Hello everybody, this is our very last day of the holiday. Unfortunately the sun has let us down these last days and so the beautiful Highway number 1 was a bit grey. Still, we had some beautiful views on the Pacific and among the surfers who were enjoying the strong waves, we have seen seals swimming and jumping out of the water! That was really cool! I forgot to mention yesterday that we have seen a humming bird (I hope I got that right, in Dutch it is kolibri Pretty amazing as we saw it in the street, buzzing around some flowers, really close to us, but of course, before we realized what it was, it was already flying a few meters further! And I also forgot to mention that a few days ago, we managed to charm us out of a parking ticket ! We were two minutes late and the officer was already printing the ticket, but after talking a bit with him and brightening up his day with my glorious smile (ahum!) he ripped the paper and threw it away ! pheuw, it was very close, but I think he appreciated the chat (and probably also the feeling of power he had )
We had quite a boring breakfast at our motel and took off for the remaining kilometers to the airport of San Francisco. Somewhere along the line, the sun broke through and that was lovely, making the color of the ocean change suddenly from grey and gloomy to beautiful deep blue! Aaaaahhhh! How we will miss the sun!!We had lunch in a lovely little city called Half Moon Bay, unfortunately I am always very nervous when we are traveling coz you never know what can still pop up och duuuhh! To be this old already and still being a woos, guess Ill never learn Anyway, we enjoyed our lunch and then drove further to the airport where I quickly checked whether our bags were not too heavy and then returned the car.When I asked the lady what I could best do with the cooler, her entire face began to sparkle as if we had given her a fantastic gift, she said that the people cleaning the car, would be very happy with it, I guess she will volunteer for the cleaning today! As soon as we had turned our backs to her, she was heading for the car. Well, the cooler served us very well, so hopefully she will be happy with it too.
Oh, I nearly forgot, today, around noon, we passed the 4000 miles, (we delivered the car with 4070 miles being about 6600 km), and Marc has to take the honors for it, because he drove the car for the full three weeks!
And now this is it, we are waiting in the airport, there is no internet access, but I will post this as soon as we are at home. Our flight is still foreseen at the original hour, so lets cross our fingers and hope we will arrive safe and sound in Belgium again!!! To celebrate a great holiday, Ill have a G&T to start with in the planeBye for now ! xx
hello dears, for the second time in 3 full weeks, the sun has disappointed us. No sun today, it seems that she cannot get past the mountainridge that is near to the sea, because further inland we can see blue sky and sunshine, unfortunately not on our heads. We left Morro Bay, passed by Hearst Castle but did not visit it as the next visit was more than 1,5 hours later and we did not want to wait for such a long time, so we continued our drive along the shore. Lovely views, nice waves, and a viewpoint where we were supposed to see sea elephants...jahàà! If the animals we saw at the end of the beach, all over eachother were sea elephants, I must be Santa !! But it was nice to watch them (from quite a distance!) Back on the road again, we drove up to Carmel, the city where Clint Eastwood has been maire for a while. The guy surely knows how to pick 'em! The shopping street of Carmel Bay is lovely and reminded us of Knokke Le Zoute (for those who don't know where that is, it is a posh neighbourhood at the Belgian coast), the houses were lovely, the shops were cute ànd very expensive and so were the cars parked along the sideway, our poor Mazda was a bit of a misfit.... A very healthy chicken wrap with a cappuccino at a coffee shop was our lunch and it was delicious! But, as we had read in our guide that there was an outlet store close to Monterey , we did not explore Carmel more, which was actually a pity because the "Outlet stores" were a bunch of sad, depressing shops, with not much to be seen ! So no further clothes shopping for us . We have actually done very poorly, so no extra suitcases or bags have been bought, because all fits in our (already slightly heavy!!) backpacks ! And anyway, the money's gone, we will have to work hard to get our piggy out of its half coma again !!! So we made a stroll to Fisherman's Wharf where another bunch of sealions were wellcoming us with their loud barking (ask me when I'm back, I'm a good imitator!!! ), pelicans were cruising the shore and we have seen....drums, drums, theme from Jaws....real live otters frolicking around, one even caught a fish and the flapping of the fish on the water was as if the otter was applauding!! really cool!!! And now...the end is near, we have made the check in for our flights, will have a last night in a super Kingsize bed, and hopefully the sun will accompany us on our last miles towards San Francisco! This will most probably be my last blog on american soil. Dear readers, you all have a nice Saturday, will revert to you soon! big hug
