Travel: 26/6/08: Den Haag: Bonding with the city

Despite its proximity and importance, I have rarely found myself in the city of Den Haag (The Hague). Den Haag is the seat of Government and home of the Queen. It isn't the capital and main tourist centre; that's Amsterdam. In between them is a large swathe of nothing much. Only an airport, Leiden (the town I worked in for about 6 years, on and off) and a lot of cows.

From the tram I got on at Den Haag central station, the first thing of note I saw was a building with a high fence and military-style policemen. It was obviously the US embassy as no other building in the Netherlands is as protected as this. In fact, nothing is ever as well protected as a US embassy. Even Bond-villain bases are easier to slip into.

Adoring Amsterdam, as one does, one forgets that other cities in the country are also beautiful; also have great architecture; also could be lived in.

Today's piece of employment was to have my voice recorded for a forthcoming animation. I play a guitarist in a punk band (which is one dream come true) and a nerdy keyboardist in an electro-synth band (another dream, obviously).

I walked back because it was a nice day and I'd had so much fun recording the voices no tram could contain it. I passed great music shops, some very impressive sand sculptures and, once again, the US embassy. Of the two guards behind the fence, one was on the phone and the other engrossed in sending an SMS. Guards are so easy to distract these days. They weren't this slack in James Bond's day.

Friday 13 June: Portland, Oregon - Slowing

We landed in Portland International Airport, which is one of the best organised airports I've seen in the US. It helps that it's not so big. The thing I am still not used to is the American system whereby all of the shops are before you go through security. Therefore after you have checked in, you still mingle with thieves, drug smugglers and terrorists for a long time before you get on the flight. But I guess I'm used to security-conscious Europe rather than the commercially-minded US.

One thing I did touch upon was the problem we were having with NWA, the Network With Additional Costs. When we came to check in online, we were allocated seats. Two people who booked tickets together paid for in the same payment were allocated seats at two different ends of the plane. Why would any company do that? There is a 100% chance we would want to sit together in those situations. The reason is, NWA wanted to grab more money from us. It allowed us to change these seats, but most of the available seats were only available at a 50 dollar upgrade charge. So basically, they stick you in unacceptable seats and charge you to sit somewhere reasonable. We picked the last two free seats together that weren't charged for (right up near the back of the plane) because we didn't want to give these crooks any more money. We should have remembered their 1988 hit, "F**k tha Passengas."

On top of that the site wouldn't let us fully check in after we selected seats because we'd booked via KLM. It suggested trying then booking airline's site. We tried KLM's website told us "why not check in online at nwa.com." Believe me, baby, we tried.

I am currently trying to complain but because of the fact we booked through KLM, they can't seem to find details. Criminal AND badly organised. Sounds like a bad combination.

We had a lot of time before the flight. I ate a huge mushroom burger while Cath napped. For some reason Americans think there is nothing better than putting a pickled gherkin in a bun otherwise filled with good things. They must either like them or think that it is good to do some penance with something that is otherwise enjoyable. Maybe they think it will help them get into heaven. Not with gherkin-breath, you won't.

Going through security, it was shown that my ticket had a random "S" on it. This random letter is added to the card based on criteria unknown and means extra security check required. It meant that I had to go through the "puffer." This is a glass box the size of a small elevator that blows air at you in order to dislodge particles. It then sniffs the air for whatever they are looking for: pesticides, drugs or explosives. Then a chatty woman swabbed my new bag and put the swabs into a machine. It was my new laptop bag and she swabbed pockets I hadn't even known were there. If the machine was calibrated for "new bag smell" alarms would have gone off all over the building. But whatever they were looking for, I didn't have any. They funny thing is, this extra security took me outside of the normal queue and I was all done before Catherine with her standard security was through. Evidently potential terrorists get fast-tracked onto the plane. The Americans have never really understood security. But I guess it protects the airport itself more.

We still had plenty of time and so nabbed some coffee and used the airport's power to laptoptify. Portland is a fun, small airport and huge jumbo planes have to line up with tiny little things that are barely bigger than the cockpit of the former.

Our flight was full and our seats at the back were not bad in that they had a little more room as there were only three of them instead of the four earlier on in the plane as it was starting to taper in there. And we weren't right at the back where the seats don't go back. However the flight was popular with people with children who I still insist should have a class of their own.

