still managed to be late. So this ment we missed our train. At first this was pretty annoying but we got a train an hour later and it actually managed to get us up to San Fran about 3 hours earlier! Strange but good for us. Anyway will leave it there again and will speak to you soon, thankyou again for reading, px

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Me on the strip and sporting a pretty cool top too	Me with a snake	On the deck	On top of the Stratosphere
View from the deck of the hostel	View of beach from deck	Water show outside The Bellagio

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