Hello everybody! It is strange, but I think that all the angels are sitting on a thick cloud in their city, because it was the second night we woke up with a "closed" sky. After a refreshing breakfast at Starbucks and a goodbye hug to Christophe (Inès must have been still in their room) we set off towards San Francisco. But on our way we met....an outlet village!!!! No way we would miss the opportunity to shop here ! But my goodness, these outlet villages are huuuuuuge !! As we had a bit of a time pressure, we kind of "ran" through the village, ending in Marc bying a few jeans and myself buying some Nike running shoes. (I really hàve to get started doing some sports after this holiday, so I began with buying running shoes...ahum! let's see where thàt will end... ) Anyway, we drove past Santa Barbara and had a fabidu hamburger at In-N-Out, thank you Peter for the great tip!!! This is really a great hamburgerplace ! you only have 3 choices: hamburger, double burger, cheeseburger with REAL potatoes. All is very clean and vèèèèry good! Ju-hùùùm! Cannot be compared whatsoever with any of the other hamburger chains and is miles away from our nightmare at Burger King! We arrived at Morro Bay around 4 in the afternoon and went to see the Morro Rock. And it is so cute, there are pelicans flying here, sea lions making a LOT of noise (and smell! ) at the pier and the fishing boats are gently lying on the water.. this is a lovely place, nice, cute shops, nice restaurants, and gooooooood sea air, so we have decided to spend the night over here. We found a good Inn for 65$ so we were all happy and went for a walk in the one street this place has. There are very nice little shops with a lot of crap, but still nice to visit, we saw some sealions swimming in the bay and heard from a lady in the shop that there are dolphins to be seen (but you need binoculars, and what didn't we bring???) Oh and we had a superlovely, romantic dinner right next to the water: some really nice fish and a great Merlot, what else can a person want? Aaaahhhh...this is the life ! (Annelies and Didier, we are staying in the Bayview Inn in Harbour Street, www.bayviewinn.net, clean and tidy and cheap and dinner at The Galley, really, really good !) That was about all we did today, tomorrow we are heading further for the North. It is with a lot of pain in our hearts that we see our holiday coming to an end, but we will try to make the most of it still tomorrow ! TTFN and have a great day! xx
hello all, we are staying in West Hollywood, so not really in downtown LA. Just for those of you who would like to situate us a bit... Today we have been searching for an outlet store but so far, nothing found, we did find lots and lots of shops selling wigs, real hair, drag queen attributes like fake eyelashes, amazingly high shoes, strange and special (read: superspecial and kinky clothes/underwear ),... pretty amazing actually. To us Hollywood is more like a ghetto neighbourhood once you go to the sidestreets of Hollywood Boulevard. Of course, Beverly Hills is tidy and neat and very nice and rich, but the rest...not really too appealing for us. Anyway, we have visited Warner Bros today (and not Universal Studios as reported earlier) and it was sùper! We had a really great guide, Brad, who seemed to love what he was doing, who liked our questions and really tried to show us as much as possible. And we were in for a treat: we actually went into Central Perk from Friends !! We sat in the famous sofa! that was só cool! And we went into the museum, on the groundfloor were clothes and attributes of several movies: the Joker-masks worn by Heath Ledger, clothes from the Matrix, dresses, costumes, letters, notes...and the second floor was entirely dedicated to Harry Potter. Marc and I were "chosen" by the Magical Hat, I was Griffindor and Marc was Slytherin !! There were all kinds of attributes: Hagrid's coat, the broomstick, Hermione when she was petrified (and that doll really looked as if it was her !), the Dementors,... anyway, being