We Speak No Americano

Saturday 22nd December 2012 - 01.14am

Good evening, or good morning depending on which time zone you are currently residing in. I am speaking to you from a luxurious double bed adorned with bamboo, in a beautiful open plan L.A. beach house whilst sipping white wine and being full of chocolate fudge ice-cream. Your life sucks, right? This is going to be a blog post to remember as over the last week a multitude of adventure has been had, so bare with me kids.

Previously on wallace's blog...

BG was left
Planes were caught
Sleep was had
Sentimental feelings surfaced
I manned the fuck up
We landed safely in L.A.X Airport.

With high hopes and Rachel Stevens' ancient song 'LAX' embedded in my frontal lobe we wondered down to baggage claim, surveillanceing the crowd for a tour guide with our names inscribed on a piece of paper. No such luck. Consequently a phone call was made - three telephone numbers and 45 minutes later we were finally seated in a shuttle containing a questionable orange peel in the right hand passenger door. KOing at around 6pm meant an early and long night for us sleeping beauties in order for us to rise and shine for our excursion to Las Vegas. The journey there was pretty straight forward with little to report except toilet stops and the occasional nap. That is until we arrived in VIVAAAAAA LAS VEGAS.

Since Mitch had already visited upper class Blackpool this year, we opted out of the $25 tour and painted the town red on our own. A cab ride into Downtown Las Vegas from our hotel, Stratosphere AKA the tallest point in Las Vegas, began my mindless gawking all the way to the Bellagio. We entered and BANG Christmas. Piano's, snow. polar bears, trees, the works. After some questionable posing amidst artificial snow and greenery we exited the crowded hotel to a similarly crowded street leading to the strip. I will admit I was confused at to what the kerfuffle was about until Sinatra's 'Luck Be A Lady' began bellowing from the pond in unison with bursts of water. I had a nice video but we'll get to that.

My mother wont be surprised when I reveal that Las Vegas was my favourite city so far as I am a massive pike at heart and as I said, Vegas is nothing more than an Upper Class Blackpool. Speaking of which it has a fake tower. (See Above) For those of you that reside under a rock with me, Vegas is made up of one strip consisting of various locations themed to be cities: Paris, New York, Rome, Venice. Old Vegas, the outskirts, is littered with pretty little chapels and drunks as its legal to drink on the street in Vegas. And smoke in casinos. Mitch informs me casinos employ psychologists to determin methods to maintain or increase custom such as interior decoration, waitresses bringing drinks and the layout of the building itself. On our travels between shops and casinos we happened to accidentally purchase tower shaped jugs. Full of slushies. With alcohol in them. And another shot for $1. This ended brilliantly for us making the drive to the Grand Canyon the following morning easier as we had the hangover sleeps.

So it's common knowledge that the Grand Canyon is situated in Arizona. Twilight educated me on Arizona climate, it said it was hot. Mitch concurred with this perception. Note the word perception.

Yep, that's snowfall on the ground and the foliage and just generally everywhere. And precipitation of water vapour. When we reached our destination, after 5 and a half hours travelling, temperate disenchantment set in until we rejected sorrow for positivity. Concluding we were superior as many people haven't see then Grand Canyon snowy and covered in fog but instead they are used to it looking a little something like the google generated image below. Every cloud has a silver lining and this lining was an excuse to return.

Back to Vegas for an evening then L.A. bound once again. Very little to report in the way of Vegas antics as unless you are a secret gambling addict or a millionaire there is little to do but get shitfaced and walk the isle with a stranger - something I wasn't keen on exploiting with the company I was keeping so in true Liz and Mitch fashion we navigated the streets to look for a light show and returned to the top of our hotel for an overpriced bevvy in the Sky Bar.

With Vegas done and dusted we set sail for LA once more. In order to divide the 4 hours travelling we came to a standstill at the M'n'M shop, adjacent to a chocolate factory that did not manufacture M’n’M’s. Having visiting an M’n’M shop in Vegas I was beginning to get sick to my back teeth of fucking M’n’M’s. Say M'n'M's, it doesn't even sound like a word any more. What did I care, they distributed free chocolate and there was a cactus garden outside. Shrubbery and dairy compliment one another, who knew? On arrival to LA we partied hard in the land of nodd, like last time but this time instead of being Vegas heading we were en route to San Francisco the subsequent day. We boarded the tour bus and I realised I had left my DSLR on another bus and so exited again. After running around hapharzardly for a few minutes I came to the conclusion the tour guides could not be less interested or less helpful. We then got abusively carted onto another bus, thrown out of our seats and then assigned new ones. We resolved to formulate a stern-worded letter. Then a man adorned in a yellow sea gull tours jacket boarded our coach equipped with no English but 'my dear friends'. This strengthened our resolve. Though the distance between San Fran and the City of Angeles is a little too far to combat in one day we had a lovely little day out. First stop, Solvang which is synonymous with mini Denmark where Mitch and I found some tasty cheeses and a nice little cake shop.