The safety instructions were given via a video with what seemed to be real aircrew carefully picked to be completely across the board racially. There was a Dutch translation after every explanation, but it was done quickly and only covered some of the topics. For example none of the first class apparatus was explained suggesting the cost-conscious Dutch don't travel first class.

Soon after take off we were offered a last glimpse of the magnificent Mount St. Helens, sitting there, biding its time.

It was a long ten-hour flight which Cath cleverly slept through. She part-fasted whilst I ate everything that came my way and completely failed to sleep whatsoever. My method was actually the more successful at getting back on the new time zone but only because I have the more flexible body clock that sorts itself out pretty quickly at the expense of being a zombie for the first few days back. I even managed to do a short improv gig the afternoon I arrived. I have no idea how it went, but I certainly wasn't in my head, which is a good thing.

It was nice to visit new places in the US. San Francisco and Portland I could definitely do again. In fact I suspect I could live in both places, and not many cities in the US make me feel like that.

Friday 13 June: San Francisco - Fasting

The latest scientific wisdom is that the way to beat jetlag is through fasting. Apparently if you don't eat for 14 hours before you land, you reset your internal clock the moment you eat, your body deciding this must be breakfast. All well and good for flights landing around breakfast time. If you land in the evening, what do you do then? Perhaps I should do some research rather than rely on second-hand hearsay. I remain unconvinced as to the scientific fact of this and will continue to eat and carry my magic time sticks with me.

We awoke at seven, grabbed a quick breakfast, packed and hopped on the shuttle-bus for the airport. It was all very easy, although our German driver was a tad grumpy that we were not ready when he turned up a couple of minutes early. We took a tiny little Alaskan Airline plane to Portland. 18 rows of seats it had. I was rather disappointed there were no Inuit on the flight. Maybe they were in Frost Class. (I know it's a bad joke but I woke up at 7, so what do you expect.)

I liked Alaska Airlines. They had a big picture of an Eskimo on the tail fin and served Starbucks coffee. However, even this managed to taste like mud as all airline coffee does. I think it is something to do with altitude.

Up in the air, we had some awesome views. A great snow-capped mountain drifted past some 45 minutes in. This was almost certainly Mount Shasta. Sometime later appeared a giant crater filled with water called Crater Lake. This was Oregon and more mountains followed many with snowy peaks, without which mountains don't really seem like mountains. Around that area there seemed many paths (they must have been roads/tracks from this height) but otherwise the area seemed very unspoilt woodland.

Thursday 12 June: San Francisco – Sway

Following yesterday's Japanese Tea Garden disappointment, we decided to take no chances. Once we had dispensed with breakfast, we headed that way on the number 71 bus. The Japanese Tea Garden is an island of peace and serenity and expensive tea in the middle of a moderately relaxed city by US standards. It's only spoilt by occasional throngs of tourists of all nationalities. And the tea isn't really that expensive given the peaceful surroundings and the great snacks you get with it. There is even some tamelife (it can't be called wildlife when it's so placid) including fat koi, some happy crayfish (or crawfish, or crawdaddies if you're Texan), a myriad of pond skaters and even an oddly marked bumble bee that could only walk. What was great to learn was that in the Eastern European language of the two very Boratian gentlemen with 4 English-speaking kids "crawfish" is the word for crawfish. Maybe it was originally an Uzbek, Kazik or Tjerkminik word in the first place, but I doubt it.

Cath and I spent many hours discussing the way of dealing with homelessness. There is a lot of it. Many places have different ways of dealing with it. Most with some success, but the problems seem to be a) not too much is done, and often it's not initiated by the city but individuals who may or may not be able to get city funds; and b) the policy in each area is quite rigid and often somewhat different. And the fact is different people are on the street for different reasons and the best method to help them out is not the same for each person. Variable measures is even more expensive than a fixed, one-size fits all solution. I think it fair to say we failed to come up with the perfect solution.

On the way out of the park, curiosity took hold and we looked in to see the Shakespeare Garden. Fortunately, a pair of elderly cyclists were being told all about it by one of the park-keepers. It's a recreation of an Elizabethan garden. What was even more interesting to learn was the fact that whole park (Japanese Tea, Shakespeare and other gardens) is "built" on sand. (If you look on the (Golden Gate) park on the map, it goes right up to the sea). It apparently requires almost constant watering for it to remain a park and not become a huge dune.

