West Coast of the US & Mexico

Welcome to America! :-D We started our trip to the US in thee west coast in thee City of Los Angeles, a crazy big city with the biggest amount of traffic I have ever seen. It feels like no matter what hour, you are always stuck in traffic.... and we stayed in this relatively cheap motel that was close to the airport, but my g'd, it felt like driving around in the ghetto. You know the kind of things you see in movies? The streets full of garbage, lots of homeless people, people standing on the corners selling drugs and every evening we saw helicopters above the neighborhood with big lights looking for

people. Well.... let's say we kept the car doors locked while driving and at least we can say that all the things you see on American television are true in reality, at least in some neighborhoods ;-p
Completely not related to LA, but poor Yohan found out after arriving in LA it's not safe to arrive in the middle of the night in a motel without food, not because of the ghetto neighborhood, but because he has a pregnant wife that goes crazy when she doesn't eat every few hours. Poor him, I am normally a pretty nice person, but leave me without food and I become a crazy person (trust me, every person that knows me well, knows that about me. I think the text:" I am sorry for what I said when I was hungry!" was written specially for me ;-p ), but with pregnancy hormones we both found out that it's even worst. Solution? Going for a tour around the neighborhood to have breakfast at 6.00 AM and the Charlotte monster disappears again ;-P
In LA we visited the Getty Center, that is a beautiful complex on top of

a mountain with an impressive art collection and very nice gardens to walk through and we went to a great concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, an impressive building.
Outside LA we strolled around on the Santa Monica Pier and back in LA we walked on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and saw lots of stars on the ground like Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jackson and Walt Disney. There was also the Hollywood museum where they have collected a lot of Hollywood history, including lots of costumes, scripts & photos. It was nice to recognize so many stars and movies :-) And of course you can't be in Hollywood without visiting the huge Hollywood sign :-D
Next stop was Beverly hills. My g'd the houses are there SO enormous, like castles! And you need of course to walk once in your life on Rodeo Drive. Hahaha... we walked as real backpackers with shorts and flipflops into the most expensive stores to just look around, but it

was amazing to see all the other people around us buying bags full of Louis Vuitton and Armani and to drive around with their ridiculous expensive cars like Ferrari's, Lamborghini's and we even saw a car that looked exactly like the bat mobile of Batman ;-) To be honest I was more impressed with the gorgeous old timer cars in the Automobile Driving Museum we visited, but well.... in the end it's of course a matter of taste ;-)
Last thing we did in LA was going to Universal Studio's, such a cool place!! It's a combination of an entertainment park and a way to visit the real movie sets of the Universal Studio's movies. We saw so many things, but definitely the most impressive ones were the street in Western style that with one click is floated wit water, or for example the film set where you see a complete crashed plane on the ground in the size of a real plane or the streets that you drive through like if you are suddenly in San Francisco and it looks so real even though you know that all these buildings are completely fake and there isn't anything behind the front doors. Just crazy! The entertainment park was great and Yohan super enjoyed, I unfortunately because of the pregnancy wasn't allowed in most attractions, but we found out that Universal Studio's has an amazing policy for pregnant woman, they gave us fast track passes to skip completely the lines, so I wouldn't have to stand hours in the line and Yohan had the day of his life, because he could go rollercoaster after rollercoaster without waiting in lines. A win/win I would say ;-P Definite highlight in the entertainment park was the Harry Potter part, where they had a great attraction around the magic wands and of course you can buy for crazy prices all the different wands that you also have in the movie. Luckily we were there still without kids, would have been impossible otherwise not to have bought one ;-p

Spontaneously we decided to make an extra stop in San Diego and that was a good plan. San Diego was great! In our eyes a much nicer

city than LA. It was really nice to walk around. The food trucks there are mostly Mexican and absolutely great and tasty. Besides that we ended up solving a Sherlock Homes murder mystery at the science museum :-), visiting the USS Midway, a huge military aircraft carrier, a much bigger and more impressive ship than I expected beforehand and last and definitely not least, the San Diego Zoo. I have seen quite a lot of zoo's in my life, but this one was very big and very impressive. We both really enjoyed this zoo!

