Team America!

The USA was always going to be the final leg of the trip. We had originally planned to spend a few months travelling around both the USA and Canada before finally heading over to the Grand Canyon in December for our rafting adventure. The realities of living out of rucksacks day to day, changing accommodation every couple of days and the nagging feeling that we both had achieved much of what we set out to do, caused us to radically alter our plans and we decided to return home after 6 months had elapsed. 

This left us with 20 days to see the USA! We decided upon the following itinerary: LA and Disneyland followed by 4th July in San Francisco then onto Washington DC and finally to New York where our flight home is waiting.

LA and Disney

We stayed not far from Disneyland, and bought a 2 day pass to the parks (Magic Kingdom and California Adventure). As you can imagine the place was packed but a good time was had. In the end we both decided that although the California adventure park had bigger more exciting rides, the Magic Kingdom was actually a better place to be. The thing that Disney theme parks do better than anywhere else is create cool interesting environments, highlights being the Cars ride at California adventure (they created a huge looking desert canyon), The Pirates of the Caribbean ride (a huge underground ride set in caves), River Rafting (the best re-creation of Yosemite outside of actually being there)and the Indiana Jones experience (a massive roller-coaster type ride set in a huge temple). The details matter, the rafting ride had awesome cedar canoes (easily a grands worth of canoe) just decorating the waiting areas!

After a couple of days in LA and a visit to our favourite restaurant chain in the world: Red Lobster we were ready to leave and took a 6 hour bus ride up to San Francisco.

San Francisco

We arrived fresh off the bus and right into the San Fran Gay Pride weekend! A bit of a culture shock to be sure with thousands of scantily clad lads and ladies taking to the streets and partying. Our hotel was near Union Square and literally next to a really dodgy area of the city with loads of drug dealers and homeless people loitering around.

We had both visited San Fran before but were looking forward to spending a week in the Bay Area. Highlights were the Gay Pride Parade, drinking at a bona fide prohibition era SpeakEasy bar (a secret bar that you get in with a password and only serves cocktails and hard liquor), walking along the waterfront and visiting Chinatown.

Maybe it was the area we were staying in, but we both felt uneasy whilst staying here. We have both witnessed poverty and ramshackle living conditions as we have travelled round the world but it was really evident here. This is the result of the US approach to social care and it was quite depressing, there were literally hundreds of people living rough on the streets, most seemed to have medical issues that obviously weren't being treated as there is no NHS equivalent and therefore no safety net. We understand that this problem is rife in all major cities but it just stood out here.

Washington DC

Washington is a really nice city. All the landmarks are easy to visit, all the Smithsonian museums and galleries are free to visit. A good couple of days spent here, saw the White House, and the Washington Monument and also the Air and Space museum. We actually stayed near the Pentagon in Arlington but its a bit like saying we stayed near GCHQ, not much to see!!!

Final leg will be to NY then back home by the end of the week!!!