This morning Amy returned to Vegas, so I was feeling a bit sad, but Barb’s wonderful cooked breakfast served outside in her lovely courtyard cheered me up – another gorgeous day in Orange County.

After breakfast we set off for Long Beach to see the Queen Mary and the “Aquarium of the Pacific”. The Queen Mary is an old cruise ship that now lives permanently at Long Beach as a tourist attraction and hotel. Sadly the weather took a turn for the worse and I was NOT suitably dressed. When we left home it was slightly overcast but by the time we got to Long Beach it was cold, windy and raining and I was in shorts and jandals. Turns out my jandals have lost all traction and coz it hardly ever rains here they have many slippery when wet surfaces that made it impossible to walk across without skidding all over the place just like I was trying to walk on ice. It was awful and embarrassing and worried me coz I didn’t want to fall over and hurt myself or my camera or end up not able to walk without a limp etc. so I had to be extremely careful.

The Queen Mary was kinda disappointing but this was probably a reflection of how cold and miserable I was, rather than the ship holding very little to excite me. At one point I slid dangerously across the floor outside a posh gift shop in the ship and crashed into the plate glass window, creating a really loud bang startling everyone around me and scaring me half to death as I pondered how disastrous it would have been for my holiday if I had actually crashed through it. So I left there straight after that and headed for the shuttle bus that takes you to the aquarium.

On the way to the aquarium there was a huge downpour of rain which caused flash flooding and I had to wade knee deep in freezing cold water to cross the road to get inside the aquarium and walk really slowly to avoid slipping over as I approached the entrance. But once inside the lovely carpeted aquarium with totally non slip surfaces I had a lovely afternoon. There was a fantastic collection of fish in some amazing huge tanks. They even had jellyfish tanks that had open tops so you could touch them plus staff standing there encouraging you to do so – I passed on that slimy experience.

After dinner the weather got worse – thunder and lightening started up. Barb got so excited by this as it hardly ever happens here and then it started to hail which was so exciting she had to phone her family and friends to tell them all. They’re all thanking me right now – coz I clearly brought this weather with me!

We set off at about 11:00 for a place featured in songs by Sheryl Crowe & Savage Garden: Santa Monica. Perfect weather for lunch on the beach before hanging out on the very famous pier. Perhaps if the Auckland City Council put an amusement park on the Devonport Wharf like they have on the Santa Monica Pier they wouldn’t have to close it. Definitely a very groovy place to be.

From there we drove along the freeway for a bit and got stuck on the freeway for a bit and I saw the Hollywood Sign. Then we travelled along Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverly Hills. We drove around some of the side streets to admire the gorgeous houses before heading to Rodeo Drive for a spot of window shopping.

Next we headed for Hollywood Boulevard so I could find the Celine Dion star and check out the footprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. We got to park in the Kodak Theatre which I believe is where they hold some of the awards shows and very quickly found Celine’s star right out front.

Today we drove to Los Angeles, with only one stop for coffee & gas, it took about 5 hours and was hilarious.

Amy thought it would be nice to pack some food so we could have a picnic on the way, but the one and only picnic stop place was closed for repairs. So while we were stopped in a big traffic jam not moving at all we decided to have the picnic in the car.

This was a great idea till Amy realised the reason for the hold up was an immigration check point where we cross the border from Nevada into California and must not bring any food with us. In a frantic but hysterical panic we tried to eat as much food as we could. Then Amy remembered it was only fruit we couldn’t bring with us and we got waved through anyway – guess we didn’t look like fruit smugglers or maybe it was the fact that I could not stop laughing.

After catching up with our friend Barb who we are staying with in Orange County, which apparently is not Los Angeles, it’s Orange County – turns out after all these years Disneyland is not in Los Angeles it is in fact in Orange County. So we relaxed in Barb’s lovely sunny courtyard in Orange County and had a couple of drinks before heading out for dinner.

Dinner was in one of Barb’s favourite places called The Cliffs in Laguna Beach, not too far from her place and had a stunning view out over the Pacific Ocean where we got to eat dinner while sipping Margaritas and watching the sun set in spectacular colourful glory. It was perfect.

My last day in Vegas, so I wanted to do all the things I had on my list that I hadn’t done yet, if possible.

First stop… The Sign, they’ve had to build a special car park around it in the middle of the road coz so many people get out of their cars to photograph it on their way in to town – its on the way to the casinos from the airport. While I was waiting my turn to photograph the sign I said to Amy, I can’t believe there is a queue just to take a picture of a sign and the guy in front of me turned and said: “Oh but it’s THE SIGN.” and he was right.

