Los Angeles and the last of the trip...

It's been awhile again, but I have some more pictures for you from the end of our road trip! We finished off the saga by going through LA to see family and friends. We first went to Riverside to visit with family. Andrew's Aunt and Uncle have a marvelous view from near the top of a hill and recounted stories of how Riverside and the surrounding area has grown over the past decades.

Next we went to Venice Beach, a first for us and our hosts in LA. We saw transformers...

And had a lovely brunch, including my pesto scrambled eggs!

There were lots of artists selling things, and lots of people selling crap, and some funny things such as this sand art. Don't worry, Andrew gave the bucket a dollar so that I could take the picture.

After walking through the artists and a music festival that we found at random, we rented bikes and rode down the beach towards Santa Monica. Unfortunately it was a bit cold and cloudy, so the beaches were actually pretty empty.

We walked out onto the end of the pier and back as well, though we didn't ride the Ferris Wheel.

But we found the end of Route 66!

Here is us on our bikes!

After we left LA, we took a last picture of the car on it's epic road trip, for posterity's sake. For those who didn't know, this is what we drove around for a month in across the country. You can sort of see my plant in the back seat, which we almost fried a couple of times, but I am happy to say it made it to California and is much happier in a window now.

We were very excited to finally cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco and get a glimpse of the city!

It was a both a sad and happy feeling to have finally arrived, foggy cold and all...

I will do another post soon with some pictures of where we are and some of the sight seeing we have already done!

Viva Las Vegas!

Part of our trip included crashing the MIT 2010 Pi Reunion (yes, it's a reunion roughly pi = π = 3.1415 years after you graduate) in Las Vegas. We knew a lot of people from the class of 2010, so we decided to tag along on their reunion.

We stayed at the Cosmo with a couple other friends, which had a massive chandelier throughout the casino. But this was the view from another set of friends' room in the Paris hotel. If I could have panned right more, you can also see the Bellagio fountains!

This was inside the hotel, where they have made a small, French city with shops, cafes, and a beautiful blue sky. In the casino area, the base of their Eiffel Tower even comes down into the building!

This was inside the Bellagio. A portion of their ceiling in the main entrance is made of these glass flowers.

And of course, we watched a fountain show. Which I hadn't actually done before, but was fun! Make sure you get a good song though, they rotate through them.

Part of the glitz and glam of Vegas is just walking around and taking in all of the lights and people watching. And the obligatory lose $10 in the slot machine (though at one point we were up!).

And of course, we ate some wonderful food. Below is pictured steamed buckwheat noodles and dipping sauce, blue cheese smothered rolls with aioli dipping sauce, and a steak with garlic butter. We shared the sides for that meal family style, so no pictures of that.

We also went off the strip to the Silverton to find the mermaid show! She did flips under water and blew bubbles for the crowd of people watching in a tank full of fish, sharks and rays.

Now unfortunately on our way to Las Vegas, the air conditioning went out in the car about 45 min before we reached the city. And it took five days, two shops, and two air compressors to figure it out (and fix the electrical short that the first shop caused). However, it means we sampled a few extra hotels, saw a couple of shows, and hung out by the pool for several hours. I mean, if you're going to get stuck somewhere for five extra days with no car, Vegas isn't a bad place to be stuck.

This was in our room in Planet Hollywood, where the rooms are themed based on movies and they have actual movie props in them. We stayed here, Bally's and The Luxor (pyramid) during our extended stay.

We also saw the Blue Man Group show on my friend's recommendation. At the end they let you take pictures of these machines that blow smoke rings (they look more like rings the further out they go).

We also saw the infamous Treasure Island Siren show. We were in between the two ships, which wasn't a bad place to view, but meant you had to keep turning around to see what was going on.

We were close enough to feel the heat of the fire from this "explosion" though!

We also saw the Cirque du Soleil Ka show, which was exceptional. We had both already seen O, which blew us away with a stage that is a pool of water the acrobats dive into. But Ka has a 360 degree rotating stage that they use both horizontally and vertically. It was incredible.

We wandered around some more, had some good food, and for the most part enjoyed our extended vacation, all the while wondering when (and some times if) we were going to be able to leave. Unfortunately that means that we had to cut out the Grand Canyon part of our trip (don't worry, we'll go back some day!), so the next post will be about Los Angeles!

On the road to Vegas

Whew! After 5 extra days in Las Vegas, we did eventually make it to San Francisco. However, we have been super busy with moving in, buying furniture, and settling, which means I have been horrible about making an updated post!

