Tag: cities

Los Angeles City Tour

Well I finally get to write my first blog post as Jon unfortunately wasn’t too well today and decided to miss our tour of LA to ensure he feels better for Vegas (we think it might have been something he ate at an outdoor bbq in Sonoma but fortunately he’s feeling a lot better tonight)

So today Jon#2 (more usually known as Dennis!) and I took a 5 1/2 hr bus tour of LA and Hollywood, going to the Hollywood Bowl, Kodak Theatre, Rodeo Drive and the Walk of Fame / Chinese Theatre among other sites.

LA was a lot more open and friendly than I was expecting, there is just a huge amount of space everywhere. I could also happily have spent hours on Rodeo Drive, (window shopping of course) so it was probably a good thing the tour only stopped there for 15 mins!

The most suprising part of the tour for me was realising that the Oscars red carpet and the Kodak Theatre entrance is part of a shopping mall with (among other shops, but this is my favourite) a “build-a-bear workshop” – they just cover everything in curtains for Oscar night!

Our plans for tomorrow are to put our lives in Dennis’ hands as he’s volunteered to drive to a few more sites around the city and the surrounding hills, as this is the man who hasn’t owned a car for several years, please wish us luck…

Hope everything is ok with everyone in London (especially Ealing by the looks of it) xx .

 

 

Seattle Subculture Tour

Our first day in Seattle today and we managed to cram a lot in (and I’m not just talking about the complimentary breakfast).

This morning started with a trip to the Seattle Center , a park and arts centre built for the 1962 “Century 21 Exposition”, which is home to the Space Needle (which we have’t been up yet, we’re saving it).

It’s also home to the EMP, “Experience Music Project” which, strangely, is both a music museum and a science fiction museum in one. The music section is home to exhibits about Seattle’s most famous exports (except maybe Microsoft), Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix and the science fiction museum is currently holding an interactive exhibit about Avatar. Strange combination but it kind of worked. The music lab also contained a lot of interactive exhibits and mini recording studios. I tried to teach Jen how to play the guitar but it wasn’t really working, not least because I don’t really know how to play the guitar.

Anyway, we then walked down to Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market , an indoor and outdoor farmers market since 1907. Alongside the fish and flower markets there’s an awful lot of tourist tat shops. It was interesting but we didn’t stay long.

In the afternoon we’d booked ourself onto the “Seattle Subculture Tour” , a bus tour taking in all the important “alternative” sites in Seattle. It was a really fun tour, although it wasn’t exactly on brief. It was pretty much a standard tour of the main sights in Seattle but there were only 4 of us booked on the bus so we pretty much got a personal tour with the guide. The tour stopped at Kurt Cobain’s house as well as “Kurt’s Bench” which has become a shrine to him over the years. We also got to hop off the bus and get some great views of Lake Washington, Bill Gate’s house (from a long way away!), Chinatown and Mount Ranier , which dominates the skyline wherever you are in Seattle, but looks great over the lake.

By the way, for any fans of Soundgarden out there, the monument Jen is leaning against in the photo is called the “Black Hole Sun”, which has a fairly famous song named after it .

 

 

Gangster Tours, Millenium Park and Fireworks

We had another fantastic day in Chicago today.

We started with a tour of Chicago’s gangster history with “Untouchable Tours” . Our excellent (and genuinely hilarious) tour guide talked to us about some of Chicago’s more famous mobsters such as Al Capone and John Dillinger whilst showing us some of the sights like the scene of the St. Valentines day massacre and some of their favourite hangouts in Little Italy and Downtown.

We then took a walk back through millenium park (finished 4 years late in 2004!) and got some good photos of the Cloud Gate (or “the bean” as the locals call it).

To complete our trip to Chicago we finished the night with a speedboat fireworks cruise. We were treated to a bit of Guns ‘n’ Roses as we bumped and splashed across the waves before the boat bought us back and stopped about 100m off of Navy Pier for us to watch the fireworks.