Next stop Mandalay Bay, another casino with a massively grand entrance. I was looking for the entrance to the aquarium but couldn’t find it so gave that a miss and headed over to the Luxor. That’s the one shaped like a pyramid with a big Sphinx out front. The Titanic Exhibition is at the Luxor and I’ve wanted to see that for years – it was really well done. They had parts of the ship totally recreated, like first class & third class cabins, the promenade deck and the grand staircase (just like in the movie) and many items recovered from the shipwreck.

Next stop New York New York, one of the structures making up that casino is a building like the Chrysler which is another dream of mine to photograph one day – so it was cool to be able to do just that.

Next stop M&M World – four floors of M&M merchandise, M&M statues you can have your photo taken with and a 3D movie theatre – way cool. I’m sure they pump the air full of a chocolate smell to make you hungry and buy more chocolate. They have every flavour imaginable in huge pick and mix dispensers where you can fill bags of very expensive chocolate very easily.

Next was a ride on the monorail out to the part of town they call Old Vegas, where the original casinos are, like Circus Circus, the Stratosphere and the Sahara. It’s also known as the seedy side of Vegas – I loved it. You have to go there if only to enjoy “The Freemont Street Experience”. This is a spectacular light show happening on the roof of the covered street every hour set to music. It was like a massive dance party with everyone walking around with beers very happily looking up. It is amazing to me that you can just walk into a store, buy postcards, tee shirts and beer (by the bottle) then walk out onto the street and drink it. And that’s exactly what everyone was doing so I had to do it too.

Final stop was an attempt at finding a lookout point away from the strip where I could try to photograph the lights from a distance. After many attempts we found a great spot on top of a casino car park. Was too hard to get any decent shots without a tripod, but the view was great.

Today Amy drove us up to Mount Charleston where she has a cabin in the woods. There was snow everywhere but the weather was warm and sunny with the clearest blue skies – the blue in the sky was stunning, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a deep blue.

We stopped at the lodge for brunch and had a quick look through a Xmas shop that is open all year round. Amy explained on the way up to the mountain the local village is really small, they only have one shop and that’s a Xmas shop but it’s open all year round, of course I thought that was cool, but Amy wasn’t saying that to impress me. While we were in the shop Amy asked me if I put up a tree at Xmas, coz she wanted to buy me a souvenir decoration from Mt. Charleston. I laughed quite hard coz Amy doesn’t know how much I love Xmas, I had to tell her that I now put up four trees at Xmas.

Next stop was the bar where all the skiers hang out and take the chair-lift up the mountain. The cool thing about this place was they had Bud Light in a blue bottle, a beer I’d seen advertised on one of the big electronic billboards on the Strip and tried to find everywhere we’ve been ever since, it was very very drinkable.

From there we drove to Amy’s cabin, at the bottom of her road was a card reader which required a swipe card to open the gate to allow you up the road. I thought it was so funny coz the reader and gate were kind of in the middle of nowhere. But without a card there was no way you could drive up there, there was too much snow to drive round the gate, so it did make it kinda secure.

Amy’s cabin was wonderful, it had power, a telephone and even WiFi. The weather was perfect so we grabbed a couple of beach chairs (snow chairs) a bottle of wine and sat out in the snow enjoying a glass of wine. The sky was stunningly blue and the snow was so white and the wine was so delicious – I was in heaven (once again).

On the drive back I discovered a cable in Amy’s car that could connect her car stereo to my iPhone, this meant I could enjoy some more wine, the stunning scenery and listen to Celine Dion all the way home – FABULOUS!!!

Up at 5:15 to get ready to leave home at 6:00. Traffic all good so we made it in about 15 minutes, 1/2 hour early. Because I wasn’t being collected from my hotel I was able to have a later start than everyone else and meet them at the depot where everyone gathered for sorting onto the correct buses and collecting their breakfast and entry tickets for the different add ons – we could add things like the IMAX experience or a helicopter ride, I went for the IMAX experience, coz that movie is the most watched IMAX movie ever and I knew it would get me very excited about seeing the Grand Canyon. The whole check in, breakfast & ticket collecting and bus sorting was quite well organised as you moved from one queue to the next. Amy has been to the Grand Canyon before several times so she stayed home and graded papers for her students.

