The American Dream

The past few weeks have been some of the most surreal and enjoyable times of my life and unfortunately the blog suffered as we stumbled through our travels trying to take it all in. So, without writing an essay I'll try and sum up the events after San Francisco and tell some of the highlights of the trip.

The first stop was Santa Barbara, which is essentially what you see on 90210 you can tell it's such an affluent area by the people swanning about, but you also experience an extremely relaxed city with an incredible shoreline. We spent the days on the beach and wandering about, but the night was really where it all happened. By coincidence we had visited during the start of a festival to celebrate the founding of Santa Barbara or something like that, we thought we were in for a great few nights there to meet the locals and have some fun. But apparently out of towners aren't particularly welcome due to previous loutish behaviour, so we struggled to get into a few places for obscure reasons. Not to worry though, scousers always find a way to have fun and we eventually found a few places and a few reasons to party.

Sunny pier at Santa Barbara

Trying out for the Chinese Gymnastics Team

Los Angeles was the start of something special, it was the first real spot that we were excited about. We stayed off Hollywood Boulevard just a few blocks away from the famous Chinese Theatre so we quickly found ourselves looking at the floor observing each star as we walked along. There's so much to do in L.A. and we managed to fit in quite a lot:

• A day out in Universal Studios (definitely get a front of the line pass)
• Watched Everton lose to Real Madrid along with Juve and L.A. Galaxy
• Ventured to Santa Monica & Venice Beach, home to the infamous beach gym
• Toured Hollywood's Chinese Theatre

Hollywood's finest hot dogs

Our very own Man Vs Food Challenge... Man obviously won

But the really special moment of the trip was on the way back from watching the footy at the Dodgers Stadium, we sat on the bus behind three extremely mad fellas just bevvying and shouting abuse. We were slightly reluctant to talk to them as they were very very wonky, but after a bit of conversing it turned out two of them were Mike Lewis and Jamie Oliver of the band Lostprophets, the third guy was Mike's brother-in-law and was most definitely the maddest person I've come across. For obvious reasons I can't divulge the full details of the night, but as you'd expect it was the definition of a Hollywood night out, partying with rockstars. They were all sound as but also game for anything, it's a night that will forever be referred to THAT night and it'll be a story I will never get bored of telling. Hats off to them three for providing one of the best nights of my life.

The Beige Brigade reppin

After such a surreal night we traveled to San Diego which was a bit quieter than we expected, there wasn't really much to see during the day and exploring the city itself only found the Petco Park home to the San Diego padres and the pier. The hostel itself was full of middle aged hippies who proclaimed it was the best hostel in the world and sat round playing the ukulele all night, the hostel pub crawl was filled with just guys so we gave it a quick swerve and headed towards the Gaslamp quarter for the local fun. We had chosen San Diego to watch a baseball game, which is extremely boring when you watch a shit game like we did, all good having the experience watching it, but make sure you watch someone good like the San Fran Giants.

Enjoying the bevvies since the Padres are shite

San Diego is also extremely close to Mexico, so we decided on a day out to Tijuana, it is the most bizarre thing just waltzing through to Mexico and it is an experience I'll never forget. I have definitely never felt more unnerved in a place before and it didn't help that we got caught up in some sort of Union protest marching down towards us. There was nothing to do there apart from eat and drink which didn't bother us and after some interesting haggling for souvenirs we decided to head back to the safety of the states, the only thing in our way was a 2 hour queue to get back across the border. Tijuana is a strange place and Mexico certainly has a lot more to offer, it's on the list of places to explore but it was a great little taster into the people and culture, anything goes in Mexico whether it be white tigers in cages driven along in a car or transvestite prostitutes passing the glad eye to Mr England.

No welcome signs to Mexico....

But it's much nicer after the prison entrance

Las Vegas was the last stop of the trip and we were staying in pure luxury at the MGM Grand, but to get there we had two coaches to catch leaving at 8pm and arriving at 5am. It was grim to say the least, but once we were welcomed to our room, it was all worth it. Premier views of the strip in one of the best hotels there, it is without doubt the highest form of luxury I've enjoyed. As we had expected Yoh was straight down to the Casino and as you also expected he was down very quickly and despite being up a few times, he returned home down in more ways than one.

Ballin in the MGM Grand

The strip is so big and walking it proved difficult especially given the heat and humidity that you'd expect from a desert. Nonetheless, we ventured through all the hotels from Circus Circus to the Cosmopolitan and considering we had to be up at 5:30am for a Grand Canyon tour we were looking for a relatively quiet night. The complete opposite happened, we soon found ourselves paying for a two night club crawl and before you know it we were in the Chateau Club in the Eiffel Tower fueled on petrol drinks and so when the phone rang to wake us for our tour, we just didn't answer... another reason to return I guess. Being the finished guys that we were, we spent what little time of the day remained riding the rollercoasters of the Stratosphere and New York New York and it quickly became apparent that Jack wasn't particularly keen on heights. Our last night of the trip was spent on the club crawl again and then 6 hours later we were up for Steve Aoki's pool party, which just consisted of 1000 beach balls violently pinging heads and drinks spilling in the pool. Not my particular taste of music but definitely a good time when you're seeing Steve Aoki webbing kids with cakes and just enjoying partying whilst being in a pool, always fun.

The Premier View 

This trip has been such a blur, not just in the griminal hangover sense but because it's just gone by so fast after doing so much. I'm extremely proud of managing to survive with my best pal Alex Yoh for three weeks but I won't be spending so much time with him for a while at least...

Keep watching.