Life, the Universe and Everything » la

Further westcoast ramblings

wnagele — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:29:25 +0000

Currently i’m writing to you from San Diego Sheraton. But, first things first.

As we used our last day in SFC to see Golden Gate bridge we took the chance to visit the museum of computer history in Mountain View which i can really recommend. We had a very nice tour there and have seen a lot including the first Google production server. As we already were in Mountain View we surely had to catch up at the Google HQ.

Afterwards we drove to Santa Cruz, as our plan (if you can call it one) was to use California #1 to go south. In Santa Cruz we had dinner and went for some bowling. We also enjoyed the Boardwalk named gaming lot – where we left some bucks playing air hockey.

As we wanted to use our travelling time as much as possible we used to make some more kilometers before catching a motel. So it came that we ended up in somewhere of nowhere and couldn’t get a motel for about 1 and a half car hours. The drive along the pacific coast on California #1 however was awesome. We had no full moon but growing moon i guess and so you could see a lot of the moon light flickering in the ocean. Finally we dropped at a motel in San Simeon at the other end of nowhere. It was a nice but short stay as we catched up in the morning and took our trip down to LA. In LA we stayed at a hotel i’ve already been once earlier this year. In the evening we grabbed our dinner and had some nice beers near Hollywood Blvd in LA.

Next day our choice fell on Disneyland in Anaheim, as we didn’t get up early in the morning we came there at about 4pm and so only had 4 hours left to enjoy the stay. I can recommend the space mountain ride. Most of the other stuff is probably only funny if you get there with children. After we had our dinner at IHOP (International house of pancakes) we stayed at a motel near Newport Beach (yes, as in O.C. California) which was – well, cheap.

Today we had a trip to newport beach and afterwards dropped by at San Diego. Here we’re staying at the Sheraton which i’ve also been earlier this year (at this time named Radisson). We weren’t able to get our trip to San Diego Zoo as BJ catched a cold (which i had earlier last week), so we took the rest of this day off and i enjoyed my stay at the jacuzzi.

Our plans for the rest of the trip are not quite sure, maybe we drop to San Diego Zoo tomorrow or we go directly to Las Vegas. We’ll see. As i had some time today i finally made it, to upload the photos.

Universal Studios LA

wnagele — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:47:15 +0000

Today we took the chance to catch a little bit more sleep and didn’t get out of bed until 10am. We took breakfast at some fastfood restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. Afterwards we took the metro to Universal City. Amazing about the metro is at first the tact it’s driving – now i know why everybody here drives by car. Also the distance between underground stations is really big – you drive about 5 minutes between 2 stations. That would be about 5 stations in Vienna.

Universal Studios were really nice, you pay the entry fee of about 60 bucks but don’t have to pay anything for the shows afterwards. Compared to Disneyland that’s really cheap then. I really liked the Terminator 2D show and also had a lot of fun riding The Mummy. It’s not that big as a Disneyland so you can do almost anything in a one day trip. As mentioned we headed there at about 12am and we did almost every show in there.

In the evening we were looking for the Mood Club again. As we didn’t find it yesterday we had more luck this time. The waitress at the bar we’ve been beforehand knew where it was. But she told us that the Element Club would be much cooler and we should hook up there later on. So we did but Element Club was really awesome – nice girls and good music. So a good end for our last day in LA.

Arrived in LA

wnagele — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:04:10 +0000

Uff, getting up today was really hard. Yesterday we took the last oppurturnity to checkout San Diego with our workshop colleagues. So we went to a brazilian restaurant to get some beer first and afterwards had dinner at an excellent persian restaurant. I really have to get a day of now.

Today Keith gave us a ride because he had to go to LA for a meeting somewhere in Marina del Rey too. Thanks for this again, Keith! We found a cheap hotel nearby Hollywood Boulevard which is not the cleanest but for sleeping and a shower it’s sufficient. Also a nice aspect as we thought we wouldn’t have any internet here is that someone in the neighborhood has left his wireless network open.

So today we checked out the nearby Hollywood Blvd and found out that the walk of fame is not such a big deal and also the rest of Hollywood was a disappointment for me. But i guess it’s like in most cases where you have to big assumptions of what you’ll get. There’s no business like show business.

Heading to San Diego

wnagele — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:36:44 +0000

I’m writing this from Vienna airport.

We’re currently sitting in the boarding area waiting to get on our plane to Paris. I’ve had a party with some friends yesterday and made the night through. Therefore i have already my 3rd mocca inside. I hope to catch at least some hours of sleep on our way to LA. *tired*