We caught the bus to Haight (pronounced, The Bus to Hate - a great title for a terrible 1950s drama; although not as good as the sign on the tram "Haight-Casto" or Hate Castro! - great title for terrible propaganda movie).

San Francisco prides itself on its coffee. It considers itself the real home of coffee in the US and that Seattle is just the pretender who just gave us a lot of chains. In a minimarket (grocery store a few blocks off Haight, there was a selection of 5 coffees in flasks. People on the go can squirt out any one of these into a beaker, pay and continue to go. Five types of coffee is more than most bars offer. We had our coffee (okay, my coffee) over the street in The Sacred Grounds Café < http://www.sacredgroundscafe.com/>, a suitably hippy sounding name for an established but still somewhat disorganised eatery. There was a Hillary Clinton poster in the window which was now just ironic since she was out of the race. (That is at least until her assassins get to Obama.) The food was great. I had a sandwich with some great Sudanese chicken thing and Cath had falafel. On another table (the only other filled one for most of the time) a woman talked with a loud penetrating voice about the peace of meditation. She might have been ironic too.

The bathroom proved to be an adventure. To do it properly, you walked through the kitchen and on your left was a door unclearly marked Toilet. However, go through the kitchen and turn right, ignoring the scruffy barely-marked door on the left, and you end up in a cavernous area that leads down many paths. Some to stairs, another to an exit and a another one to a toilet marked "For pizza patrons only." This was locked. And anyway, we were in a cafe, not a pizza restaurant. I followed the thread of my jeans back and found the entrance to the lair. I fancied I heard what could have been screams far off in the distance. Presumably from the pizza place. Back in the kitchen I asked where the bathroom was. It was immediately on the left out of the kitchen. I would have felt stupid had not a girl appeared in the kitchen for the same purpose I appeared there a few minutes earlier. I let her go first and she immediately turned right. It wasn't me. The door was invisible.

We took 2 buses to the Golden Gate Bridge. (That is we changed, rather than went on separate buses.) The Golden Gate Bridge was once the longest suspension bridge in the world, and it is certainly one of the most famous. It's mainly recognisable because 90% of suspension bridges all look the same. From the look-out point, just before you get on the bridge by foot, you can look down and see an historic army fort. It's not obviously reachable from there, although it is clearly reachable by many people.

We walked about 1/3 of the way across the bridge and back mainly to say we'd done that. We had been expecting it to sway in the reasonably strong winds, as some guide books had suggested, but it didn't. Sometime around Portland we'd been past the bridge that sometime in the 50s or 60s swayed so violently in the wind it fell down. It's one of those piece of footages you never forget. And so when we read that the Golden Gate Bridge can sway in the wind, this is the image we had. We were both relieved and disappointed. Even so, without the swaying it was still not a casual experience for someone who is scared of heights.

I wasn't scared a bit.

We then took two buses to the coast to go visit the Seal Rocks. These are rocks where seals are known to hang out. At that time they were all rock and no seal. I guess the seals don't work after 5 pm. They must go to their night home and eat their fish suppers. Mind you, they're probably sick of fish.

We took another bus back to our hotel and steeled ourselves for dealing with nwa - navigators with attitude. Airlines, once companies of apparent generosity, are becoming very miserly and grasping. We booked two seats at the same time and when we came to check in, we were allocated seats miles apart from each other at different ends of the plane. Most available seats were in the aisle, but were "premium" seats, i.e. you had to pay to sit there. So they give you unacceptable seats and then make you pay to sit with the people you booked the tickets with. It was just a cynical, penny-pinching way of grabbing more cash off you. A complaint has been made.

We had dinner in a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant not far from the hotel. The best thing about it was the aquarium display of potential dishes in the front. Of all the creatures only a couple of the shrimp showed any enthusiasm and were trying hard to get out of their tank.