Harry Potter-fans it was awesome! We also saw the outside of Central Perk, the house of Ross and Monica, when it was Prom-night and Rachel still had her old nose, we saw Jack's bar from the Gilmore Girls and ....tataratààà! we saw a real moviestar: a doctor from ER (don't know his name, but it is the young guy, quite goodlooking and definitely goodlooking in real life!!) WB has the only "jungle" in movieland, the "lagoon" is surprisingly small, yet many scenes have been taken there... it is all quite surreal, it all is so small, yet on TV it looks so real. We went into the hall of ER, there were two vending machines, except...they were just posters, but they looked so real ! And then we were put in front of a green screen and had to make "a move", later on it appeared that the Hogwarts Express was passing us... We really had good fun today ! Late afternoon Marc and I drove to Santa Monica, normally it would have taken about 20 minutes but due to the heavy traffic it took more than one hour. And the Pier really disappointed us, the beach was ok, with very high waves and a cool breeze! Nice ! But the trip back - again with very heavy traffic- made us come back on our earlier promise to have dinner at the beach. Instead we had a very nice dinner with Inès and Christophe, Annelies and Didier in an italian restaurant at the Farmer's Market. The evening went by too fast, but time flies when you're having fun, isn't it? Tomorrow we will be heading for the north again, slowly facing our last days in California. Good night all, have a good day and to be continued....
from a sleepy wild west town to the City of Angels
Gooood morning everybody!! I know, it is almost night again for you guys, but after typing our blog yesterday evening, it was gone ! By no means I could find it back, and I didn't have the courage to write it all over again. Anyway, we had a very early rise and left Williams at about 5:45 hrs for a more than 7 hours long trip to Los Angeles. For the first time on our tour, I also took the wheel. Ahum! A car with an "automatic" gear is a special thing if you are not used to it and it made the trip quite exciting! The closer we came to LA, the more it all looked like we were sticking our heads into an ant's nest ! wohow! Fortunately our "Truus" -> GPS showed us the way and in no time we were at our Best Western hotel close to Hollywood Boulevard and the Hollywood Bowl. After a quick shower we were ready to go. It is only a few minutes' walk to Hollywood Bld, and arriving there it is like a kind of déjà-vu with Las Vegas! We met Spiderman, Captain Jack Sparrow, the Thin man from Wizzard of Oz and I even think that there were two celebrities in front of the Chinese Theatre, two blond women (no, not Paris Hilton) surrounded by cameras, but they did not look familiar to us...Anyway, we had a look at the stars on the pavement, had a walk and then decided to take the hop on, hop off-bus again, who took us for a 2 hours-tour through Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I must say though that except for Beverly Hills, it all looks a bit "neglected", dunno how to explain it, but it cannot really charm us. We liked San Francisco a lot more. Of course, I must admit that sitting on the top of the double deck bus, I DID think that it would be lovely to be just extravagantly rich We had dinner at the Farmer's Market, a big semi covered, fresh vegetables and fruits market and there was also a superlovely Plaza with shops and restaurants and some singing and swinging fountains like at the Bellaggio's in Vegas. When driving back to the hotel we were in for a surprise: the parking ticket was only very cheap if you could prove that you had something at the Farmer's Market which we didn't as we had dinner in the Plaza, so our ticket for 2 hours of parking was 14$ !!!!!!!!! That is a straight rip off !! And we were quite pissed off too, but what could we do?! Anyway, today we will visit Universal Studios, there is so much to see here and we have so little time, but ok, one has to make choices... will report back tonight ! (if I'm not kicked out again!) Bye! xx
