On my Way Home!

So that was it. We got back to the hotel in time to watch "Family Guy" before collapsing under sore legs from standing all afternoon. The next morning was our last free breakfast (so made the most of it!) before we headed out to Hudson's river for a little while enjoying the view and sunshine. That was after a well needed haircut (my hair had taken a lot of punishment after 6 months without conditioner) before it was back to the hotel to pack our now massive and extremely heavy backpacks just one last time for this trip! Bloomin' backpacks...dead handy but by Jove they kill your back when you fill them with lots of crap!

So here we are, waiting to get the subway back to the airport for the British Airways flight back to London. It's weird 6 months have passed. It will be weirder being surounded by british accents again and not that of Aussies or Americans! It seems to have gone quick but then when I look back on say, Australia...that seems ages ago! So much has been squashed in since then.

I've really enjoyed travelling: the flights, the places, the views, the atmosphere, the activities, the hostels, meeting loads of people from around the world who are all in the same boat! ...Though I won't miss the long string of the same questions you get when you talk to anyone new (which is every day): "Where are you from?, Where are you going?, Where have you been?, How long you're travelling for?, What did you do at uni? Have you finished? What are you going to do when you get back?" And on. I bet I will miss it though. It's funny the one thing you hardly ask is what someone's name is! Then you chat to them for a long time, that is feels like it's too late to ask them. Crazy.

I've loved every minute of these past 6 months....well, except the moments when I've had slight food poisoning AND the occassions when we've found ourselves so unexpectedly on long, steep, up-hill walks with seemingly no end in sight and can only lead to sore legs the next day. But life has been good! I have a million and one memories and experiences to cherish and have picked up enough souveniors to fill every crevice of my already overwhelmed backpack! It's truly been an utterly, incredibly, most fantastically splendiferious adventure and now I'm on my way home and insearch of a cup of tea.



14/10/2007 - Update: After coming through "Arrivals" in my "new" New York jumper, and complete with a cup of tea after a balloon and "Welcome Home" banner-filled welcoming, I'm well and truly home now!!! Until the next trip that is! ; )

Thanks for reading my wanderings and all the comments, bye for now!

Carla xx

New York, New York!

Soon it was time to return back to San Francisco driving through the night, hence more sleeping on a moving coach. Except this time I was so tired that somehow I managed to get to sleep before the coach even started moving, so I was OK and only awoke once we were back at the bus terminal! After the goodbyes we headed to the BART train to get to the airport. It being 7am in the morning we were really quite early for our 3.45pm flight and asked to change on to an earlier one. Which we did (joy of joys!) but this meant we had to go through a secondary screening procedure where they put you in a chamber and blew puffs of air at you (very odd) and take clothes samples, check through all your stuff and make you wait. We ended up being nearly late for our 11am flight! Thank goodness for delays!

After watching "Evan Almighty" on the plane we arrived in New York. It was already dark, it was raining and the information guy at the airport was not at all helpful. We eventually got a shuttle to the hotel (but the driver was a mean guy). Our first impressions of New York weren't great. But then we arrived at the Embassy Suites hotel and collapsed in our suite complete with TVs, soft double beds (no more sleeping bags), white fluffy towels (no more " travel microtowel"), dressing gowns, shampoo, free stuff and a bathroom with a shower and a toilet that flushes(no more holes in the ground)! Heaven!

The next day we headed out after a lazy breakfast and followed by a lazier morning, to look around. The hotel is in downtown Manhattan near Ground Zero so we had a look over at the construction site. The next couple of days were spent seeing all the usual places you see in films and on TV: the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, Ellis Island, Broadway, Time Square (went to M & M's World - massive and with M & M's of every colour imaginable!), Central park (where I walked around in the rain with my soft pretzel), Madison Square Garden, Grand Central Station, NYC Public Library, The Chrysler Building and on the Friday (our last full day) we went up The Empire State Building!

It was a lot of queueing to get up the Empire State, then 80 floors up by elevator before walking the last 6 flights to the 86th floor observatory for spectacular views over New York City. Downtown Manhattan, Uptown, Liberty Island, Brooklyn, Macy's - It was all there!

I watched, along with the hundreds of other people cramped up there as the sun finally melted below the city's skyline to set on our last day of travelling. It was a weird moment for me, it was like saying goodbye to my travels already and I could feel a tear forming in the corner of my right eye. But the moment soon passed since it was really windy up there and got a lot cooler, fast. So I made a hasty retreat back inside to pick up a sweet little glittering snow dome with the Empire State seated inside at the souvenirs desk before making my way back down. It had been a gorgeous view though; from below the city may be hot, smoky, busy and dirty but from up above it's rather quite pretty. It was a good way to spend the last evening.

Mono Lake and Secoia Trees in Yosemite.

Some loons that night decided to camp outside in the snow, but I was quite happy to stay sleep snugly in the coach. The next day after a great breakfast with something called "Glop" we headed out to Mono Lake, in The Sierra now where we had camped the previous night. The Lake was really pretty. The sky was California Blue and that reflected on the lake. Also the lake is fed by three streams but only loses water through evaporation therefore the water is 2.5x saltier than the ocean and 100x more alkali. It means you can float really well in the water if you go swimming but if you do swim you will be surrounded by trillions of Brine Shrimp (look like Sea Monkeys) that live there. Also it was like 4 degrees outside so you can probably guess I didn't go swimming. Instead I looked very scientifically at the "Tufa's" which are calcified springs that build up out of the water.