On the way back, we encountered a chatty woman who was begging. That is she was sitting by the side of the sidewalk talking to passers-by in a friendly and kindly way. We spoke for a bit until she brought up the subject of kids. She explained she had 5, and that they were the greatest thing that had happened to her, but due to some mistake she could no longer see them. She burst into tears and it was clear she preferred us to leave her be. There was a story there and we were both curious to know and to help if at all possible. She was well dressed, well-groomed, and had she been walking along we wouldn't have thought beggar except that her shoes had seen better days. Sitting on a blanket on a city street is all you need to say beggar, it seems.

AAfter putting much thought into solving or alleviating the problem of homelessness, we came to few concrete conclusions, packed and went to bed. All we know is that there are people without any home and there are seals with two.

Wednesday 11 June: San Francisco – My new favourite Asian city

Notice the UFO in the above picture. Is any more proof needed?

We grabbed our breakfast from the hall and then headed out. There was a whole saga in searching for a stamp. We gave up for then, but eventually had word that there was a post office beneath Macy's. We wandered down to Market Street via a somewhat dodgy area. There were many beggars and at one point a guy had fallen out of his wheelchair. Two motorcycle cops were already on the scene and taking charge firmly but friendlily. We caught the historic Tram Line F where old trams (not just from San Francisco but also from other cities are run for the use of locals and the joy of tourists. We caught it in a bad part of Market Street but it meant the tram was not too busy before the stop where all the tourists get on it. The line goes to the end of Market Street and then heads up along the harbour. We went to Pier 33 as the night before we'd booked tickets to go to Alcatraz.

Once the last place you might want to be sent, now huge queues of people wait to get on the boat to go there. The island is prime real estate; plumb in the middle of the bay with great views of both bridges and of the city itself. The trip over is quick, and the boats are large but full. You need a couple of hours to really do the island properly, even though there is much of the island you can't get to, either due to renovation / dilapidation or because birds are nesting. The island is prime nest site for gulls, guillemots and other sea-faring birds.


Most people start with the short film giving an overview of the history. It was originally made by or for the Discovery Channel and I had seen it before as it was somewhat familiar. So I even knew vaguely about the Indian Occupation which Catherine didn't. This, for those of you who didn't know was in 1969 when a group of Native American activists took over the island as a protest about the generally dreadful treatment they were receiving and had been receiving since the first boat load of immigrants piled into the country. In particular it was against a kind of forced integration that was in action at the time.





Wandering around the island is pleasant and no doubt good for you. But the most interesting part is the audio tour of the prison itself. Ex wardens and former prisoners tell you what was where, what it was like to be there, and about the various escape attempts. Some of the latter were studies in patience and ingenuity.




We took the ferry back. This is the only way if you discount swimming which is ill-advised because the waters have treacherous currents and sharks. The sharks however are only vegetarian, which means they kill you by boring you to death about how they don't eat meat. (Only kidding. Smiley face.)

San Francisco is one of the few major cities that still have abandoned harbour warehouses. In many other cities these have all been converted from crummy, rat-infested eye-sores to some of the most expensive places to live in the city.

We headed over to Chinatown. Actually half the city could be called Chinatown, but we were heading to the bit that has most of the restaurants. It was curious to hear the children on the bus all speaking Chinese to each other. It's not what I would have expected, but it was nice to hear. I don't hear enough Chinese these days except from random conversations on the train via the airport and from my Shanghai neighbour at work.

We ate in a Vietnamese restaurant that we think was called Pho or Golden Flower. I know, go to Chinatown to eat Vietnamese is a bit like getting French food in a Tapas bar, but Amsterdam is short of Vietnamese places. Keeping with the Asian theme, we went on to the famed Japanese Tea Garden. However it was shut.

That evening we decided to check out the real nightlife of the city. We took the old-fashioned tram to Castro, the lively gay side of town. Even for a Wednesday it was pretty happening. A few restaurants were open but we decided to look for our light supper in another part of town, supposed to be the main going-out centre, the Mission District. We walked there, avoiding dark streets, and for those of used to the scale of Amsterdam maps, it was a touch further than anticipated. The Mission District is a going-out sort of place, but it's also a bit down-at-heel. It's supposed to be good for bar hopping, but it's not like there is a line of bars, you have to know where the next one is. Most bars and restaurants were closing as we were arriving. The only clearly open eatery was a Mexican fast-food 'restaurant' (it had a counter and no chairs as far as I could see) which was packed and needed a security guard. The two guys who went in as we passed smelt like they had come from a cannabis sauna. They seemed to be in good spirits.

