Yosemite Gallerys

Our photos of our time visiting the Yosemite National Park are up on Picasa Web Albums now. We've just arrived in Las Vegas and we're wrecked. Hostel is fine, a little out of the action but we're only a short walk from The Fremont Street Experience and The Golden Nugget casino where we're going for a buffet dinner later (best in town, or second best depending who you ask!)

Here's the links to the Yosemite Photays. We're gonna write about our experience there later, just too tired right now.

Thanks to everybody for their kind comments!


Gallery 1: Travelling to Yosemite Valley from SF




Gallery 2: Our hostel - The Yosemite Bug




Gallery 3: Yosemite National Park

Last day in San Francisco

Our last day in San Francisco came round faster than we could believe. We could’ve stayed longer, said that about everywhere we’ve been (except Niagara Falls!) hopefully we’ll be back to see more of the beautiful bay area.

We’d planned the previous evening to get up really early to watch the Man United Chelsea match. We tracked down a bar run by Irish people that were going to show it. Problems were they were charging $20 a head on the door and it was a bus ride away from our hostel. Luckily (especially given the game and the result) we decided to take it easy and have a bit of a lie in. Headed over to our place’s sister hostel across the street round 9 for some free breakfast and they were showing the match on their big screen in the dining room! Would’ve been raging if we’d got up at 6 and spent all that money, the ones working the desk in our hostel weren’t really in the loop with what was going on over the road. Spent the rest of the morning updating our photos and that. Got a bit behind cause wireless in our hostel just wasn’t working.

Anyways…when we finally got out and about we had a brilliant day. Caught the cable-car a few streets away from our hostel. We got an excellent spot on it, hanging on right at the front! Not for the faint-hearted but a highly recommended way to see some of the city. There’s plenty of photos and a couple of videos showing the amazing views from up high on the hills of San Francisco.

At the end of the line we got off and walked towards the Golden Gate bridge. The area was mostly parkland, really busy with cyclists, joggers, kite-flyers, soccer-kids and doggies (including a cute wee sausage dog.) You’ll notice plenty of photos of The Palace of Fine Arts which we learned of from watching an action movie, couldn’t find the spot where Sean Connery stood though. There’s loads of shots of the bay and the beaches and even a pirate thrown in there too.

Had a nice meal that evening in a Mediterranean place, tried and failed to get some laundry done. Really should get onto that soon, Chris thinks she has fleas. Watched more 24 and Rain Man before hitting the hay cause we were up round dawn again.

We’re writing this up on the way to Yosemite Valley (on Microsoft Word, we’ll copy and paste when we’ve an internet connection.) Took Amtrak which was actually pretty cheap on this particular line. On the best train ever, slow but really comfortable. The views haven’t been much to write home about…but we will anyway. We were hoping for the rolling hills of the wine country but up until now it’s been chemical plants, wrecking yards and lots of farmlands. Ah well Yosemite will make up for all of that.

Pictures from San Fran day two


Update: A stomach churning video of our ride on the San Francisco cablecar. Check out where we were. Hanging out the side right at the front. It's a wonder we didn't lose a limb.

Our first proper taste of San Francisco

1st of 4 new posts.

We spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning on The Rock - Alcatraz. Had no difficulties making it up to Pier 33 where the ferry was departing cause we're so damn good at catching public transport here. It was a pleasant streetcar ride. We also learned the difference between streetcars and cablecars which was fascinating.

Alcatraz was really interesting. Most of the tour obviously centred around it's time as federal jail but it was also cool to learn about the Indian occupation and the civil war era (which Chris was pretty knowledgable of anyways) The island was freezing, must've been an additional horrible hardship for the prisoners especially in winter, poor lads. There was bird shit everywhere. Nature's definitely taking the place back, if it ever lost it. The gardens are really nice, tended by National Park volunteers. We watched The Rock with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage on the plane to San Fran to prepare us for the visit. Didn't see any terrorists or green poison rockets though.

Had some lunch at the big pier next door which is a dead nice development the pinnacle of which was the big seal enclosure out the back. Dead funny watching them carry on, push each other around off the little wooden islands. The noise would have done your head in if you were eating nearby though.


Photos on Alcatraz and Piers


Seals at Pier 39. Arrr Arrr Arrr!

Are you going to San Francisco? Yip!

Another major bit of travelling passed off without a hitch. We got up 3am for our flight out of Logan airport to San Fran. The view from the plane was cool, we stopped in Atlanta briefly and caught a sight of the Yosemite National Park where we're off to tomorrow. There's a few photos of our amazing room in San Francisco and Bradley's penknife that got us out of another alcohol realted dilemma! Check out the cool night shots from our window that we discovered how to do by accident.

