The drive to Ottawa....

This was over Easter weekend April 07

We were picked up from the hotel by Miriam's boss and started the 12 hour drive (spanned over 2 days) to Ottawa [12 hours in the car with Miriam's boss - more than a good chance to get on the right side;)], stopping in Ithaca for the night. The first day consisted of freeways, American flags, small '(Hicks)...villes', American flags, bare trees, American flags, and a little bit of snow. But then we arrived in Ithaca.

We all liked Ithaca because of its small town, big University feel to it. There were heaps of cool little cafes, restaurants (including the MooseHead restaurant) , bars and the young population gave the place a cool vibe. Ithaca was the first place in America where we had a nice meal! While in Ithaca we visited Cornell University . It is situated on a hill looking over the Ithaca township - the buildings reminded me of Cambridge.

After a nights sleep, we were on the road again - so cold that our bottles of water in the car froze over night. The days journey consisted of freeways, American flags, snow (and lots of it), American flags, bare trees, a view of Lake Ontario, and a border crossing.

We crossed the border at Ogdensburg, a small village on the shores of Lake Ontario. It was the quietest border crossing I have ever been through by car. There were about 2-3 vehicles crossing at the same time as us. After 5-10mins we were through. Canada! The first thing I noticed was a Canadian flag outside a house along the shores of Lake Ontario. The second thing I noticed was metrics - our speed limit was now 100km/h. The car had a switch to change the speedo dials to km/h instead of miles/h.

After about an hour or so we arrived in the place we would call home for 3 years - Ottawa !

San Fran for one more day, then onto Washington....

This was around April 1, 07

So, it was a beautiful day and we got to the airport early to catch the flight to Washington - Baltimore area. We booked in, cued up for the ridiculous security check (shoes and socks off - I was wearing jandels but still had to take them off) and went to our gate for departure. A United employee said over the system that the flight was delayed - no reason given. 30mins later she then said flight was canceled because the pilot didn't turn up! So to cut a long story short we cued for about 4 hours to get our complimentary hotel and food pass and re-booked our flight for the next day to Dullus International - 1 hour or so from our hotel out of Washington - near Arundel Mills. The flight across to Washington was uneventful - good views of the Grand Canyon etc (see pic).

Our hotel was right beside a 2 mile long shopping (outlet) mall called Arundel Mills . Crazy stuff! One of the biggest, if not the biggest in the States. It took me 4 hours to walk from one end to the other, stopping at a few shops on the way through - electronic stores bigger than some malls back home; shoe stores with enough shoes to fit the towns folk of a town the size of Ashburton; a 24 cinema complex with giant pillars at the entrance; clothing stores where it was cheaper to buy bulk than a single item (so as to get rid of their stock). It was massive, far too big.

We had a free upgrade on our car rental. The guy at the Hertz counter - a young boy racer type - upgraded us from a Toyota corolla to a brand spanker V6 Pontiac G6 GT. 'Nice car, you will have a lot of power' - were his words. It had an eight speaker sound system with subwoofer, electric and heated everything including seats and mirrors; a hologram of the speedo etc that displayed on the front windscreen when you drove! We found a Baltimore hip-hop station 92q with DJ K-Swift, turned up the eight speaker sound system and drove around the car park at Arundel Mills;)

Miriam had to work for a few days near Washington, so on one of the days I had the chance to go to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. I've never been into planes that much and wouldn't know much about them but the large hanger full of planes and the space shuttle Enterprize was unreal. You can check out some photos at flickr . I also made it to the Air & Space Museum in Washington - watched a Red Tag Fighter Pilot movie on the iMax cinema - pretty cool, picture was good (except for bugs running across the lens), sound amazing, film crap.

We (including Miriam's boss and wife) went to an ice hockey game on the Wednesday night. It was a nothing match in terms of the NHL competition - Washington vs Florida of all places - but it was our first. You can see why they wear all that protective gear as some of the hits were big - we were up near the back and could still hear the shoulder charges against the wall. The speed of the game was amazing - Washington won 1-0. I will have to learn how to ice skate on the canal in Ottawa.