We also passed a guy who was dressed a pimp. The very stereotype of a pimp. If you'd have seen him in a movie or gangsta rap video you'd have said how clichéd surely pimps don't dress like that any more. I'm not saying he was a pimp, I'm only saying he dressed like one. And the girl on his arm dressed like a ho.

We realised a snack would not be forthcoming without queuing for a long time behind two guy who could be classed as a class-C narcotic. We bought some nuts and hailed a taxi. The taxi sped through the city and afforded us our first Bullitt moment. A Bullitt moment can only happen in San Francisco on those streets where the roads slope up or down but are level for an intersection. It's when you go too fast on the up or down and it causes a bit of a suspension crunch you hit the flat. I was so happy to have had this experience. Someone should start a Bullitt tour, so that any tourist can experience this (as well as a few key sites from the movie).

Tuesday 10 June: San Francisco – Flowers in your hair

Our hotel was one of the many quirky hotels which San Francisco is famous for. It sits amongst many other hotels (both quirky and chain) in an area not far from Union square a focus of much tourism and shopping. Breakfast is provided in the hall of each floor and so you can go out and pick up what you want without too much preparation. I hardly met anybody going to get my coffee and pastries so could have worn almost nothing had I wanted. I did. That is I did wear something. It was small scale and there were no waffle making machines and no Spanish ladies making omelettes. Which is odd because the room was costing us more than the hotel in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills! Not round the corner from two massage parlours and within the shouting range of drunks. But the novelty of it being almost outside your door was something.

The day was Sunny but windy. One of those days where I wondered if it might get too hot and Catherine was freezing. We wondered down to the end of Powell Street where the Powell-Hyde cable car is manually turned round and sent up again. San Francisco is blessed with an abundance of public transport. Where as in LA it is invisible and unused, in San Francisco you are never far away from a bus, cable car, vintage tram or other form of mass transport. And if you like the underground form of transport, you can always do the Bart, man. A vintage trolley/tram travels up and down the divisive Market Street and then up the coast. Hundreds of buses and electro-buses cross the city in a variety of ways. And there are two cable car lines. These go north-south and seem to only ever be filled with tourists. They cost 5 dollars a pop, where as all the other forms are $1.50. $1.50 to go anywhere in a big city. It makes most other cities, London especially, look ridiculous. At the terminus for the Powell-Hyde line there was a large line of tourists waiting to buy tickets and passes. And an even longer one to get on the cable car. We queued and got 3-day passes (aka Muni Passport) which give unlimited travel for $18 and then walked up the street. At the terminus they only let enough people on to fill the seats. This is because they know from then on people will jump on at the next few stops. We did so, and followed the line to its end.

Whilst we had been in the queue for tickets, we nabbed a huge folder that was being touted about for free Starbucks coffee. The huge folder contained a tiny little business card thing that was the actual offer (you can have a free iced coffee or iced mochaholic (or something like that) on Wednesdays). The rest of the packaging was useless. The guy giving them out even said, don't throw them on the floor. Guy, tell Starbucks to just give you the card rather than a folder that is instant rubbish.

How the cable cars work is quite fascinating. All along the route under the street is a cable. It moves constantly - you can hear it. The cable car, when it wants to go forward, grabs onto the cable and releases the brakes, when it wants to stop, it releases the cable and on go the brakes. The cable car goes up and down the hills and when going down the two conductors have to literally jump on the breaks. It goes down streets with elderly Japanese tourists holding on the side for dear life; streets that sometimes are just wide enough for two parked cars, and two cable cars and 4 elderly Japanese tourists.

We took the cable car to the end: the marina. Here we wandered around. In the bay was a nice old sailing clipper. After the bay there was the maritime museum. It was not that old a building but it was dilapidated. If it were a ship it would have sunk with all hands. It WAS ship-shaped although certainly not ship-shape.