I’m going to miss Chicago, but we’re off on a cross-country trip tomorrow towards Yellowstone Park. It’s going to take us a few days to get there and we don’t have any hotels booked along the way so this is where the road trip starts in earnest. We’ll probably update the blog in a few days when we get there.

 

Hancock Observatory and Architecure Boat Tour

Today was a busy day (comparatively, I suppose).

We started by taking an architecture boat tour around the Chicago river . Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper and as you’ll see from the photos below, it’s full of them.

From the river we were able to see and learn about all of Chicago’s most famous buildings, including the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), the Trump Tower and the John Hancock Center .

Speaking of which, our next stop was the observatory at the top of the Hancock Center on the 94th floor . Apparently on a clear day you can see 4 states from the top of the tower, but it was getting a little bit cloudy by the time we got there and the light was fading. Still, we managed to get some pretty good shots of the skyline while we were up there.

We finished off the day with a trip to my favourite tacky American chain restaurant, “The Cheesecake Factory” . It’s not exactly upmarket but the cheesecake is amazing (I had the Reese’s Peanut Butter cake).

 

First Night in Chicago

We’ve arrived in Chicago and thought we’d spend our first night at Navy Pier .

It’s pretty much exactly as you’d expect, like a much bigger version of Brighton Pier, with an Imax cinema, theatre, ferris wheel etc. Very touristy, but we’re tourists.

Chicago is a beautiful city at night, the lights in the hundreds of skyscrapers really light up the sky. We’re here for 3 nights so hopefully I’ll get some better photos of the skyline before we leave.

A brief stay in Toronto

Another quick stop-off today in Toronto .

As with Montreal we haven’t got time to explore properly unfortunately as we’re making our way down to Detroit and Chicago , but we did quickly drive into the centre to get a few snaps of the CN Tower and a few of the Rogers Centre .

We’ll get more photos tomorrow hopefully as we’re off to Niagra Falls .

 

Montreal and Bonus Photos

We’ve only got one night in Montreal unfortunately and to be honest don’t have enough time to see the city properly. Our trip into Canada is only a quick one and seemed a better idea than travelling through the New York State countryside. Still, it’s nice to be here, however briefly.

I wasn’t sure what the mix between English speaking and French Canadians would be. Well, Montreal is pretty much 100% French speaking and I got a D in GCSE French so reading the signs and going out for a meal has been…. interesting…

We’re staying in a nice suburb called Longueuil which you can see in a few of the photos and we took a drive into Downtown Montreal, hence the slightly shaky photos taken from the car window.

We’ve also just taken some photos off Jen’s camera from the last few days, there’s a few extra ones from Mount Washington and some nice road trip photos from our drive through New Hampshire.

 

Boston Freedom Trail

I just wanted to post a few photos from today. We spent 3 hours learning about the history of Boston and US independence on the Boston Freedom Trail .

The photos won’t mean much to anyone who hasn’t been on the tour or read the history but it was a really interesting day learning about key figures in the revolution like Paul Revere and Samuel Adams , seeing sights like the USS Constitution and the Old South Meeting House and hearing about events such as the Boston Tea Party , Boston Massacre and the Battle of Bunker Hill .

We’re a little tired after doing 2.5 mile walking tour in the middle of a heatwave but it was great fun.

We’ve arrived in Boston

We arrived at Boston Logan airport at 7pm local time last night and our hotel had upgraded our room and put a bottle of champagne on ice for us (I’m liking this honeymoon business). Unfortunately our body clocks thought it was about 2am by the time we got settled and after a 7 hour flight we grabbed some food quickly and fell asleep.

Today we’re supposed to be getting a bit of work done and a bit of shopping for the trip but we had a bit of a walk around and checked out the harbour and Faneuil Hall Marketplace , so I thought I’d post up a few photos.

Tomorrow is independence day so we’ll be going to the Boston Pops concert and fireworks.