Howdy folks ! (we are in the Far West after all...) We found a very nice and cosy coffee house - The Java Circle- on Route 66 where we had a huge coffee and a muffin and we did some windowshopping in the city (ahum) center. Then it was time to leave for our appointment with ....a helicopter !!!! Yiehàà! The Grand Canyon is much to big to be seen from the Rim, so we dug deep into our pockets for an extraordinary experience ! Flying in a heli is one of the things figuring on our wish list and where can it better be done than at the Grand Canyon? Now, when being face to face with one of those machines, I wasn't all that courageous anymore and I almost regretted it, but that feeling was completely gone once we were airborne! Wohow!! Amazing! Fantastic! Fascinating ! The 30 minutes were too quickly over, but all good things come to an end and actually the 30 mins were enough to have an idea of how huge this all is ! After the flight we went again into the park for a stroll at the West Rim, but as Hermits Rest is closed for road construction, our walk came to an early end. And maybe for the best, because in the distance we could see a thunderstorm heading our way with a lot of wind, so we decided not to stay in the park but to go back to Williams. On our way back we have seen some marvellous lightnings! As this country is so spacious, you can really see the lightning going completely down, cool! Anyway, then we were treated for the first showers in our holiday, pooring rain ! And a temperature drop to half of what we are used to: 17°C, I guess that is about the average temperature now in Belgium, so we could get used to that again! The "city center" of Williams really is very cosy, but the junk they sell in some of the shops would in Belgium be sold on flee markets or garage sales ! But it was nice to just stroll around, meanwhile the sun was back which made it of course a lot nicer! As we did not have lunch (again) we decided to go for an early dinner at about 18:00 hrs, and again we went to McGillycuddy's restaurant (same as yesterday) where we had again mexican food and a superdelicious Margarita on the rocks ! And had a good look at the local geeks ! Amazing how some people dress up here, honestly, we saw a real life Buffalo Bill entering, a guy who looked like a doctor in an old Western movie and an entire "rariteitenkabinet" in a row. Hysterically funny sometimes, especially because these people are serious. Anyway, tomorrow morning we will have to get up really early because the trip to Los Angeles will take us about 6,5 hours (450 miles), so we need a good rest. Next time I'll be writing, we'll be in California again! Tatààààà!
PS: due to the WiFi being extrémely slow, we cannot add pictures, sorry...
gooood morning dears ! After a good night's rest and an ok breakfast , we first drove to Horseshoe Bend, to have a look at some beautiful meanders of the Colorado river, at the moment we were there, a speedboat was cruising the river, which made it even more special. After this, we headed for Antelope Canyon, as this is Navajo property and no national park we had to pay some entrance fee: 6$ per person, but on top of that we had to subscribe for the trip (25$ each!!) We had to wait for a while and then our names were called and we were all (14 of us) seated in a pickup truck. Our driver was Leroy, a Navajo and Charles Bronson lookalike! The trip alone was already an adventure as he had to manoever his car through loose sand ! Then we arrived at on of the highlights of our holiday: Upper Antelope Canyon! Waaaauw ! This is a slot canyon, and when the water whooshes through it, it leaves marks which look as if some textile is blowing in the wind, with the light coming from the top of the canyon, it gave some spectacular views ! Our camera's did not stop clicking and the Navajo lady (Charles' wife) was a great teller and sometimes she just took the camera out of our hands and took a wonderful picture herself. After our visit and a bumpy ride back to the parkinglot (temperature was 41°C there!!) we passed via Lake Powell and then we drove to Grand Canyon. We did not really know what to expect of it, we knew it was very touristic but in the end it was ok. The first view was overwhelming: it is soooo huge over here ! It cannot be compared with anything we saw so far. We took pictures here and there and then sought for a "sunset"-spot. Unfortunately the warm reds, pinks and purples are not really represented by our cameras ànd there were some clouds in the sky which ruined the light, but ok, you can't have it all, can you? For the night we found something really cute in Williams: The Canyon Motel, where you can sleep in a trainwagon if you like (and if you make your reservations a bit earlier than we did!) We have a cosy cottage, n° 7. Then we went for dinner in Williams City, which is great ! Time stand still here, and the city has two main streets which form a kind of loop as they are one way, but one of them is part of Route 66!! isn't that great?! What still amazes us is, that the people live in this kind of Disneyworld and that it is real life for them! Back home we would never imagine that something like this still exists in this era.. very strange, but interesting and amusing too! We like it ! Tomorrow we will stroll around in the city when we return from Grand Canyon. So dears, we have to hit the sack now, tomorrow will be a long day again ! TTFN !! (tata for now)