Next day we tried to do the Smithsonian Institute Museums in the National Mall. However it was Spring break and really not a good time to be visiting - heaps of people and loud ones at that! All we could manage was the Natural History Museum. Very cool Museum - recommend it, just not around school holidays. In the pre-historic section, there was an archaeologist working on a dinosaur bone dated back 120 million years - I took a photo but the '120 million years' part was blocked from view. We also saw (un-related to bones) the worlds largest diamond - the 'Hope Diamond'.

That day in Washngton was freezing - which was going to be a common theme as we headed north to Ottawa...

The city of San Francisco...

Last weekend of March 07

We took the bus into San Fran the next day. What a great city. After finding Union Square we soon got our bearings - a compass would come in handy in he US as the street signs include the compass points. There were many tourists around central - we couldn't get over the long cue for a ride on the tram up Nob Hill, a 1 hour wait for a ride. Being from Wellington, we ended up walking to the top of Nob Hill later in the day - took all of 15mins. There is a selection of photos from San Fran on Flickr and a silent video of break-dancing at Fisherman's wharf on YouTube.

We took a cable car to Fishermans Wharf on the San Fran waterfront and boarded a tour boat of the harbour. It took us right out to the Golden Gate bridge and around Alkatraz. On the way out we passed a group of seals bathing in the sun and were told that we might see sperm whales in the harbour - but not that day. The Golden Gate bridge was amazing up close. Just as impressive was the longer San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which was completed a year before the Golden Gates in 1936. Anyway both were impressive. Going around Alkatraz wasn't as airy as I thought it might be because of all the tourist boats arriving.

Once on land we had some dinner around Pier42, did some shopping etc etc, walked some more back around cenral, did some shopping etc etc and took the late BART back to the area of our hotel. We were flying to Washington the next day, o we relaxed at the hotel for the night.

So that was San Francisco. Or was it....

Arriving in San Francisco...

End of March 07

After saying the good-byes to out families at the airport, we - M&M (also known as Miriam & Mike) - boarded a domestic flight to Auckland in order to catch the onwards flight to san Francisco. The domestic flight was delayed a few minutes - at the time we thought nothing of it. We arrived at Auckland airport realising that the 'final call' was showing on the international departures board for our flight to San Francisco. Now I'm a laid back person, but when 'final call' was showing and we had to get to the international terminal (10mins down the road), go through immigration, and then get to our gate, my laid back nature suddenly sat up a bit. We caught the free bus to international, filled out the embarkment cards, went through immigration, and ran to our gate. Luckily our flight to San Fran was delayed and we had time to reflect on the situation - actually I went to the loo.

Now I'm not going to go through every detail of the flight across the pacific, like the plot of a 70's thriller movie. All I can say is that it was a pleasant flight on Air New Zealand, however I never slept (I find it hard to on any flight) and ended up watching or listening to the huge selection of entertainment available. So I was a little tired on arrival.

San Francisco. We arrived around lunchtime & went through immigration and customs without a hassle - no fingerprinting! Our hotel was closer to the airport than downtown San Fran but it was nice. I had no idea about how much to tip anyone and tipped the driver of our shuttle a little more than what was the norm - I realised this when he smiled (almost laughed) and thanked me 'very much' for the generous tip.

We rested a bit and then went to 'Leann's diner' cross from the hotel. This was a classic looking stereotypical American diner. The menu consisted of burgers, pancakes, ribs, chicken sandwiches etc and all came with a small salad and large portion of fries. It ended up being one of the fattest meals I had had in a while, leaving me feeling more tired than when I arrived. [I'm sorry to say, but this ended up being a common theme throughout the places we visited in the States - the food portions were always huge; fries came with everything; everything had corn syrup in it making the foods sweet as (literally); and the coffee was either filtered and disgusting or just disgusting. I'm not saying that all of the US is like this, only the places we ended up at]. Anyway, we were at the diner and I said to Miriam (along the lines of) 'we are in a stereotypical American diner, all we need now are stereotypical cops with mo's asking for donuts'. And then low-and-behold a group of cops walk in (one with a mo) and sit down beside us. However, they didn't order donuts and that was because 'Leann's' didn't have them on the menu. I said to Miriam, 'I gotta get a photo with these cops'. Great guys - they were egotistically proud when asked to be in a photo - the one with the mo brushed it back ready for the snap. We left Leann's, thanked the staff and laughed about what just took place.