California - Santa Booze!

After any wedding comes the honeymoon. I've been on a honeymoon before shortly after Pezza & I got married, it was good fun and it's not a nice feeling to think that you'll never go on a honeymoon again! So, with Foe & Erin safely married it was time for the honeymoon - they decided to spend a week in Santa Cruz on the Californian coast and then head to Vegas; the great thing about this honeymoon was that we all went along for the first leg!

The happy couple arranged a beach house and after the brunch at Bill & Laura's it was time to head over the windy roads of Santa Cruz mountain to our next destination. We found it fairly easily as we had no car issues and could therefore follow Paulie's sat nav. We must have arrived late afternoon - Foe, Erin & the Kershaws were arriving later as they had a meal in Morgan Hill with the family. We had a recky down to the boardwalk to see what Santa Cruz had to offer, this is very much the beach/amusement park/tacky part of the resort and we struggled to find anywhere we could call 'HQ' for the next few days. We had dinner and pumped the barmaid for info on where we could tube, the general consensus was head down Pacific Avenue. Stuoobs was keen to get going and rather than go home and change he suggested that we "head down Pacific and 'see what happens'". Despite his optimism we did go home and cracked open a beer whilst proceeding to get ready. Amazingly, Pezza suggested that just the boys go out! This was terrible news to Ollie and Tim who were quite happy to sit in a dark house with a cup of warm milk after the mayhem that was the wedding night, however they succumbed to beer pressure and we were on our way!

Paulie and Karen were staying in a hotel and came out to meet us, our first port of call was the Blue Lagoon (it had a neon sign). It was a little unconventional but as it was the first bar we could always move on after one. We found the barman to be a bit odd but he was fully on board with giving us Jagerbombs for bugger all! A few more in there and it time to take our Boys night (and Karen, who kept up exceptionally well) onto the next couple of bars. Stuoobs was beginning to flag but Ollie & Tim were now bouncing off the walls after their earlier reluctance however 'one more' and it was time for home. By the time we got home the Fodens had arrived and we now had a full house.

The next morning we had our best lie in all week, the weather was cloudy and Easty & I were thinking of things to to during the day in Santa Cruz when it's cloudy. We could think of one thing. Erin assured us that the sun would come out early afternoon and she wasn't wrong so we stocked up and headed to Santa Cruz Main Beach for a day of sun, banter and beach volleyball!



That evening was the first of our planned activities for the week, the Foes had planned some pub golf; Natalie & Clare wanted to know what happened at the end of pub golf.......

We crawled through the bars of Santa Cruz and gradually got more and more 'Pub Golfed' ending up in the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall bar; a bar that has an arsenal of 99 beers and you can earn a plaque on the wall if you shift the lot of them. As men we are programmed to turn down every loyalty based system in the world, such as store cards for example, however a plaque on the wall of a pub? Where do we sign? We optimistically thought that between us we could do the lot which seemed like a good idea until you're faced with drinking a bottle of La Fin Du Monde, a 9% beer whose title translates as 'The End of the World'.

Anyway, this was the final bar of the night and it was karaoke night - more than enough to keep us fully entertained until the fun and games began.




We all woke up feeling terrible. It was good news that Foe had arranged a day's wine tasting (tasting=drinking). We were told that the minibus would be picking us up at 11.00am however what turned up wasn't a minibus. I'd always dreamt of the 'BOTT minibus' which is essentially a minibus with the inside ripped out and replaced with a limo type interior, a fridge and a loud sound system; this is what Foe had booked and it didn't take long for our hangovers to drift through our bloody Marys and into the Champagne. We had hooked up Stuoobs' iPod to the radio and drifted through three of Santa Cruz Mountain's finest wineries getting thoroughly thoroughly smashed in the process. We were supposed to visit a fourth winery but by this time we had acquired many bottles from the three visited so far and the power ballads were blasting out so we told the driver to just drive around for an hour!

This was a superb day.

(1) First glass with Donald Sutherland (2) On the minibus - getting wrong; (3) Clare & Pezza (4) Our picnic at one of the wineries (5) Bus driver Pez (6) Band Aid!



From then on we drifted through the day, firing up the barbecue, some mild nudity and then heading back down Pacific.