Just came back to this post to add that while we managed to get the BART train from the airport without a problem we had a bit of difficulty finding our hostel cause of the vague directions from them. We ended up at the wrong end of Taylor Street which was quite a terrifying experience. It was the middle of the day so we were fine but the people there were all a bit crazy to say the least. We were so relieved to get into the hostel and pleasantly surprised by how nice it was.



Photos from our trans-american journey

Visiting Christines cousin Siobhan O'Hea

Took a wee bus ride down to Hartford to visit Chris' cousin Siobhan who emigrated to America from Belfast around 13 years back. Siobhan lives in nearby Wethersfield which is much nicer than Hartford. There's a link below to some photos of Siobhan, her beautiful new house and loads of her lovely dog Indiana! We had a really nice day, met Siobhans brother Francis and their granny. It poured as wer were leaving Hartford, learned a few days later that there was a massive storm in New England.

Siobhan is getting married to Joe on her 25th birthday in a week. Unfortunately we couldn't meet Joe cause it was a flying visit. We know they'll both get on great on their big day and have a class time at Disney World on the honeymoon.


Meeting Siobhan and her Granny

As a little bonus. Guy dancing along to an acoridan player on Boston underground. Didn't capture his best moves (including an audacious handstand) but you get the idea. Best thing was this guy was just a randomer, not part of the acordian players act. He arrived with a bike in tow so he must've been a commuter.

Late updates again - Boston (but we're in San Francisco)

Taken us days to get round to this again. Not for lack of trying either. Finally got a chance to put these up as we were eating breakfast watching extra time of the FA cup final. Enough said about that.

Here's our Boston photos. Our initial impressions of Boston were a bit mixed. The people were really nice (everyone in America's dead pleasant, alright well nearly all). Just as we got off our worst bus journey ever at South Station Boston a lady approached us and gave us her and her husbands metro passes which sorted us out for the whole 3 days we were there. So generous. We felt like crap but we were dead touched by that. An exaggeration to say worst bus journey ever cause at Buffalo bus station we met a guy who'd been on buses for 3 days straight travelling home from Nebraska to Boston. We thought it was bad having to go back to New York to make it up to Boston.

We only spent a couple of hours at the main tourist spot around Fanueil Market the first evening. It was nice but the city looked like one big building site, or a series of many little ones anyway. They're finishing up The Big Dig, a massive 15 year road building project that Chris and I were well up on cause we accidentally caught a documentary on it on a Sunday morning. Next day we saw much more of the real Boston, well the nice real Boston anyways. Natasha's advice about the city was extremely helpful cause we didn't really have a clue. Managed to take in prominent sights from the films: Good Will Hunting and The Departed. Dave's Boston accent came on greatly. Fenway Paaark for example.

Our Hostel was lovely, really nice area and we got a free breakfast, although the coffee was horrible (we've both been drinking a lot of the stuff over here). Had a couple of beers in the Cheers bar, unfortunately only a replica of the Hollywood set and shamefully not a very good one. We saw the bar that inspired the show but we weren't quick enough to take a snap of it as we were on a tour bus.



Snappin' in Boston

Niagara Falls

Writing this at one of Niagara Falls nicer establishments and it's a Starbucks! Couldn't really get our heads around the place, actually don't think we have even yet. A lot of the town is pretty damn rough. You can see in some of our photos the run down shops and houses only a few hundred yards from the centre of the town. They must've been struggling for a while here cause them most prominent building is a big horrible looking casino run by native americans. It always seemed to be full (based on the carpark, we didn't really feel like going in despite it being one of the few places we could identify at the beginning that we could get food at.

Our hostel was fine, the area wasn't particularly nice (it being in Niagara Falls, NY). We'd read some bad things about it on the internet the previous day. The only real annoyance was the old chinese lady who ran the place who knew best about absolutely everything. She did sort us out with a nice map and seemed to genuinely care but she was really bossy and she knew the value of a dollar. Her assistant was terrifying, a youngish non-asian girl who looked like courtney love on a particularly bad day. Anyway the room was fine and we could walk safely to the falls.

The falls were spectacular, breath-taking, wet etc. There's loads of photos and a few videos which will hopefully convey how beautiful Niagara Falls is. We liked how the US side of the falls was preserved as a National Park. We didn't make it over to Canada because Dave forgot his passport but it looked really built up with casions, fares and other stuff. If anyone visits we'd recommend a short stay on the US side, maybe, probably there's more to do on the Canadian side but you can really see everything you'd want to on the american side in a day.

The power of the Falls is astounding, so much water going over there - 675,000 gallons per second according to a sign post. Chris was wondering if you poured milk into the falls at the top would it turn into butter at the bottom. We didn't get to test this out but we reckon it probably would.

Photos below!


Click here for pictures Niagara Falls

and videos!


Horsing around near the Horse-shoe Falls (at the American Falls actually)






Maid of the Mist