Cruising around California

I am having a brilliant time. After arriving at LAX I spent a couple of days in Santa Monica, immediately met a nice , Abi, who is also travelling on her own, so spent two days with her. Abi was pretty fit though, as the first day I think we walked for about 6 hours, and the second we decided to cycle up Santa Monica mountain. Only 20 miles, but it took us all day. Going up was very hard work, but the view from the top was worth it and the ride back down was fantastic.

I met up with a friend, Dave, from work for the weekend who just happened to have a convertible Ford Mustang. We drove to Las Vegas together (after I had gotten us lost in LA). Las Vegas is quite possibly the coolest place I have been to, everything is geared towards having lots and lots of fun. We stayed in 'Excalibur', a medieval themed hotel. In LV you can travel round the world in a few miles, my favourite hotel was the Venitian, so beautiful and even had real canals inside. Dave's was Mandalay Bay because of the waitresses wore very skimpy outfits. I even doubled my money gambling which was good, shame I only bet $2 in the first place.

Driving back through Death Valley was amazing, it is supposed to be the hottest place in North America, and it snowed!

Last night madness with Dave was fun, I drunk the biggest tail I have ever seen and proceeded to get absoultely wrecked. I am getting used to drinking tails, I have found a hotel here which gives out free drinks to its guests. I managed to blag my way in, made friends with the barmaid and now can get free tails before 7.30pm each evening. I haven't told them I'm staying down the road.

I'm just chilling out now in San Diego, the weather is very hot and sunny and its a lovely place to spend a few days. It is Thanksgiving tomorrow so I'm going to take my turkey sandwiches down to the beach.

Hope you are all having fun back home,

Sue