Drinking in L.A.

Just arrived in L.A. today (Emily’s Birthday), spending the night in a cheapy hotel place and picking up our campervan tomorrow, which we’ll have for the next couple of weeks.

Manhattan Beach, L.A.

Things have been great so far and seen some interesting places. Getting used to the long journeys now, which haven’t been all bad. Spent around 52 hours travelling across America so far and will be good to get our own wheels for a bit, and do our own thing. For a re-cap of that see the vid

Really hot in L.A. today, so decided to head to the beach to celebrate Emily's birthday and catch some long awaited sun.

Sunset Sangria

It’s been quite easy to get internet through free wireless services so far, which has been great – but that might change as we head out in our camper. Will try to keep in touch as best we can.

Arran

The Pit Stops

The last two stops on our trip - Kansas City and Santa Fe, New Mexico have been pit stops en route to LA, so both have been rather uneventful.
Kansas City was a funny place. It was very sparse and rather industrial. It wasn’t until we arrived in the city (and we had 10 hours to kill) that we found out the train station was the main tourist attraction! Don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice station equipped with a cafe, a self-playing grand piano (playing an eclectic mix of 2 Christmas song), a part time cinema and of course a tornado shelter...but you couldn’t spend more than an hour there. After a bit of walking along the main road you eventually arrive near a small cluster of pubs and restaurants called the Power and Light District (according to trip advisor this is the main place to go out and is meant to be hip part of town). We ended up going on a small pub crawl before deciding on a bar to settle in and watch a basketball game.

Kansas City

The overnight train to Santa Fe was a lot better than the Chicago one – it wasn’t as busy so we were allowed to leave our allocated seats and spread out a bit, having two seats to sleep on is a lot better (plus there were no chronic snorers this time!).
We spent most of the day hanging out in the observation deck of the train; saw some iconic scenery on the way to Lemy (our stop just before Santa Fe) like the Rocky Mountains!
 

Snowy New Mexico Desert

As the train didn’t go all the way to Santa Fe Amtrak arranged a connection bus for those travelling onwards. We got off at Lamy (a small town with a population of 120 people) and found another five people waiting for the bus. It turned out to be an old man with a jeep and a trailer at the back for our luggage. It was a bit like getting picked from the train by your Dad! It was good fun though, and the chap regaled the history of Santa Fe over the short 30 minute journey to our motel. Santa Fe is a lovely little town, apparently it’s great for skiing, really wish we had room to take our snowboarding gear!

En route to Santa Fe

Next stop LA, just in time for Emily’s birthday!

Arran & Emily

Chicago

They say you have to be super hard to stay in Chicago, because of the temperature extremes and I think they’re right...we spent a couple of wintery days in Chicago and I ended up wearing two hats!

It’s maybe not as cold as it is back in Scotland (I think it was about -1, both days) but it certainly was the windy city, which made the temperature a bit more extreme.
Sunday was our first day in the city. We arrived quite early in the morning after our 14 hour train journey. Although the train was comfortable, we didn’t actually get much sleep, mostly due to the John Candy like chap sitting in front of us – he sounded like he was snoring on behalf of everyone! When we got to the hostel we dumped our bags and headed out for the day. We spent the first day just taking in the architecture (some amazing buildings in Chicago) and the Christmas market.

The Wrigley Building

 The hostel was great. It was actually more like a guest house. It was located in the heart of Greek Town and run by a very smiley Greek guy and his family. It offered a really hearty complimentary breakfast which was a total surprise (I think a lot of blog postings from now on will include a note about the hostels and the quality of the breakfasts!).
Again it’s another city that you can walk around quite comfortably. We were going to use the EL train on our second day to get to the Lincoln Park Zoo, but decided to walk so we could take in some sights along the way. So glad we did. There were a couple of really nice (but extremely cold) beaches....they would be great in the summer months!

I’d say there are two main highlights from our time in Chicago – the first would be going up the John Hancock building (one of the largest buildings in the city) at night and getting amazing panoramic views of the city.

View from the 94th floor of the John Hancock building

And the second, would be eating a traditional Chicago town pizza. We went to a restaurant called Uno. It seemed to be the place to be for good pizza served by an elderly and hilarious waitress called Marta (who had worked there for 35 years). The restaurant was packed with locals and tourists...even though they warn you at the door that there will be an hour wait for food! It was well worth the wait (we actually only had to wait half an hour in the end) amazing pizza and lovely wine. We then stumbled home to the hostel for an early(ish) night – we had to be up early for our next train. 

Chicago Town Pizza

Next stop Kansas City where it’s apparently -7, I think I’ll keep my hats on.

Emily