Italië 2024
 "Shocked"){kind=icon}
 "Wink"){kind=icon}
 "Crying or Very sad"){kind=icon}
 "Twisted Evil"){kind=icon}
 "Cool"){kind=icon}
hello dears, for the second time in 3 full weeks, the sun has disappointed us. No sun today, it seems that she cannot get past the mountainridge that is near to the sea, because further inland we can see blue sky and sunshine, unfortunately not on our heads. "Very Happy"){kind=icon}
 "Rolling Eyes"){kind=icon}
Hello everybody! It is strange, but I think that all the angels are sitting on a thick cloud in their city, because it was the second night we woke up with a "closed" sky. After a refreshing breakfast at Starbucks and a goodbye hug to Christophe (Inès must have been still in their room) we set off towards San Francisco. But on our way we met....an outlet village!!!! No way we would miss the opportunity to shop here ! But my goodness, these outlet villages are huuuuuuge !! As we had a bit of a time pressure, we kind of "ran" through the village, ending in Marc bying a few jeans and myself buying some Nike running shoes. (I really hàve to get started doing some sports after this holiday, so I began with buying running shoes...ahum! let's see where thàt will end... "Laughing"){kind=icon}
 "Confused"){kind=icon}
hello all, we are staying in West Hollywood, so not really in downtown LA. Just for those of you who would like to situate us a bit...
Gooood morning everybody!! I know, it is almost night again for you guys, but after typing our blog yesterday evening, it was gone ! By no means I could find it back, and I didn't have the courage to write it all over again.
Howdy folks ! (we are in the Far West after all...) We found a very nice and cosy coffee house - The Java Circle- on Route 66 where we had a huge coffee and a muffin and we did some windowshopping in the city (ahum) center. Then it was time to leave for our appointment with ....a helicopter !!!! Yiehàà! The Grand Canyon is much to big to be seen from the Rim, so we dug deep into our pockets for an extraordinary experience ! Flying in a heli is one of the things figuring on our wish list and where can it better be done than at the Grand Canyon? Now, when being face to face with one of those machines, I wasn't all that courageous anymore and I almost regretted it, but that feeling was completely gone once we were airborne! Wohow!! Amazing! Fantastic! Fascinating ! The 30 minutes were too quickly over, but all good things come to an end and actually the 30 mins were enough to have an idea of how huge this all is ! "Surprised"){kind=icon}
gooood morning dears ! After a good night's rest and an ok breakfast , we first drove to Horseshoe Bend, to have a look at some beautiful meanders of the Colorado river, at the moment we were there, a speedboat was cruising the river, which made it even more special. After this, we headed for Antelope Canyon, as this is Navajo property and no national park we had to pay some entrance fee: 6$ per person, but on top of that we had to subscribe for the trip (25$ each!!) We had to wait for a while and then our names were called and we were all (14 of us) seated in a pickup truck. Our driver was Leroy, a Navajo and Charles Bronson lookalike! The trip alone was already an adventure as he had to manoever his car through loose sand ! Then we arrived at on of the highlights of our holiday: Upper Antelope Canyon! Waaaauw ! This is a slot canyon, and when the water whooshes through it, it leaves marks which look as if some textile is blowing in the wind, with the light coming from the top of the canyon, it gave some spectacular views ! Our camera's did not stop clicking and the Navajo lady (Charles' wife) was a great teller and sometimes she just took the camera out of our hands and took a wonderful picture herself. After our visit and a bumpy ride back to the parkinglot (temperature was 41°C there!!) we passed via Lake Powell and then we drove to Grand Canyon. We did not really know what to expect of it, we knew it was very touristic but in the end it was ok. The first view was overwhelming: it is soooo huge over here ! It cannot be compared with anything we saw so far. We took pictures here and there and then sought for a "sunset"-spot. Unfortunately the warm reds, pinks and purples are not really represented by our cameras ànd there were some clouds in the sky which ruined the light, but ok, you can't have it all, can you?