That night was a huge dinner of soup, mashed potato and my favourite...Brocoli! Then we toasted marshmallows on the fire with chocolate (smores) and even cooked a banana on the fire (which was horrifically mushy). It was another night at the same camping grounds with the horrid toilets, no water, no mirrors, you had to wash your teeth carefully as any food or toothpaste could attract bears. And you're surrounded by dark trees and nothing else. It was proper camping and hard going. But in the day, the woods were pretty! On the last day (Monday) we headed out to do a nice walk in some meadows in the National park before going to see the giant Sequoia trees...the largest living things on the planet and very old too! They live to over 3000 years. There was an old one that had a giant tunnel dug into it which was really cool!

Yosemite National Park

Very little sleep, but in the National park never-the-less and so up and with a cooked breakfast and packed lunch as provided by the two tour guides Adrian and Seena, we headed out into Yosemite Valley. You could spend the day as you wished so we hopped on the parks' free shuttle and first stopped at the largest Graphite Monolith in the world: "El Capitan". To look at it, it just looks like a sheer white rock face that's pretty tall but it's 3000 feet tall and with good binoculars or a telescope that someone kindly let us use, you could see these tiny little people climbing it. The record is 3 hours but most people take 3-5 days to reach the top....all crazy. Next we walked down to the Valley Falls, all dried up at this time of year but still bloomin' tall (5Th highest waterfalls in the world or something like that).

Feeling a bit knackered by now, we headed up to the Vernal Falls. The sky was blue which was nice but it meant the sun blazed down without mercy. It was a really pretty walk up to the falls but bloomin' shattering too! We eventually made it to a "that'll do" place at the falls to stop and have lunch before heading back to the "Green Tortoise" Coach.

That evening we heard what other people did, most people only seemed to have done the vernal falls walk so no wonder we were knackered! For camp that night we headed out of the park and into a place called Hartley Springs where the snow from the previous night hadn't melted. At one point it looked bad when the coach couldn't grip on the snow but eventually we made it into camp safely. My only problem with the basically woods called a camping ground, was the toilets (or restrooms) which were dark ominous pits/holes in the ground in something no more than a shed. No lights, the smell was disgusting, plus the sheds were just out somewhere in the woods. It was horrible looking around in the dark for an old shack and then trying to find a way back to camp. Plus there were deer hunters camping around...they must be strange folk! Therefore I drank as little water as possible!

Goodbye San Francisco!

After Alcatraz, and nigh collapsing from walking all over the city, we decided to spend our last day in San Francisco by getting the Trams everywhere! That way travel in style. It was a mighty queue for the tickets but one hour and a McDonalds milkshake later we clutched our day passes in our hands and rode the tram uphill to Lombard Street; The most crooked street in the World. We hopped back on the tram and took it around the city before getting back to Pier 39 for some shopping and lunch. Then going back to the hostel to collect our bags and start walking to the bus terminal to catch the Green Tortoise sleeper coach for our Yosemite NP 4-day tour.

The tour started at 9pm that night, in which you all sleep during the four hour journey in the coach on bunks or on the platforms made up and then when you wake up you're in Yosemite National Park. It's a really nice idea....in theory. but I could not sleep in the sleeper coach because frankly sleeping horizontally on a bed in a moving coach is weird!

Alcatraz...A.K.A The Rock!

Looking out to the water in San Francisco Bay, there's a big ominous-looking rock with old buildings on it...also known as the infamous prison of Alcatraz. The Next day in San Francisco we took a boat out to the rock. It was really nice weather and there some kind of Navy air show going on which was good to watch on the 12 minute journey to the island.

What's great is that when you get to the Island they give you audio tour headphones to listen to the stories of Officers and ex-prisoners alike. So you all go around the place with headsets on, and the tour takes you to all the famous cell blocks, the dining hall, the gun gallery where there was an attempted escape and even showed you the cells belonging to the three prisoners that escaped up through the wall pipes and were never seen again...I think there's a film with Clint Eastwood about it. Not sure what it's called..."Escape from Alcatraz" or something. But it was a really interesting tour and day to behold on The Rock!

San Francisco, California!

Yes, we arrived in San Francisco in the dead of night, and had decided to be thrifty and save money by getting the BART train and walking the 6 or so blocks to the hostel. This would have been easier if (a) we hadn't had our 20KG backpacks and (b) San Francisco wasn't all hills! But nearly dead from exhaustion and looking slightly worse for wear we eventually made it to the hostel just before midnight! The dorm room....not too bad!

So we began our time in San Francisco the next day, walking. Walking the hundreds of blocks to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and fun stuff....such as visiting the "Bubba Gump Shrimp" restaurant where outside I met Forest Gump himself! While it wasn't Tom Hanks but a good impersonator. I was a bit weary as at first I'd taken him for just some random guy but when I realised he was paid to be there I thought what the heck, and so had my photo with him and had a chocolate from his box of chocolates!

Then we walked the hundreds of blocks to get a good view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It took some time with lots of buildings, then boats and even trees in the way but eventually I got a good photo. We then had to get back to the hostel which unfortunately was all uphill...boy was that a mighty walk up those streets. It was really tiring and I found myself mentally waving my fist at the cable car trams that passed us comfortably going up the hill I was practically dying on! What a stupid idea to build a city on hills! Completely knackering!