The last few days, plus more of our travelogue...

As you can gather from my post about the Royal wedding, DH and I are well and truly home again! We've been home 5 days now and we're well and truly back into the all the routines. I don't mean that in a negative way either...it's great to be going about all those everyday things. Wednesday was a flurry of unpacking and sorting out all those gifts we bought for family and friends. I've also been working my way through the house giving all those weeks' worth of dust the 'flick'! We've had a steady stream of visitors and best of all...homecooked meals again!
On Thursday I went into work to access a website which I couldn't do from home. My employers, the state government are offering some packages and as I'm still on leave and not officially retired, I 'threw my hat in the ring' and applied. People at my classification will go to the bottom of the list so I may not be successful but DH and I thought it was worth a try. Being at work for an hour or so made me realise how special my work mates are and it also made me realise how glad I'm not there working any more! (it's the pressure and the constant testing of the students that has disillusioned me)
Tonight DH and I went to the Gold Class cinema and saw 'Arthur'. I thoroughly enjoyed it; lots of laughs, but also pathos. My brother gave me a Gold Class Gift card for my birthday nearly 12 months ago. We had to use the card in the next week before it expired. The trouble has been that there are limited choices of film in Gold Class and there hasn't been a film that both of us wanted to see.
Now the travelogue has only gone as far as Washington DC, so let us move on a bit...

On Friday April 15, DH and I drove from Washington DC to New York City. The speeding traffic on the freeways was well and truly ‘freaking out’ DH by this stage and we tried to use some of the smaller roads and we went through some charming communities.

We took 'smaller' roads which went through charming towns and verdant countryside

Nearing Baltimore we found that there wasn’t that much alternative and we navigated some really big, wide and fast moving freeways as we skirted around this huge city on the ‘Baltimore Beltway’. We came off the freeway system and stopped at a big shopping centre at Towson. It was a Westfield! We had a cup of coffee and also did a bit of shopping. There was a Pandora shop there and I went in to inquire the price of the murano glass beads as they had recently gone up in price in Australia. With tax included they were still $7 less than in Australia so my generous DH bought me a new bead as an early birthday present. My watch had stopped the day before so we took the opportunity at Towson to get a new battery for it.

Heading towards the New Jersey Turnpike

The Verrazano Narrows bridge in New York

Another view of the Verrazano bridge showing the 2 tiers of road

The traffic we met as we neared the Coney Island turnoff.

Then we headed back to the freeway to continue the journey to New York. We made very good time getting to the outskirts of NYC and we were excited that perhaps we’d have time to see another Broadway show...wrong! The traffic was unbelieveably ‘bad’! It took us hours to get to our hotel near the JFK airport and when we finally arrived we found we were quite a distance from the subway. So admitting defeat, we went for dinner a little way from the hotel and then settled for the night. One good thing was that the trip to the airport the next morning was very quick. DH dropped the luggage and yours truly at the airport and then returned our car, the Hyundai Tucson, a nice car. The porters at JFK airport were wonderful. I was on my own with a mountain of luggage; 4 suitcases, 1 overnight bag, a backpack, a laptop in a satchel, 2 big coats, a large cloth bag and my handbag. A porter took the check in luggage, plus the print out of our boarding passes and ID and did all that was necessary to get the luggage checked in while I stayed with the carry on things and waited for DH to come back. ( Yes I did remember to tip him and I gave him an extra $5 we saved as we didn’t need to get a trolley as the porters had their own!)

It seemed like DH was gone for ages...he had to take the car about 2 miles away and he then came back to the terminal on the free driverless train. The flight out of NYC started with a very rough take off. The bad weather had been moving south and as we left the city had a few days of stormy weather. At LAX, our luggage was almost the first out on the carousel which is most unusual! Lol Then we caught the shuttle from the car hire company to their office to pick up our third and last car...a small Chevy!!  Then we set off on the freeway to Bruce’s cousin’s place in Huntington Beach. After a few hiccups with being in the wrong lane and not being able to change lanes safely we arrived at Adrienne’s place to a warm welcome and a lovely home-cooked dinner.

Just inside the front doors of our Huntington Beach accomodation! lol

A striking piece of art work in the front garden

The BBQ area with the violinist sculpture in the foreground

Goodbye Hotel California...

Last Friday was our last full day in San Francisco. First on the agenda was a trip to a store called Britex which is a fabrics and sewing and craft notions shop and the stock covers 4 floors! DH allocated 20 mins for me to check it out. The stores don’t open until 10 so we had a little wait. It was then that I noticed that next door was another of those ‘All Saints’ Clothing stores with all the old sewing machines in the window. But any way back to Britex...20 minutes to do a 4 floor fabric store???? After 25 minutes and 1 floor I went outside and ‘negotiated’ some more time. I didn’t actually buy too much but I certainly had a good look around!

There were 3 very large windows on the second floor filled with vintage sewing machines

A closer view of one of the windows

The Britex store and to the right of it, the 'All Saints Clothing Store'

On Friday we also went in search of a Post office. We had been warned by friends at home that PO s are not as easy to find as in Australia. We had post boxes in our street but I wanted to send a parcel so it had to be a PO. So I looked up Post Offices near Geary St on the net and found that there was one in the next street...funny we’d never seen it! Then I noticed some comments on the site and someone had written that the basement of Macys was a strange place for a PO! So off we went and got some big USPS envelopes and went up to the counter to pay for them , just like you have to do at home...Wrong! They are free, you pay just for postage after you fill them. So back we went to our hotel, filled and addressed the envelope and then went back to the PO. Apparently I put the addressee on the wrong side of the envelope! Hopefully, Pat will get the parcel in Portland sometime! Lol

The sign indicating that to the right and  then a turn to the left and there is a US Post Office.

But the day’s activities weren’t over. DH and I went to a theatre production in a tiny theatre not far from our hotel. The play was ‘Party of Two’ a two hander musical and the 2 performers did a great job. When we got back to our hotel, we packed up ready for our flight to New York the next day. So after breakfast next morning we were able to walk downtown and get on another cable car route as the maintenance was complete and more than the one route was working. On the way back we stopped at the cable car museum and what a delight it was! As well as the obvious historical display, the museum is in the depot where the cable cars are kept and it is also where the driving mechanism for the system is located. You can see the cables working and they move at 9.5 miles per hour and each cable car grips into that system...guess who didn’t take their cameras on this little outing? Both of us! However I found this video on YouTube which shows the machinery that runs the system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeZZ8Mwi6qU&feature=related

An interesting display in the museum showed how close SF came in the late 40s, early 50s, to losing the cable car network. Many routes did close but between 1947 and 1954 some people worked very hard to keep the cable cars running. By now of course they are a symbol of the city!

In the lobby of the Hotel California is this mural of song lyrics which all mention San Francisco

Another view of the hotel lobby

By midday we were heading for the airport with all of our luggage. We shared the shuttle bus with some young people from Germany and Holland. These young people had all travelled in Australia. At the airport the checking in process wasn’t as onerous as we’d expected and neither of us had to endure the full body scan...they seemed to select young people for that???? We did get one ‘surprise’ though...luggage trolleys cost $5 to use and you don’t get any of that back when you click them back into the return area...hmmm...rip off surely! But we did get some nice surprises too! We thought that we had to pay for every bit of checked in luggage and were gritting our teeth...but no! First bag each is free! Next nice surprise was that we’d been told that it would cost about $90 in cab fares to get to our hotel...wrong again! It is a set rate of $51 from the airport to downtown NY. It was after midnight when we got to our room...it had been a long day!





DH helping put our luggage in the NY cab

Our room in New York