1. Paulie Tossing, 2. Pezza Begging for Beer, 3. Bottle of Tequila & Bowl of Gin, 4. REM gig


From then on it was a thoroughly good couple of days and definitely one of the best honeymoons I have ever been on. Eventually it was time to drive back up to San Francisco to stay in a hotel for one more night before getting our early morning flight home via Philadelphia.

Definitely one of the best holidays ever. The full photo album is via this link.

We got back Saturday morning and it's been a struggle to get back to normality with the body clock but with the start of the football season coming up we have a great weekend ahead with the Geordie side of the family coming down for a few days of fun.

Andy
xxx

California (Post #2 of 3)

When I left you after Post #1 we were driving the 70 miles from San Francisco to Morgan Hill.


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If only it was actually that simple. In order to drive we needed a couple of cars. Stuoobs & Paulie had checked this out and booked a couple of vehicles from the Hertz hire place over the road from our hotel, Paulie had booked himself a funky cabriolet for himself and Karen whilst Stuoobs, Easty, Pezza & I had hired one of those GMC SUVs that make our very own Chelsea Tractors look like toy cars. Paulie foresaw sadness here but was fortunate enough to get his car, the rest of us had to wait whilst Hertz scratched around their San Francisco depots looking for something vaguely similar to what we had ordered. We were lucky in the end and got the GMC which was slightly better than what we had actually ordered, nonetheless it had set us back a bit of time.

We were due to be at Morgan Hill in time to check into our hotel and make the 20 minute drive to Eagle Ridge for 3pm for the wedding rehearsal for the wedding that was due to take place the day after and as we had in the car the best man, an usher and one of the readers it's safe to say we may have been missed! We rocked up at Eagle Ridge about 30 minutes late and got proceedings underway without further ado.

That evening was the Rehearsal Dinner. This is something a bit alien to us Brits. Bill & Laura (Erin's parents) had hired out a really strange venue which was essentially a massive games room (pool, shuffle board, an indoor-American version of Crown Green called 'bocce ball'). The games room had a bar! It turned out to be a brilliant venue as it offered everybody, many of whom were from 8000 miles away, the opportunity to mingle and meet everybody so that you're not strangers at the wedding. Another purpose of the rehearsal dinner is for the groom's father to say a few words and for the bride & groom to thank everyone involved, again a good idea!

I particularly enjoyed the evening as Graham & I can rightly say we are the World Series of Shuffleboard champions 2008!

After allegedly having an early night we got our final beauty sleep before the big day. It was an early start as a few of us played golf (Foe, Easty, Graham, Si, Finchy & Finchy's kids). I was faced with the choice of going off with the younger generation but I thought that they would probably have a better time without me; as my inclusion was a bit of an afterthought there were five of us, the most that can be in a group is four so I chose to ignore the actual golf and just drive around in a golf cart, enjoying the banter and Californian sunshine. The morning only got better from there; I had no doubt that there would be alcohol involved at some point during the morning but what I didn't expect to see was some fitty approaching us in a golf cart converted as a bar. It was brilliant, if this was done in the UK it would simply be an ice box on the back of a lawnmower but this girl had many beers and a fridge full of shorts. By the time we'd approached the back nine we were having a lot of laughs and I had invented a new sport called 'Andy Golf'. It's like normal golf but the shots are counted in bottles. All of the pictures are on Graham's camera and I'll try and get hold of them once he's lost all his money in Vegas.

The afternoon was time for the main event and aside from sweat running into places I didn't think was imaginable it was what can only be described as the perfect Californian wedding.

(1) The girls (2) The boys! (3)Bridesmaids (4)The reading (5)Down the aisle (6) doing the deed.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

After the photos and mingling it was time for the meal, after the meal it was the speeches with Easty doing a sterling job at making Foe cringe and Americans whinge!

Rule #28: Make sure there's an open bar.

It was then time for the night do and the happy couple were generous to lay on an open bar so many Jagerbombs were on the go and Stuoobs did the Kev thing of invading the dancefloor with a bottle of sambuca. Foe had briefed the DJ with a list of essential songs and the evening was set. We were booted out of there at around 11.30pm but a facility had been laid on at our hotel to carry the evening on there. This is where the real carnage began with many beer bongs and Stuoobs' iPod on the go. I think the last of us retired at approx 4.30am.

