As mentioned in my last posting we weren’t yet sure what to go for next, however it would have been quite silly to go for San Diego without enjoying it a bit. So we’ve looked at the Zoo while BJ stayed at the hotel to give his body a day off to get rid of his cold (which turned out to be the absolutely right decision). We on our part, enjoyed the stay at the Zoo and the change from the last activities. Some animal pictures can be found here.

Afterwards we dropped back to the hotel and picked up BJ to start our trip to Vegas. After an about 6 hour ride we finally arrived there and checked in to our hotel. Most of the other stuff happened in Vegas is filed under our non-disclosure agreement based on “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. I can however tell that it was one hell of a trip. We needed all of our time for “different” activities and so weren’t able to go for Grand Canyon or Hooverdam either.

Our back flight was just the extension of our one-hell-of-a-trip, which we however didn’t want it to be. All started out right at the Vegas airport when we figured out that there are quite a lot of people trying to depart on mondays. To make things even easier we figured out our flight was put over 30 minutes earlier for departure. Later on turned out we missed a mail of our travel agency trying to tell us exactly this. Well, however we made it to the gate exactly when they pushed-back the plane for departure. Only thing we could do was to wave after it. After the persons at the gate absolutely pissed me (us) off by stating via the loudspeakers that they are no information or whatever and are going to close now, we had no other possibility then going back to the Check-in desk to rebook that stuff. The lady at the check-in desk later stated that she was so sorry for that, as they would have needed to do this up at the gate. Anyhow she did a really great job by finding an alternative flight for us going via Denver and Frankfurt which only caused us about 7 hours later arrival. The rest of the trip was quite smooth as we catched all the connections and also today arrived our luggage.

I myself enjoyed the trip and now try to work things out, that came up in the meantime.

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.

If i find the time i’ll keep you posted.

One consolation about it, i have my 2 week holiday starting in less then 2 weeks. *YES* Viva Las Vegas …