Our wandering morphed into a search for food. We found a fascinating looking nouveau-Vietnamese. Nouveau but not ouvert. It turned out to be part of the Ghirardelli Square. History bit: Ghirardelli was an Italian who came to California via Venezuela hoping to strike gold, but instead formed a very successful chocolate company. What seemed to be the old factory is now being turned into an up-market plaza with a tourist and chocolate bent. Although it is not finished, many businesses are already open including a McCormick and Kuleto's (this guy teams up with anybody). We went for Lori's Diner as it had outside seating and courting pigeons. Cath had something semi-healthy and I went for a Hot Rod Burger, because you can't get any more American than a Hot Rod Burger. It's a burger smothered in chilli. The burger itself was fine but the chilli was somewhat effeminate and the onion rings were sugary.

After this we partook of coffee and one of Kara's Cupcakes < http://karascupcakes.com/ > before checking out the chocolate store. It was full of chocolate. A girl at the door gave out small free samples of something filled peanut butter that would kill me if I ate 5. I had 2.

After that we walked to catch another bus, this time to Haight-Ashbury. Haight-Ashbury (pronounced Hate-Ashbree) is an area of town named after two streets that was once an area frequented by hippies. I'd only just heard of it, but to Cath it evoked all of the romance of hippidom. That is free spirited living outside of the system as opposed to being stoned and unwashed. This all happened 40 years ago. Now Haight Ashbury is a tourist street with some hippy-themed stores. There is very little evidence of real hippies living there. The odd street hawker and particularly hairy old man was all we saw. Off the main street are some great houses. Some have been painted in striking but pleasing ways. The odd one has hints of psychodaelia. We wandered round trying to find vestiges of hippiedom and then walked further down Haight to a more grungy/rock part of town. An empty bar played Ministry in the mid afternoon. I know I'm getting old as now I believe there is a time of the day that is too early for Ministry.

We struck off and found a nice local café – Café du Soleil (formerly called Boulange de Cole Valley). There we had beer and wine and observed local life. It was a definite neighbourhood, with allegiances and conflicts. One person tried to move her chair into the sun slightly further away from the café. She was very jovially told that some do-goody curtain-twitcher complains every time a chair moves too far into the sidewalk. There was even what I thought was a drug den: a house outside of which a gang of motorcyclists made lots of noise and at one point a couple of young kids sloped into for a ridiculously short amount of time, trying to look cool and not scared or suspicious.

In American Apparel, amongst the usual array of slinky clothes for skinny teens, were tiny t-shirts for tiny dogs. This is where people buy them. (We'd seen a couple on the beach already.) There was quite a selection but I didn't see any of their skinny jeans or sheer, see-through underwear for dogs.

We took a bus back that took us along Market Street to somewhere near where we got on the cable car that morning. The length of the queue for the cable car was actually only about the volume of one cable car for once. Soon after, it was back up to former length. Cath waited outside the public autotoilet but because of some clearly dodgy deals going on. She never got in. When the time was up for the person in there, someone waiting outside, handed him something and the door closed again. I'm still clueless as to what could have been going on. I can only suppose drugs or criminal stomach trouble.

We went to Chinatown to look for a snack for supper. It was a bit late, about 10, but we were surprised to find nothing whatsoever opened. Chinatown is somewhere I expect to have some late night places. But given that about 3/4 of San Francisco seems to be Chinatown, I can't say we explored much of it. To make sure we didn't die of the munchies, we popped in to witness the sort of crazies that frequent late-night pharmacies.

Monday 9 June: San Francisco – Tipping

The US is a tipping culture. That is not to say it is a culture on the edge of a precipice, although in some ways that is true. I mean that tipping is a necessary part of social interaction. Much of the business you do will have some sort of tip/reward. It is different in the UK and other parts of Europe where tipping is limited to restaurants and cafes (and is roughly around an accepted mark but variable according to service, and often optional) and for bin men (who get a Christmas gift or else you rubbish isn't cleaned up so well in January). In the US it is customary to leave a gratuity for hotel room cleaners, give bellboys and door persons cash in their hand and even to tip taxi drivers. As a European it feels condescending and unnecessary to tip someone for doing their job, but Catherine assures me it is as part of the culture as haggling is in other cultures. It should be noted that wait staff in the US are often not even paid and rely on the tips which in most of Europe would be illegal.

