Breakfast wasn’t included at the Marina International Hotel so we decided to have an orange juice and banana from our store of food in the car. We then headed off on Route 1 up the coast, stopping off at the Malibu Inn for brunch of omelette. After eating we spent an hour sunbathing on the…

We left the Sandman Inn relatively early and hit the road for Santa Monica. We reached the Marina International Hotel in just under two hours and, despite being early for check in, they found us a room. We decided to walk around the marina to the tourist information office, which proved to be very uninformative.…

We woke to drizzle and so decided to drive down to the base of Morro rock, take a few pictures and then carry on towards Santa Barbara. On the way out of town we stopped for our first lot of gas – $29 worth after 300 miles. Next stop was Pismo Beach (photo below) where…

I handed over the car keys to Ady for today to give me a chance to see the scenery. First off we went back to Cannery Row to visit Monterey Bay aquarium, which lived up to its reputation as one of the US’s top attractions. There were massive tanks spanning the two floors that housed…

Getting out of San Francisco proved to be a challenge this morning due to the run. We went all the way across to Ocean Beach before seeing a way through. Given that we were detoured we decided to go the the supermarket that we saw yesterday to stock up on a few things for our…

After a good night’s sleep (thanks to herbal sleeping tablets and ear plugs!) we grabbed a bit of breakfast at the motel. We set off to walk to pier 33 for the Alcatraz trips, going via the crookedest street, which indeed is crooked. The trips to the rock were all sold out so we opted…

The Days Inn proved to be comfortable apart from the car alarm going off during the night! The hotel shuttle dropped us right at the airport terminal and we were through to departures very quickly. The flight left on time and arrived in San Francisco slightly ahead of schedule in just under 6 hours. We…

Thankfully mount lsajnrejecfnbajkd (I’m not sure of the spelling, but you know the one – wrong kind of ash…) didn’t affect us at all and we left and arrived on time on Delta flight 155. We were at the back of the plane and so at the back of the queue for immigration, which meant…