I managed to get on the huge black double decker bus, the only one that goes into the Grand Canyon, making it easy to find when returning to the bus. There were three buses departing for the canyon from that company alone, and every seat was full, so we had to be organised onto appropriate seats and I got to sit with a friendly family… the Jacksons, coz there were seven of them and they needed one extra to make up the eight pack in the downstairs section of the bus where the two face to face seats were complete with tables and cup holders, unlike every other seat on the bus that had nothing. The Jackson family even gave me a window seat and offered me Beef Jerky, but I declined the Jerky telling them it was far too early to be eating Jerky, I’d only just finished my coffee and Danish. The bus departed about 7:00.

First stop Hoover Dam – Awesome, we had 30 minutes to walk around and photograph the dam, there was a big queue at the bus stop toilets but we didn’t have to worry about that coz our bus had its very own toilet, another bonus of being on that bus! From there we drove through the Mojave Desert to Kingman a town in the middle of nowhere. They had a general store and a McDonalds. We had a 30 minute break there to stretch our legs and get some fresh air and stock up on snacks for the next part of our journey – a three hour drive to the Grand Canyon. The Jackson family bought beer and as we set off they all switched seats and I ended up with the three kids while the Mum, Dad & Grandparents played Poker. This part of our journey was through the Arizona Desert a vast stunning snowy vista, the Tour Guide told us it’s about 30 degrees out there – so I got my converter out to work that out in my temp and that’s 1 degree below ZERO!!! OMG I’m not dressed for that kind of weather, why didn’t they tell us it would be cold when I booked my ticket. I’m going to the Desert and in the movies it’s always hot in the desert.

Lunch at the National Geographic Visitor Center, followed by a quick walk around in the snow and the spectacular IMAX movie. It was cold but very warm in the sun so I was fine, I did not freeze to death.

From there we drove to the Grand Canyon – at long last – after a life time of dreaming about this moment, I made it. I took loads of photos with both cameras, so I’m sure I got a couple of print worthy images. We had one hour there then we got dropped off at a second view point with several souvenir shops and cabins, got some cool shots of the snow and icicles hanging off the cabins. One hour there too.

The ride back with the Jackson family was not so great, the drunk parents seemed to have forgotten their strict parenting skills and allowed the children to climb all over the seats and generally behave like children, plus they all developed bad coughs and sneezes which inevitably ended up all over me. 2.5 hrs later I couldn’t stand another minute of the Jackson family. So once inside McDonalds I asked the driver if there was a spare seat on one of the other buses he said no but he would see what he could do. He managed to swap me to upstairs next to a nice quiet Asian guy while some poor Aussie dude had to endure the last part of the journey with the family, but he probably had a blast & played poker with them while enjoying the last of their beer.

I enjoyed my nice quiet ride back to town, past the spectacular lit up Hoover Dam and the view of the fabulous lights of Vegas which I got to see easily coz I was upstairs.

Today we had lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Stratosphere casino (a bit like our Sky Tower). Amazing views of Vegas, great food, plus an amusement park with 4 terrifying rides that hang off the top of the tower – too awful for me to even watch for too long let alone have a go.

After lunch Amy dropped me off at the Palazzo/Venetian. I took a couple of photos with my new camera and the battery went flat (I forgot to charge it). What was I to do??? I can’t go somewhere and not take photos of it, it’s what I do! So I wandered around feeling utterly lost and hopeless. Went into the Venetian and saw the Gondolas but coz I couldn’t photograph them I wasn’t so excited about it. Then I got totally frustrated & lost trying to find MadameTussauds which is in the Venetian but the big directory board just confused me. Eventually I found it and had to use my cell phone camera to take pics of the mannequins – this museum was way cool you could touch the models and have your photo taken hugging them etc and I got to see Celine, she’s their latest addition. I found a camera shop which kindly agreed to charge my battery for me if I bought a charger – it will work in NZ so I figured it was worth it.

Then I headed down the strip to make my way to the M&M shop. Along the way I went through Caesars again. Made it as far as the Coca Cola shop and M&M shop but didn’t go in coz I was running out of time and wanted to take photos of New York New York. Also found the Grand Canyon shop and managed to get myself on a whole day tour for tomorrow.

Went inside the MGM Grand to wait for Amy to pick me up. Had a beer in the Rain Forrest cafe which was way cool. I got so sit on a Zebra legs bar stool at the bar and enjoyed a thunderstorm complete with rain that came down around the bar – totally awesome.

Today I went to a brand new shopping centre called: Fashion Show. Every hour there is a real fashion show right in the middle of the mall – the very cool thing about that is the runway actually comes up from the ground (out of nowhere basically) and the models appear in a huge box which also rises from the ground, it’s awesome. After the show is over the stage & runway disappear back into the ground. The couple of shows I managed to catch were both for Guess Jeans.