Our final act in Morgan Hill was a brunch at the Duricas' which was a really good wind down following the previous day's merriment, carnage and, of course, golf.

As you can see, there's not a whole lot of meat on the bones here, largely due to beer bongs and golf, so here's a link to all my Morgan Hill pictures.

From there we drove to the coast and onto Santa Cruz. I'll pick that one up later in the week once it has been heavily edited.

Andy
xxx

California (Post #1 of 3)

I last blogged on the London to San Francisco flight and was showing off the wonders of my phone as a blogging tool. The intention was to find some of California's numerous wireless networks and post a blog every couple of days. Unfortunately, two days into the trip my phone screen smashed and here I am trying to cram the last 12 days into one massive posting!

And what a 12 days it's been. It's certainly been one of the more eventful holidays I've ever been on from the ever predictable flight sadness, the very unpredictable flight upgrading to the legendary wine tasting!

So, to begin: our itinerary for the trip was supposed to be as follows:
Wed 30 July fly from Manchester to San Francisco (via Philadelphia)
2 nights in San Francisco
2 nights in Morgan Hill
4 nights in Santa Cruz
1 night in San Francisco
8 August fly from San Francisco to Manchester (via Philadelphia), arrive home 9 Aug.

As always, things went wrong but instead of the usual (lost luggage, closed airports etc) we were told a day before that we'd been bumped off our flights as the plane that was due to take us was being replaced with a smaller one. Thankfully Col the travel agent gave us the heads up and Stuoobs was well prepared once the airline called. We were due to fly Wednesday morning and had treated ourselves to business class flights. The airline had offered us by way of an alternative economy via Frankfurt. Stu & I have one experience of Frankfurt and the only way to describe it is the ONLY airport that Stuoobs has refused to shit. Stuoobs held his ground and got us on a better flight from Heathrow first thing in the morning, this meant that we had to get to London that night and a few calls to people and some panic packing meant that we were all on our way to Manchester Airport to fly to London where we would be put up in a hotel (all courtesy of United Airlines).

Getting to London was easy enough but once there we had no idea whether we were in the Renaissance or the Radisson but after a few calls we headed to the Radisson and made haste to the bar.

It was the following morning where we thought the wheels had well and truly come off as we got to Heathrow Airport (the modern day 'Bermuda Triangle'). The problem was that US Airways (who we were now flying with) had upgraded their computer system overnight and seemingly told everyone except the one bloke checking us in. He was totally useless and it took him the best part of an hour to check us in. We were all issued with business class boarding cards but we were not sat together.

A few gins and a bloody mary in the lounge and it was time to head for the gate where we could bypass the queue. Pezza was first and the chick at the boarding gate scanned her boarding pass which was greeted with the 'negative buzzer' sound. We thought we were doomed until the lady handed us all new passes with the words 'First Class' scrawled across the top.

This was an unexpected bonus (especially for Karen B & Easty who had no idea we were flying at the front anyway) and we celebrated our fortune with gin.

A very comfortable nine hours later we landed in San Francisco (not San Fran, not 'Frisco' - the locals hate it apparently). We had a bonus night in San Francisco on the basis that our flight landed several hours earlier than our original flight was scheduled to. As with any transatlantic flight the efforts to get rid of the jet lag are always tricky and the best thing to do is find something to keep you entertained. As we were early we hadn't foreseen it being necessary but after some serious flagging at about 7.30pm we went hunting for some bars. Wednesdays in San Francisco are clearly not buzzing but we stumbled across a gem of a place called Maggie McGarry's. By an unbelievable stroke of fortune they had their inaugural karaoke night. This was not just any ordinary karaoke night with a tv screen, old mic and fat DJ, this was 'M&S karaoke', if Carlsberg did karaoke etc etc.

They had a live band and a selection of songs they knew with a music stand on the stage with the lyrics. You would hand your song request to the groupie, get up and rock! It was, without question, the greatest karaoke I have ever experienced and we need to get this sort of stuff going in the UK. I did Mr Brightside and Stuoobs followed suit with a cracking rendition of Summer of 69

He got his first real six string...