Despite being one of the shortest flights since the Wright brothers flew for about 10 seconds, Catherine still managed to sleep. She is an inspiration to us all. We nabbed a fixed-price airport shuttle bus (plus tip, of course) to our hotel. The driver didn't speak a great deal of English and my Mandarin is not what it was, but we punched the address in the GPS and strapped ourselves in. On the way, a local also taking the shuttle bus warned us about dodgy areas. Don't go straight on or right out of the hotel, otherwise it was fine. The bus drove via the "straight on" route so we could see it wasn't the most salubrious sections of town. We vowed to avoid it during the small hours of night.

Having dumped our bags and freshened up, we decided to sample some nearby nightlife. We had two bars that seemed close in mind. The first, a blues bar had a Southern Swing band playing. But the $15 cover seemed a bit much for the one drink we were after.

The second place was further than it had seemed on the tiny map. It was closing up as we arrived. It was 10:30. Somehow we had expected better of somewhere of San Francisco's repute. As we wandered back, we saw that many restaurants and bars were closed by 11. It's not quite what we had expected. What WAS open was Borders bookstore and the Virgin record store (which I thought had gone out of business). So you can't get a beer at 10:30, but you can buy a book or classical CD. Is this really the message we want to give our kids?

So instead we grabbed a local beer from the late-night liquor store and partied in the hotel. Well, when I say partied, I mean Cath slept and I wrote jokes. Not being the cleverest of lambs, I had bought a bottle of beer, but had no opener. A sensible man with more attire on would have gone down and asked the porter, instead I used several coins and suffered a few lacerations to my fingers before I was able to get into the well-earned beer. Early settlers who had to wrestle bears for their beer would empathise.

Monday 9 June: LA – What we missed

There were a couple of touristy and very American things we did not do during this short trip.

First was renting Harley Davidsons and riding off into the desert in the style of The Wild Angels, Easy Rider and every other US 60's counter-culture movie starring Peter Fonda.

The other thing was visiting the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace. Richard Nixon is famous for embodying everything US presidents are renowned for, except he was the one who got caught. Things they should have there are the incriminating White House tapes, a balaclava used in the Watergate hotel break-in and a packet of cigarettes smoked by Deep Throat.

I'm still waiting for the Clinton museum to open.

Monday 9 June: LA – Tar not very much

We broke our fast but were unable to get to the waffle maker again because of a throng of children and their parents. However, today there was a little Spanish lady who made omelettes how you like them. I like them warm, full of mushrooms and made by Spanish ladies.


After this we checked out and drove to the La Brea Tar Pits. The tar pits are several patches of tarry water that are filled with animal bones and surrounded by school children. Over thousands of years many creatures have found themselves trapped in the sticky pools, sunk to their deaths and been preserved as bones. For the last 100 years or so, humans have peering into the pools and recreating the creatures from their bones. There are thousands of wolves, sabre-tooths (which are no longer called sabre-tooth tigers because they ain't tigers) and American mastodons, which are like mammoths, which are like hairy elephants. (You didn't know America had elephants, did you.) Many of the creatures whose bones were found in the pits are now extinct. This could be due to the fact they kept falling in the pits, but that doesn't seem to be the most popular theory. Only one human skeleton has been found which is surprising considering how many kids there are running and screaming all around.


If you have trouble imagining how these creatures could get trapped in the tar, models of mammoths illustrate. On one side of the largest pit, a female sinks as her mate and child look on helplessly. On the other side, a happy little mammoth strides merrily off the edge unwittingly into the black goo. The human kids all run around merrily in what is essentially a place of death.




In the cheap museum, you can see many reconstructed skeletons, some life-like models and some awkward animated ones for kids still young enough to like that sort of thing. There are some facts, but possibly the best bit is the quiet arboretum in the middle (which is forbidden to groups of children). It has plants and a pool containing big koi and an abundance of turtles. The turtles swim about lazily or sun themselves. They were all relaxed except for one little one, who enjoyed aggravating the others by swimming in front of them and waggling its paws in their faces. A teenage brat turtle. Awesome.





On the way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, we drove up Rodeo Drive, famed shopping haunt for stars. The street was mostly full of tourists looking for stars, just like we were. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. The trouble with LA is at one time the roads are fast moving and you can fly anywhere, but a few minutes later, it all grinds to a halt. There wasn't a great deal of choice at the airport, so we had to eat at Chili's a chain that is a kind of prefab Texas. I had fajitas that were adequate if you ignored fact that everything had been sweetened.

