zimmers in texas

This will be the last installment of the "zimmers in texas" blog as we are sitting at LAX waiting for our flight home.

Let me say this has been the most amazing experience and I am very glad we had the opportunity to do this and to have Erin, Daniel and Elsie come to visit.

Glenn did manage to catch the train and he arrived safely in San Diego on Sunday afternoon. I arrived on Friday night and Gee picked me up from the airport. On Saturday morning she took me to a small airport where her brother took me up in his 2 seater plane and I got an aerial view of San Diego. It was a fantastic way to see the sights. Gee and I then went to Del Coronado for lunch. This is a lovely old hotel that sits on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

We had a lazy day Sunday and Gee left for Austin at about 2pm and Glenn arrived from Austin at about 4pm. We stayed the night at Gee's at set off for Chula Vista to visit one of the Maximus sites. From there we drove to Annaheim to another site. We were not even tempted to visit Disneyland. We stayed the night at Annaheim and then drove up to LA to visit the Burbank site. We spent the morning here and then drove to Palm Springs.

We caught up with Catherine who lives there now and is renovating a duplex she bought. It will be lovely when it is finished and she has been assured it will only be a matter of weeks.

Palm Springs is like an oasis in the desert. As you drive in there are hundreds and hundreds of wind mills on the hills and it is very dry and barren (except for the windmills). Once you hit the outskirts of town everything is green. It is an old Hollywood town where lots of movie stars play. This week is the National Film festival and apparently Brad Pitt was in town yesterday (just our luck) but we did see John ? from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

We stayed the night in Palm Springs and had a lovely visit with Catherine then headed for the Grand Canyon. This is another amazing sight. We drove around the South Rim and were both very impressed except it was freezing cold. Glenn says it really is a "grand" canyon but I think he was copying Richard Nixon's "It's a great wall" comment when he visited China.

We stayed the night in a lodge here and headed off for Las Vegas that afternoon. Las Vegas is probably the place we have both liked the least. The whole town is fake. We stayed in the Paris Las Vegas and the entire hotel is made to look like Paris. The Eiffel Tower is out the front and the Casino looks like a boulevarde in Paris with the ceiling painted sky blue with lovely white fluffly clouds so it looks like a balmy summer dusk no matter what time of day or night. We went to see the Blue Men Group and the Venetian and this hotel is made to look like, you guessed it, Venice. There is even an escalator going up and over the Grand Canal. We saw all the popular hotels like Caesar's Palace, Circus Circus, Disneyland etc etc and of course we saw Elvis everywhere. The hotels are pretty reasonable in price but the food is not, if you eat in the hotel. We caught the monorail around the city and got some good views of the city. I don't think we will be rushing back to Vegas.

The next day was a long drive from Vegas to Monterey in California. There were snow forecasts for Vegas so we expected to run in to some pretty ugly weather but we only saw very small flurries going through Mountain pass on the border between Nevada and California. The rest of the uneventful except for a stop at the Hoover dam. There is a lot of work going on there and it will be massive when it is finished.

Monterery is a lovely litte bay area on the coast about 100 miles south of San Francisco. We took at drive down to Carmel and Big Sur and the coast road is a bit like The Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Carmel is a very pretty town with no McDonalds or KFCs. I think you would need to have a fair bit of money to purchase property in this area.

We stayed a couple of days in Monterey to relax after all our driving. This is the town with Cannery Row made famous by John Steinbeck. The canneries don't exist anymore but it is still possible to see the foundations and one has been turned into a sort of market with little shops.

On Sunday we drove up to San Francisco and went for a walk to Union Square and did a bit of shopping in Macy's just for a change. Monday morning we drove to the Haight Ashbury area and across the Golden Gate Bridge. We took a cable car ride down Powell and Hyde Sts and had lunch at Fisherman's Wharf. Tuesday we went for a walk down Lombard Street which is supposed to be the bendiest street in the world. It was so cold we didn't stay want to stay outside for too long so we just took in a movie. Today we walked around the Yerbera Buento Gardens and then took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) under the bay to Berkley. We had lunch down by the bay in a lovely restaurant that had pavlova on their dessert menu and now here we are in the QANTAS club at LAX back to where it all started.

It is hard to believe we have been gone for 8 months, I am sure within about 3 weeks it will all be a blur until all our visitors from Texas start to arrive.

My favourite place- the Badlands in South Dakota
My least favourite place- Las Vegas

Glenn's favourite place- Austin
Glenn's least favourite- Los Angeles

Erin arrived safely and we have just experienced our first winter Christmas but unfortunately without snow.

Our friends Judy and Tom invited us to their home to share Christmas lunch with them. We provided the plum pudding and pavlova. Tom cooked deep fried turkeys for lunch and we had the typical sides of mashed potato, seasoning and gravy. Judy had cooked cherry pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie which were all delicious.

The week between Christmas and New Year was very busy with selling the car and packing up as much of our belongings as possible before Daniel and Mum go home.

We also did some sight seeing, shopping and took everyone to see a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse where the comedians talk over the show with pointed comments.

Erin and Daniel have been quite impressed with the shopping especially the outlet mall at San Marcos.

New Year’s Eve was a great evening at Judy’s. It was a fun night and Erin even got to let off the fireworks at midnight. We all got to hold a real shot gun and have the photos to prove it complete with a cowboy hat.

We set off for New York very early on 1st January. It was much too early considering our partying the night before but we managed to make it to the airport on time.

New York is amazing. We were amazed at the size and the amount of things to do. You would need about 3 months there to even begin to visit everything. We took a tour and got to see lots and lots of buildings in the comfort of the tour bus. We caught a ferry to Staten Island and saw the Statue of Liberty, we saw a play on Broadway and went to the museum of Natural History. We also took a horse and carriage ride in Central Park and saw where they drop the ball on New Year’s Eve. We visited Ground Zero and went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre and saw the sights from the top and the skating rink and giant Christmas tree from the ground. The queues were hours long for the Empire State Building so we gave that a miss. We tried all the foods we were supposed to like New York pizza, New York cheesecake, hot dogs from a street vendor, bagels and hot pretzels. We also caught the subway up and down Broadway and Grand Central station and walked all around Times Square.

We were very tired by the time Thursday afternoon came round and it was a relief just to sit down for a while. We must have walked miles and miles all though Manhattan is smaller than Dallas/Fort Worth International airport.

Today was our last day in Austin and we managed to pack up everything and all get away on time. I took Erin out to the airport and she made her flight to Los Angeles and I caught my flight to San Diego. Judy was coming in from Indiana and got off the plane I was due to board so we got to see each other for a short time and had a tearful farewell. I am now sitting at Houston Airport awaiting my flight to San Diego which has been delayed an hour and the gate has just changed for the third time.

Hopefully Glenn caught his train OK but I wont find that out until Sunday.
Monday we are planning to visit the Maximus sites in San Diego and drive up to Los Angeles. On Tuesday we will be going out to Palm Springs and from their into Arizona for the Grand Canyon and then Las Vegas. Our last port of call will be San Franciso and we will be heading home from their on 17th January.