Day two and time for a stroll through the City and finally meeting up with the Fodens who we hadn't seen since Foe's series of leaving dos. It was a brief meeting as they still had a few last minute bits and bobs to do before the wedding but we had arranged to meet them later and we went off sight seeing on bikes around the city. All this really involved was riding a bike over the Golden Gate and enjoying a beer 8 miles away in Sausalito before getting the ferry back (with great views of Alcatraz)

(1) Four 'bicyclysts' (2) Stuoobs about to climb up to the bridge (3) On the ferry back to Fishermans Wharf (4) Alcatraz
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

We were then straight on it and met the Foden party (males) in Hooters for the start of what ended up as Foe's American Stag Night. We tried our best to get him to jack it in and come to Vegas but I think he was too drunk to understand. We ended up in Lefty O'Doul's, a restaurant/bar named after the legendary baseball player. This is the bar that Stuoobs, Foe, Easty & Dunc frequented two years ago and is home of the brilliant pianist, David Seaman who is an all-request piano party dude. This was one a fabulous night and I'm glad that we gave Foe a night he wont remember.



All of my San Francisco pictures can be found here

The next morning we were up and driving to Morgan Hill. I'll pick up the blog there at some point tomorrow...

Andy
xxx

The most disorganised place on Earth...

Seriously, how do people in LA function? It's a brilliant place, it really is. It has everything here you could possibly want; imagine London but cleaner, with nice weather and a few beaches and you'll be just about there. It has a flaw though, you know when you've done something and you go away for a brew or a little sit down and a while later you think, "Jesus, I forgot to add a transport infrastructure!"

Well this is what God must have thought a few years after inventing LA. Even the airport's rubbish; ours was the first flight to arrive in the AA terminal. There are 4 baggage collection belts in this terminal and even though it was just us there they decided that they need to use 2 belts so you had no idea where your bags would be. You then realise that without a car LA is impossible to negotiate. On this trip we have been to one of the most frantic and poorest capital cities you could imagine in Bangkok yet getting from A to B there was easy with a choice of taxi, tuktuk, river boat, canal boat, train or subway but LA has decided to have a bus network that makes the Sheffield Tram look organised. How do they get around this? Tarmac, and lots of it. Taxi drivers here must be millionaires.

Whinge over.

Our flight was pants. American Airlines have Tony Soprano and some illiterate wine buff to let you know, 'We know why you fly'. You therefore have to assume for the average American flying is an experience whereby they expect to be treated like a terrorist with Aids from the moment they walk into their departure airport and through their trip on their 'airplane'. There is no such treatment upon arrival as you don't actually see anyone when you arrive if travelling domestically. Again, Bangkok Airlines whoops their ass.

Seriously, whinge over.

So, enjoying LA is easy. Our room wasn't ready when we arrived but as it was 7am it would have been a bit optimistic to expect it to be so we took a stroll through Beverly Hills and along the famous Rodeo Drive and you really can see what all the fuss is about. Celebs must love it here but for the average Joe it's way out of our league. Maybe it was too early or maybe it was because they saw two scruffy Brits in shorts, but all the shops were shut.

In the evening we took a cab to Sunset Boulevard and had dinner and drinks in the trendy Skybar with amazing views over the rest of the city before a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard and the world famous star walk. It's great walking down there for the first time as it's a real sport trying to walk with your head down to spot the stars you know whilst trying to avoid the Hollywood Blvd street furniture (lamp posts, benches, dealers, pimps & hookers).

There must be some funny stuff going on as after I saw this beauty of a star:

I saw two separate stars for Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. I ask thee! No star for Chesney yet but it surely can't be far off with his imminent theatre production about to hit the finest stage in Salford.

Yesterday we took a trip to Universal Studios. It was amazing. It lacked the 'magic' of Disney but made up for it with superb shows centred around Terminator 2, Shreck, Blues Brothers etc and presentations on special effects. You really got the impression you were in a place where amazing stuff happened. The tour was my highlight with a little trip down the actual Wysteria Lane that was open due to the writers' strike.

I'm not sure what's in the kids meals in LA but you have to admit for 8 and 10 years old respectively, Lisa and Bart are freakishly big!

Next stop is Vegas, we board the plane in about 2 hours and we meat up with Stuoobs and Caroline for what should be a great five days. Or, as the Americans say... "Fiiiiiive."

Andy

xxx