To be really honest, because of the great Mexican food we had in San Diego and the realization that we were literally only 2 minutes from the Mexican border we said, why not go for 3 days? So off we went :-) We booked a hotel for the ridicules price of only 10 dollars per night and drove into Mexico. Leaving the States was really a joke, you just drive in and the only reason you know you past the border is the huge Mexican sign and flag next to the road. Without any problems we

found our hotel in Tijuana and let's say you get what you paid for: nobody spoke a world of English, you had the option to buy the condoms on the nightstand next to the bed, on tv we had "special" channels (let's say it wasn't National Geographic ;-p) and at night cars would arrive full of sexy dressed girls. Let's say the hotel became an active "business" area ;-) But we didn't care, it was cheap and the sheets were clean :-) The city of Tijuana itself wasn't too interesting, we went to the Tijuana Cultural Center, that was ok. We walked on the boulevard, where we took a ridiculous touristic picture with the donkey Paco and visited the beach where you can see the enormous wall on the beach and land inwards to stop people entering the US, while drinking an alcohol-free cocktail and listening to the Mexican Mariachi music. To be honest the highlight of the visit was our detour Google map took us through the ghetto areas of Tijuana. The road got worst with the minute and we ended up in a sand road with big holes

and the houses looked awful, but the worst was the people on the street, that was the moment we both got quiet, locked our car doors and hoped the car wouldn't brake down. Thanks Google Map! One of these moments that you'r happy when it finishes, but are funny memories to think back too :-D In order to go back to the States, we got the full package. An hour wait in line and after an extensive search through the car and luckily a very nice border control man that even apologized for confiscating our apple (because apparently, it's forbidden to bring fruit over the border) we were allowed to cross the border. Haha…. we didn't really care. We were happy that we went to Mexico, but to be honest even happier to arrive back to the States ;-D

Back in the US we continued straight up North towards Las Vegas. Yohan already has been there before, but for me it was the first time. I didn't expect too much of it as I am not really into gambling and

can't drink any alcohol on the moment, but Las Vegas really surprised me. I really enjoyed spending there a week! We had so much fun walking around through all the different famous casino's like the MGM, Bellagio, Cesar Palace and to just look at all the different kind of characters visiting the casino's. And the water fountains.... you have several ones, but the water fountain in front of the Bellagio is absolutely the most impressive one. Every half an hour they have a water show including music and lights effects, really nice to see. And of course, the shows, Las Vegas have a huge amount of big performances to choose from. We choose in the end to see one night the Las Vegas show that is a musical about the history of Las Vegas. It was really nice and in the second evening we saw Mystere of Cirque du Soleil. That one was even better. Absolutely breath taking performance and very special to see so many different kind of circus acts and not just performing in front of you, but the performance was everywhere. In front, above, behind us and even coming from the

ground with stages that would disappear in the ground or go into the air. Really a very special performance! Besides the gambling there is also a completely different activity, it's called the CSI Experience. Really cool, you need to solve 2 murder cases by yourself, like in the TV serie, with the help of all the clues you find on the way. So funny, it made me very competitive, a side that Yohan hadn't seen from me before. Haha... well, I guess that with this trip we get to know each other even better ;-p We managed to solve both cases like good detectives and bought the cutest little outfit for our little bundle of joy :-) Such a funny text: "I just did 9 months on the inside". We celebrated the solving of the murders with the most amazing crepe in the trip. You can see that finally my appetite came back, luckily for me the US is the country of lots and lots of food. And not only that, the sizes are also crazy big. We normally order only one dish and even that, we can barely finish together!

Outside Las Vegas you have a nice park that is called Red Rock Park. As you probably can guess, it's famous for his red rocks. This was the first park we visited of many, but later more about the parks. We ended our visit to Las Vegas with a last night of gambling ourselves. And of course, as real good tourists we started gambling with 20 dollars, first won 180 dollar, decided to continue and lost everything after that. Haha... well, that's part of the deal I guess ;-D

Even though it was quite a drive, we didn't want to miss the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon, so we left early in the morning and made it to the morning tour of the Hoover Dam. It's much more impressive than I thought and really worth visiting to see the inside of the dam. They gave a lot of information and we learned a lot that morning about the American history.
After we needed to continue driving all day, to be able to visit the next day the Grand Canyon National Park. It's such a beautiful park!!