All the big department stores were there, I even bought something from Maceys. There was even something called an Oxygen Bar where people sit on bar stools and pay to breath oxygen.

From there I walked down the strip, got to see the Belagio fountains again had a great spot directly in front. Ended up at Planet Hollywood and the Miracle Mile shops. Rather fabulous too, got to see a thunderstorm happen right inside the mall and bought an iPhone/iPad charger that recharges in the sun.

This morning we went to an area called Red Rock for some great shots of the desert. I’m absolutely loving my new camera it creates amazing panorama shots.

After that a friend of Amy’s took us to visit a good mate of his who lives in a million dollar home, so I could check out what flash homes in Vegas are like. It was pretty flash – it had an amazing pool complex with a swim up to bar, big house, great views.

Next we headed for the “Strip” to check out a bar called the Chandelier, a 3 story bar surrounded by a very spectacular chandelier. To get there we walked through a place called Aria and then Crystals, both were amazing shopping malls with brands like Tiffany, Jimmy Choo, Bulgari, Van Cleef and Arpels – I don’t think there were any of the top labels missing from there, it was an out of this world experience, so stunning. The strange thing was, there were all these people wandering around with huge drinks in their hands as they moved from one bar to the next and none of them were dressed up flash, they were in shorts and jandals, apparently this is quite normal for Vegas and it is Saint Patrick’s Day.

The Chandelier bar was too crowded – so we headed back to Aria and found a great spot appropriately called View Bar where we had several beers.

Next we went to the Bellagio to watch the fountain & light show. It was very fitting that the song accompanying the fountains at that time was “My Heart Will Go On” – of all the songs & all the times to play it – awesome. If I cant see Celine at least I can still enjoy her music in a most spectacular way. On the way to the fountain we walked through the hotel lobby and I took loads of pics, the Bellagio really is quite spectacular in a classy European floral kind of way.

From there we drove to an amazing Italian restaurant called Buca di Beppo. It was full of character and charm, very crowded and very busy. Hugest pasta meals I’ve ever seen and really delicious food.

First stop this morning was at the AT&T store for a sim card for my phone so I could keep in touch with people over here. Got an awesome deal for only $2 I have unlimited calling anywhere in the US and unlimited texting to anywhere in the world for a whole day. It’s a pre-paid sim card so I only pay the $2 for the whole day if I use it. Awesome – no wonder American’s are always on the phone in the movies, it’s coz they can be!

Then Amy took me to a new shopping mall called Town Square where one of her favourite Italian restaurants is located, plus an Apple Store, plenty of other flash stores and the biggest Electronic store I have ever seen. We sat outside to have our lunch at the fabulous restaurant And I felt like I was in Beverly Hills, it was so flash and the waiters were so gorgeous & friendly and we chatted for hours and I just didn’t want to leave – but the excitement of visiting my first ever Apple Store drew us away from there and I went shopping.

The Apple Store was very busy and very noisy and I’ve never seen so many staff in a store that big, there were about 50 and the store wasn’t really all that big, five of them at least we’re standing outside taking orders or something, getting stuff sorted before you even entered the store.

Amy left me there so I could wander around the shops at my own pace and call her when I was ready to be collected, which wasn’t till about 8:30 pm later that night. That’s coz I found the most amazing electronics store EVER!!! It was like a gigantic Dick Smith store only a lot bigger, probably about as big as a Mitre 10 Mega store, or The Warehouse, but it only sold electrical stuff like computers, TVs, gadgets, every accessory you could imagine. It was super cool and I felt like I had died and gone to Electronic Store heaven.

The prices were amazing too, so I bought a new little camera that is proving to be absolutely incredible. It makes fantastic panorama shots super easily, plays them back almost like watching a movie, records video in HD, zooms in 18 times (optical zoom, not digital) and it can even email, or upload the photos using WiFi.

While there I found a place to get coffee, but getting a simple coffee turned out to be hilariously difficult. I couldn’t see a wall menu so I said to the guy: “Can I just get a coffee, thank you.” in about 5 seconds a coffee in a takeaway cup turned up, I walked over to a table to sit down and drink it. Then I realised I need sugar, so I had to go back and ask for that, then I realised I need a stirrer or spoon (which he couldn’t understand) and then when I took the lid off I had to go back to the poor guy AGAIN to say: “excuse me I would really like some milk in here but it’s full to the top”. Apparently you are supposed to say when you order your coffee: “coffee with room for cream please”.