Sunday 8 June: Los Angeles – Muscle Beach (far away in time)

Sleeping was not as easy as you'd think. The hotel had one of those air conditioning systems that works by loud mechanical gears, clunking pistons and turbines from the days before oil. We found out in the morning it is possible to switch it off, but then of course everything heats up because LA is all about sunshine and chaos. It's hot and sticky.

Those of you who complain about the size of UK Sunday Newspapers should get a US Sunday Paper. There's enough written material here to keep you going a whole month. And enough wood to build a shed.

The hotel had a buffet breakfast like most hotels. It was pretty good with a fair selection. Best of all was a make-your-own-waffle machine. However, this was so popular you could never get to it for kids.

The morning concierge also had that actor look. It's pretty safe to assume everyone in LA from the road sweeper to the mayor is an actor. It should be noted that even the state governor is an actor. (In the loosest possible meaning of the term - he's actually only a bodybuilder who can read out lines, but in Hollywood, anything goes.)

We took a walk around the area. It was not the movie-star part of Beverley Hills, but a highly Jewish area. With kosher delis, Hebrew schools and groups of men walking around dressed in black with big hats covering little caps. We stopped in Label's (probably pronounced "Labelle" rather than "label") for so-so coffee and coffee cake. I liked the coffee cake, but it was perhaps a bit early in the morning for sponge. Cath said it wasn't at all what she thinks off when she thinks of coffee cake. The guy seemed to mutter when we only ordered coffee, I think annoyed that we didn't order any of their staple sandwiches.

A number of years back, a friend, Carolyn and I staged a few cultural exchanges. She came to London and I went over to see their three capital cities Washington DC, Disneyland and Universal Studios. Since then she's been married, separated and now moves in theatrical circles.

Carolyn and her friend Arjay had agreed to show us about a bit. As they were running late we decided we had time to feed Catherine. We went to "Factor's Famous Deli" which was closer, bigger and better labelled than Label's. We sat in the nice garden whilst Cath had a great ALT (Avocado Lettuce Tomato) on rye bread (of course) and I had a very decent cup of coffee (decaf as there had been much "caf" at breakfast). This meant we were a little late getting back and nearly missed the friends. But eventually we got together and drove to some of the places to see and be seen in LA.

First off was the Santa Monica Pier a popular tourist and pleasure zone. Off the pier is the beach front. The beach is beautiful golden sand made 1,000,000 degrees by the sun. Near the pier is Muscle Beach, made famous because here men and women with bizarrely formed pectoral muscles would perform amazing feats of sand-kicking.

Although we had been hoping for stars, the beach is more for your regular people, so we saw only one instance of over-the-top breast enhancement. We saw none of what we were really hoping to see (and something a lot of guys are apparently getting) butt implants.

Dogs were very much in evidence. LA is dogtown. People have all shapes and sizes of them. There is a tendency for the smaller more effeminate dog especially wearing a designer dog T-shirt, but you can also see many of the super-large variety often filling the back of a large pick-up truck.

We moved on to the Venice area named after the canals there. We didn't see any of those, but wandered down a street famed for its quirky shops and good eateries before popping in for some good old up-market slash quirky versions of regular foods. I had a pretzel burger which proved that sesame buns or wholemeal rolls are still the top thing to put burgers in and not pretzels. But you can't blame them for trying.

Along the beach a variety of stores and home-made stalls appealed to the hippy in all of us. And also the fashion victim in all of us, as the ultra-tight leggings painted made to look like jeans proclaimed. People sold their wears or set themselves up as human guitar-wielding jukeboxes. One man declared that he would insult anyone anytime for a fee. We nearly took him up on it.

Once again the so-called beautiful people were less in evidence. But then it was Sunday and they were probably in Church. Or at kabala school. Oh hang on, that's Saturday.

It had been nice to see Carolyn again, even for a short amount of time. We shall have to make sure it can happen again soon.

At night, back at our hotel, the streets were patrolled by gangs of men in black coming and going, possibly to their gang head quarters, or "sinnergogs." We had planned to go out and watch some sketch show performed by improvisers or some other Sunday twist on improv or just find a haunt to hang out with the stars, but tiredness due to obscene heat (in my opinion, not Catherine's) took over and we collapsed on the bed.