So in between Texas and Vegas, we took roughly two days for the drive and stopped at the infamous Roswell, New Mexico along the way. This post is mainly pictures from the road while we're in the car and aliens!

We saw some great wind turbines throughout the drive and even the blades of one on the highway trying to take an offramp. Not sure if it made it around the corner, but it looked large like an airplane wing!

In Roswell, NM, they really play up the alien encounter and have an entire museum dedicated to stories from the general public and military about the debris they found and the "bodies" they saw. It was... interesting.

Also a few tourist trap attractions where you could take pictures with aliens.

We saw a lot of the road in general, with some pretty epic flat stretches... 

...and some great landscape closer to Vegas.

Eventually, we made it to Vegas! Where the MIT Pi Reunion for the class of 2010 (roughly 3.1415 years after you graduate) was happening for the weekend and we had several friends who were going. More pictures from that to come!

Texas... yeah, the state really is that big.

After New Orleans we spent several days in Austin visiting Cathy, Marilyn and Travis. Unfortunately, we didn't do too many touristy things here, mostly just hung out with people and ate so much food. We did manage to drive through the city and see the Texas state capitol building before stopping off at Barton Springs.





There was a family there from Europe feeding pigeons... sort of disease-scary, but entertaining to watch from a distance.



We also had to be sure to get us some Texas BBQ. We went to what is apparently the best BBQ in Austin, and you know it's good because we had to drive like 45 min to even get to it. This is the pit where the meat was cooking, they let us back to take a picture.



And this was the sampler plate Andrew got, complete with ribs, brisket, turkey and sausage. And of course the sides of potato salad, cloeslaw, homemade pickles and bread.



We also went out to the hoppin bars on 6th street one night. The food was excellent, we found a bar with arcade games and skeeball, and the buiilding downtown that's shaped like an owl.



After that we made our way to Dallas to visit with Jesse and where we finally saw some cowboys.





And on Marilyn's suggestion, we had some bluebell ice cream, which we had to admit was absolutely delicious!

Louisiana and a delay...

Sorry for the delay in posts. This past weekend we were in Las Vegas but have been having car trouble, so we are still in Las Vegas... Nothing crazy, but the AC went out and we didn't want to drive through the desert without it, but it's turned into an electrical short and they haven't been able to fix it. In the meantime, I have pictures from the previous weekend in New Orleans! We spent the weekend just off of Bourbon Street in a French Quarter style inn, the Olivier House. First things first, we wandered Bourbon Street, where they close it off to cars and people wander freely with their drinks!



The next morning we got up early and went on a swamp tour and a city tour! We were promised alligators, and boy did they not disappoint! While probably not animal rights friendly, they enticed the alligators in with marshmallows.



And used hot dogs on sticks to get them to jump out of the water.





We saw probably a dozen alligators jump! We also went through a thicker part of the swamp and stopped by "The Wishing Tree", where someone on our tour boat proposed to his girlfriend!



The guide showed us houses on stilts to avoid flood waters (the river rose 22 feet during Katrina), house boats that have electricity but don't have to pay property taxes, and a drawbridge.







For lunch we had a great Cajun sampler with jambalaya, étouffée, red beans and rice, and we ordered gumbo, fried gator and fried pickles... way too much food!



After that we did a city tour through the French Quarter, the lower 9th ward (where Katrina hit), and an above ground graveyard. Many of the houses we passed were long and skinny, called shotgun houses. They are designed so that doors can be opened from the front to the back to allow airflow through the house. This one is a double shotgun, so it's two residences in one building.



We passed through the Musicians Village, which was a nonprofit in conjunction with habitat for humanity that created houses for musicians affected by Katrina. There were also a lot of empty plots where people's houses eventually collapsed, the government cleaned it up, but the owners still haven't returned to rebuild.





The above ground cemeteries were interesting, but a little creepy. The low water table line of New Orleans means that coffins often floated back up when the rivers flooded. The above ground tombs are used instead. A body is put in and then the tomb wouldn't be opened for at least a year and a day, the tomb in the heat would act like an oven and essentially cremate the body. The remains are pushed back and drop down into a hole with the other family remains and a new body can be put in. Strange to me, but better than coffins coming up out of the ground.





That night we went out to find dinner on a balcony, some Jazz and beignets from the famous Cafe du Monde!









A great weekend in New Orleans and we definitely want to go back!

Hopefully I'll get another post about our Texas trip up soon, and hopefully the car will be fixed soon!