Mmm Danish pastry. On the other hand we tried devilishly hard not to spoil our lunch that we would eat on the Californian beach. In true to English tradition we ate pre-packed cheese and ham cobs on the beach whilst vigilantly defending our nutrients from an overly keen seagull. The rest of the tour group visited Hearst Castle, one of very few castles in American culture due to its well lack of culture. The castle was constructed for William Randolph Hearst. I can't tell you a lot about it a part from it has palm trees, mosaics and a pool. The geezer owns a zoo so there was some stripey oss's in the surrounding fields and his son got kicked out of Harvard for trying to sell his tutor weed. 

Early start, surprise surprise but off to Stanford University. It is situated in the middle of Stanford which is a huge as university town, pretty certain we entered it 10 minutes previous to the drive of the university. While we did ascend the town we were told a bit of  a back story regarding the establishment. The full name of the uni is Leland Stanford Junior University in memory of Leland Stanford's son who died of typhoid two months before his 16th. His parents were so distraught by this tragedy that they founded their own private research university in attempt to fill the void. It is the second largest campus in the US after Ohio State, Ohio represent. Stanford also proved to be a hotspot for athletics as Olypic medals have been won by Stanford athletes annually since 1912 including 129/244 gold medals. They excelled every other univeristy in 2008 at Bejing. 

Onwards to San Francisco, the city in which That's So Raven was filmed, home of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate bridge and shitty clam chowder. Many said the Gold Gate should not be built, however interesting fact - it is constantly being painted by two men. Once completed, it is about time to start repainting the other side. While photographing the monstrosity that is the Golden Gate we spotted Alcatraz, let me re-enact it for you.


Mitch: "Is that Alcatraz? It is now" *takes photo*. I died of laughs. 

We decided to explore the coast and Alcatraz via my favourite method of transport - boat. I just love boats. Mitch just attached an unecessary Freudian association to boats - everything's been tainted. Initially we approached the bridge to allow our Chinese population to get a better scope with their fancy flash photography. Since my camera had gone AWOL I was content posing and watching the seagulls and pelicans follow the boat and intermittently landing in the foam. We circled Alcatraz, a solitary island where notorious criminals were banished and is the most likely source of inspiration for J.K.Rowling's Azkaban home of fictional villain Sirius Black. Alcatraz houses more evil villains such as Machine Gun Kelly and Al Capone. During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as "missing and presumed drowned". September 1961 Morris, West, and the Anglin brothers were planning an escape attempt, which they carried out on the night of June 11, 1962. They fabricated dummy heads from a mixture of soap, toilet paper and real hair, and left them in their beds to fool prison officers making night-time inspections.They escaped from their cells by crawling through holes in the cell walls which they had dug with spoons over a year's time. This put them into an unused service corridor. West could not make it out of his cell and was left behind.From the service corridor they climbed a ventilation shaft to reach the roof.

The trio then climbed down from the rooftop, scaled the prison's fence and assembled a raft from the prison's standard-issue raincoats and contact cement. They pumped up the raft on the northeastern coast of the island. At around 10 p.m. they climbed aboard, shoved off, and started paddling. To prevent freezing to death a car and clean clothes would have been required to get away alive yet no thefts were reported. Food for thought.

Later that day we visited Lombard Street, the twisty and turniest street like ever. Mitch told me an advert launched ping pong balls down it for laughs, but I'm sceptical. Once all the structured activity was complete we did what we did best and went shopping. We made a compelling observation that San Francisco's ghetto is rather central to the city whereas in most cases you find the ghetto on the outskirts.

The venture back to L.A. was divided with a visit to Yosemite National Park. This was a beautiful beautiful location that I would love to see the contrast between by visiting in the summer. There isn't much to say about it besides its an absolutely stunning view that cameras don't do justice. Well, I could probably google it but I'm kind of tired of regurgitating information now. 

You, as a devoted reader, will be glad to know. That concluded our week scaling the West Coast but not our time in California.