Washington Day 2

View of Washington skyline

Washington Monument and reflecting pool

Vietnam Memorial

Trolley tour

Today was our big sightseeing day here, we got tickets for a hop-on hop-off bus tour called the Old Town Trolley tour. It worked really well as we got to choose which parts of Washington we wanted to have a look at by just getting off the bus and having a look around. The buses stop at all the tourist attractions every 20-30 minutes.
First stop was to the National Cathedral on a hill overlooking Washington, followed by the Smithsonian Space and Science Musuem. After that, visited the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, finally followed by the National Museum of Natural History, aka the 'Bones & Stones' Museum.
We then had an early night with a 4am wakeup call for our flight to Mexico.

Washington Day 1

Spy Museum

Hard Rock Cafe

Today we went to the International Spy Museum, which was excellent. We spent about 4 hours looking through the whole thing. There was a lot of Spy equipment with descriptions about how they work. Also there was stories and theme rooms about spy exploits, ranging from planting bugs through to the cold war.
For dinner we went to to The Hard Rock cafe, every city seems to have one over here.
It started raining while we were eating dinner but we didn't let that ruin our plans to take some night photos of the monuments. We walking in the pouring rain for about an hour and got some fairly good photos.

Update from 4-5th day in SF

Viansa winery

Wednesday we had a long walk to the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts (after getting on not-quite-the-right-bus-but-kind-of-close), which is an amazing building built in 1915 for an international world show. Now it houses a hands on science & technology show called the Exploratorium, it is very similary to the one at Motat in Auckland but 10X larger, it took us 4 hours to go through most of it but it was excellent. After the Exploratorium, another long (but interesting) walk through the marina district back to Fishermans Whalf. We then went to the San Francisco aquarium which is almost exactly the same as Kelly Tartons but without the penguin enclosure - took us about 15 mins to see the entire thing. That evening after going back to our hotel we decided we needed to do some laundry so off to a typical American laundry up the road - complete with the resident strange mumbling man who talked to himself continuously while doing his laundry....

Thursday we spent the day doing a wine tasting tour out to Napa County and Sonoma - about an hours drive north of SF. The countryside was very dry, no green grass, everything golden brown in colour. Apparently there is no rain at all here suring summer - not even a shower! First stop was a traditional style winery, which used to be a western style ranch. Three different wines to taste here, all were very nice. After that off to an organic winery - Madonna Estate, the wine was also very nice here. We then stopped for lunch at Sonoma Square - this was like something out of the movies, a sleepy old fashioned small American town, very pretty. Our final stop for the day was Viansa winery - this place had the wow factor, built on top of a bluff overlooking the surrounding countryside. Our guide sweared it was exactly the same landscape as Tuscany - rolling golden brown hills, blue skies and vines as far as the eye could see. The actual winery building was modelled on something from Italy and was very impressive complete with vaulted wine cellar. Despite all of this the wine here wasn't all that great! Still, the view and surroundings made up for it - apparently this is a favourite place for wedding receptions and it's easy to see why.

Photos and Update from 3rd Day in SF

Our hotel

Monday night we watched the movie 'Presidio' 1988 in the hotels cinema, we had the whole cinema to ourselves. The room we are staying in is named after the movie, and there are photos and other info about the movie in our room. All the other roms in the hotel are also named after San Francisco movies (glad we're not staying in invasion of the body snatchers room!)

Tuesday, we got up late and missed out on doing the bike ride over the Golden Gate bridge. But we did get to do some museum tours in the afternoon, the first was the California Academy of Science which was interesting. Mostly aquariums but a few very interesting snakes, including some very thin long tree snakes (will post photos when we can). Next stop was the Museum of Modern Art, but on the way Sarah found a beautifully restored caruosel, which she went for a ride on. Afterwards we realised we had actually watched a documentary on the Discovery channel earlier this year about the restoration of it. The museum of modern art was very unusual, we did a guided tour of a one of the exhibitions 'Drawing Restraint' by Matthew Barney (Bjorks boyfriend). His art is.... 'very modern' and involves a lot of petrolium jelly, white plastic & exercise equipment, and symbolism of whales and atropy which went way over our heads. It became very apparent that Sarah & I have a lot to learn about modern art. Lastly we managed to upload a lot of photo's to a photo album(set) on Flickr, you can find them on the link on the right side of this page.

First Day SF, Bus Tour & Walk Home

Photo: View from far side of Golden Gate bridge back towards San Francisco

Photo: Top of Twin Peaks

Arrived yesterday after our 12 hour flight, was the best long flight we've both had. The plane was one of Air NZ's latest 777's, with much thinner seats providing more leg room and the inflight entertainment system. We took inflatable neck pillows and ear plugs which really helped too.

The hotel we are staying is a neat little art deco styled 'movie' themed hotel in Union Square (centre of town), complete with a mini cinema off the lobby and a huge LCD screen where they show classic movies every night. All the rooms are named after a movie and feature posters and photo's from the films.

Today had our first full day in San Francisco and completed a day tour of the city which was very interesting. First stop was the Mission Dolores, which was the first building and church built here. Then up the step windy SF hills to the twin peaks, the second largest hill in San Francisco for a view out over the fog covering the city. Next we travelled to the Golden Gate park for quick look around, they had squirrels, turtles and those giant canadian geese in the park. The squirels were very cute, we could call them over to us and they would stand on there back feet and stiff your hand! We then drove over Golden Gate bridge to the other side and watched the fog literally rolling in off the hills - amazing to see as it was such a warm, clear day.

The trip finished at Pier 39, one of the many wharfs in San Francisco which also hosts the Maritime Museum and provides a great view back up at the city from the water, and across to Alcatraz. We went for a walk around the neighbourhood here, touristy area but very pretty.

Finally we tried to catch a cable car back to Union Square but the queues we just enormous, so we ended up busing and walking back through China town to the hotel.

Tomorrow biking across the Golden Gate Bridge - should be interesting if there is fog around like today!

Gadgets for USA/Mexico Trip

Disclaimer: the following is technical stuff, not holiday stuff, written by Peter!

Well we are about to head off on our trip to USA & Mexico and I have spent a few hours today getting some technology in order to allow us to keep ourselves and everyone updated on our travels.
1 This blog, I haven't done a blog before so it should be an interested experience.
2 Two camera's, a Sony Video camera and an old Canon Digital Camera. We will be able to use still photo's off both camera's for the blog, and video's from the Canon. The Sony is a bit difficult to get video's off as we will need a computer with firewire support.
3 A U3 USB Stick with a selection of U3 applications to make getting online a easier from Internet Cafe's. Skype (making phone calls over the internet), Firefox (web browser with my own favourites), ACDSee (resizing photo's for email & blogs), myPodder (to download Podcasts), Trillian (Instant Messaging), Avast! (to protect from virus infected PC's)
4 Our MP3 players, for entertainment during the flights and long bus trips.