Thinking backwards I could have stayed there a few days. It's of course very touristic, but the nature is breath taking. We had a great hike all along the side of the canyon.
The days after was a combination of lots of hours of driving and visiting a lot of famous nature parks on the way. For example, we took instead of the highway, the road through the Mojave National Preserve, where we took some great pictures of the Nevada dessert. All the things you see in American movies of only dessert views are really true. It makes you feel so small and have a lot of respect for nature. After a long drive we spend the day in the Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park that is next to it, where you have the biggest trees in the world. And they are enormous! They left one of the trees that died and it's so big you can walk through it standing up all straight without hitting you head. Very impressive parks to visit. And a weird feeling of coming from the boiling hot dessert and suddenly driving through cold and snowy mountains.

The last park we visited on our way to San Francisco was the Yosemite National Park. A completely different kind of park that is as big as the other parks we visited, but more of a canyon where you drive through and with very big waterfalls. Yohan was all excited and smiling and went to visit the Yosemite Falls waterfall from so close by that he came back all wet, but with great video's with the waterproof GoPro. Haha... well, everyone his own things... he really enjoys ;-D But we both definitely enjoyed the walking and driving around the park and we took some great nature pictures.

After enjoying the parks, we ended up in San Francisco. A nice and diverse city. For starter, you have the Golden Gate Bridge, that is actually not golden, but kind of red. Besides that, you can visit the Alcatraz Island, that we unfortunately couldn't visit, because it was already fully booked 10 days ahead. But we definitely enjoyed the Italian neighborhood with amazing Italian cheeses, the market with

lots of little stores and great seafood, the famous trolley (tram) and we even participanten in a traditional Japan parade with lot's of dancing and cute children dressed like samurai's and wit kimono's. We walked around a lot downtown and literally climbed up the streets. It's crazy how steep some of the streets are. It's hard to capture on the pictures, but you must stand really sideways in order to pose for a picture and when you drive on Lombard Street, the "most crooked street in the world", you are more in an entertainment park than driving on a street ;-) But most of all we enjoyed our day biking trip through the Golden Gate Park, that was really great. You pass these beautiful places in the park like the Japanese garden, beautiful fountains or suddenly, just before you bike into the sea shore, there is out of the blue a windmill. That's the nice thing of San Francisco, one moment you are in the middle of the city and the next moment you are looking at the sea. The only thing we were really surprised about, was the crazy amount of homeless people downtown. And not just a few people, big groups of communities living together on the streets and in tents in parks or under bridges. Very sad and to be honest quite shocking as we aren't used to that at all. I thought that when you see American series or movies it's over exaggerated, but in San Francisco it felt like reality.

Our last stop before leaving for Hawaii was the city of Seattle,

completely in the North of the US, close to the border with Canada. A nice city with lots of things to do. We took a walking tour through the underground city. We had no idea, but apparently, there is a whole neighborhood underground that is from the time that the original city of Seattle was build and it was great to get some more background information during the tour about that. Of course, you can't visit Seattle without seeing the Space Needle Tower. The famous tower you see every time you see an episode of Grey's Anatomy ;-) and straight under it is the Chihuly garden and glass museum. We never heard of him before, even though he is world famous, but he makes these beautiful and impressive glass installations. As always, it's hard to capture it in the pictures, but trust me, they are really special and beautiful! (And secretly we were very proud of ourselves that later in the trip we recognized one of his works in the museum of Fine Arts in Boston :-) ) Another famous tourist activity is visiting the Public Market Centre, really fun. They have a lot of different little

stores and market stands. But in the end definitely the most fun activity was the visit to Emily, my cousin. It's so much fun, to meet up with all the people that are living abroad and you normally almost never have a chance to see and now to have the time to really catch up and to see how they really succeeded to start their lives abroad. Emily, it was really great to see you and we can't wait to see you soon again in the Netherlands or maybe even in Seattle!
Something completely different and random, I feel that even though we aren't home my pregnancy nesting feelings are starting. Because I can't prepare a baby room or start sewing baby clothes, I found something else ;-) I started knitting. Haha... if you would have told me a few years ago, that I would be knitting I would have laughed about it. But even though it makes me feel like a grandmother, it's very calming and super easy to travel around with and isn't it fun for the baby later to have a baby blanket made by his mother? So, I just ignore the grandmother feeling and take my knitting needles out every time we need to wait a long time or are sitting in a coffee place :-D

US, you were great! Now it's time to continue our trip and to check out the island of Hawaii :-)

(Travel plan: Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon Park, Mojave National Preserve, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco & Seattle)