23 + 24 SEPTEMBER: GRAND CANYON VILLAGE

Days 7 & 8:

A quick look around the Grand Canyon Village.

In 1901 the Santa Fe Railroad opened and the tourist trade really got going. Up to then travellers had had to pay $20 for the stagecoach ride from Flagstaff.

• Thunderbird Lodge: we were staying here, and were told it was the best lodge in the village. Our first night here we all had a BBQ organised in the terrace room just 35 feet from the Rim, with stunning views.

• El Tovar: the South Rim's first great hotel, designed in 1905. Breakfast here was sumptuous, a chance to treat ourselves to Eggs Benedict.

• The Hopi House:

• Bright Angel Lodge:

22 SEPTEMBER 2012: CASTLES AND CACTI

Day 6:

Early start: bags out at 6.45am, on bus at 8am.
First stop an hour and a half away.
Route today: Sonoran Desert - Verde Valley - Colorado Plateau - Grand Canyon.

Sonoran Desert:
What do you think a typical desert cactus looks like? A long central stem with 'curved arms' growing from it? That describes the  Saguaro cactus and the Sonoran desert is the only place on earth it grows. Growth is slow as it only rains twice a year on average, so after 15 years it is only 1 foot tall. It doesn't start to sprout its distinctive arms till it's 75' lives till it's 150 then just keels over and dies!

Montezuma's Castle:
'We are not building this country of ours for a day ..... it is to last through the ages' : Theodore Roosevelt (1903) on the creation of  Montezuma's Castle as a National Monument.

First stop of the day, and a total misnomer: it's NOT a castle and has NOTHING to do with Montezuma (the Aztec emperor). What it is  is a 5 - storey, 20 - room limestone apartment-style shelter built by the Sinagua indians. Montezuma wasn't even born till 100 years later.
The signs here call it 'prehistoric', which as Brits we found funny as it dates from 1000 A.D., ie 66 years before the Battle of Hastings!

Alongside, there's the remains of a larger building dating from c.1200 to c. 1450. No one knows why these buildings were abandoned.

Sedona and Red Rock Country:
We continued our drive across the Colorado Plateau to the town of Sedona which sits at the base of the plateau, surrounded by towering rocks which were once part of the plateau. They've been eaten away by erosion and stained many shades of red by the high concentration of iron - oxide.
This is really the stuff of cowboy movies. You can imagine Clint Eastwood riding over the horizon . Steve and I are old enough to remember watching 'Rawhide' on TV and it could have been shot here.

BELL ROCK

Sedona is renowned, if that is the word, for its 'vortexes'. A vortex is a place with special energy that are supposed to make visitors happy and fulfilled. The town is full of them, as it is full of clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, crystals etc. The 'Vortex movement' started in 1987 when 5,000 true believers descended on the town, and they've been flocking-in since. 

We thought it was a pity because the scenery says it all about this place, but I suppose there has to be somewhere for tourists to stop and eat. 

21 SEPTEMBER 2012: POOLS and POTTERY

Day 6:
After a 'Healthy Breakfast' in the local diner (seriously, as Steve is on a heath - kick at the moment) it was time for some R and R. And where better than in the pool on the 3rd floor terrace of the hotel? Never been in a pool in such a setting before. Lionel Richie coming through the audio only made it seem more like something out of a TV programme.

The Heard Museum:
We decided to visit the Heard Museum to get some knowledge about the Native American tribes we were going to hear so much about next week. So we headed for the newly built tram system. But once on board we both thought it would be better to stay to the end of the line so we could see what America's 6th largest city really was like. Downtown, where we were staying, is home to glitzy corporate HQs and conference centres, but no-one lives there. As we got further from the centre we saw barren fields, old housing and tired shopping centres. Nothing seemed to have been planned apart from the roads' grid system. Signs offering repossessed homes for sale was evidence of the down-turn since 2008.
Back at the museum we joined a really interesting guided tour and learned much about the culture and art work of the Hopi, Navajho and Apache tribes. The guide made it clear that the lesson to be learned seemed to be that Native Americans had managed to keep their own cultures alive only by adapting them to meet the needs of the tourists who flocked to shop in their reserves.

Pool No. 2:
Another taxi ride took us to the Doubletrees Hotel, where we were to join the Caravan Tour. Just time enough to spend another hour in a pool (temperatures of 104 degrees soon make you forget to feel guilty about such decadence). Surreally, the pool was adjacent to an open-air area where a wedding was taking place. we wondered if the ceremony would last longer than the marriage!!

At 6pm we met our 42 fellow travellers for the next week. Betty , our tour guide (an ex-anchor woman for a local TV news channel in the Deep South) got us all to talk to a stranger and elicit something 'quirky' about them to tell the rest of the group. Steve drew the long straw: what could be more quirky than go-karting??

20 SEPTEMBER 2012: PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Day 5:
GETTING THERE
The taxi driver we found this morning to take us to the aiport was a fount of knowledge on Obama (good) and US medical insurance companies (VERY bad). Steve started him off, and away he went.
Chimed with another conversation yesterday about the evils of the American banking system. Californians are very keen to share their views, highly articulate and, so far, pretty left-wing. Arizona will be different.
Checking into Los Angeles airport would try the patience of a saint......no customer service here. Few humans either, as you struggle to get the machines to respond before you are timed-out. And amazingly the couple struggling with the machine next to us were from Dublin and had just done a similar Grand Canyon guided tour as we're booked in for tomorrow! The Irish turn up everywhere.

DOWNTOWN PHOENIX

Taxi driver No. 2 today (from Phoenix Airport to the hotel) was very different to this morning's: an Iraqi, probably in his mid-50s, who wanted to know how much we thought it would cost him to rent a one-bedroom flat in any part of London that was about an hour's journey from the centre. Why?? Because he fancied himself to be an exceptional football coach who'd been praised by Paul Mariner no less (here we told him we'd seen Paul Mariner play for Ipswich back in the days when we lived in Suffolk) and who wanted to become a Coach for Derby County!! If the conversation had been less surreal we probably would have asked him why a flat in London, not one in Derby.......but somehow it didn't seem the thing to ask.
But at least he knew the way to the hotel.
San Carlos Hotel:

www.hotelsancarlos.com
We're booked in tonight into this hotel, not least because Sue was intrigued by the Moon Guide saying it 'brings back the golden-age of big city hotels'. It opened in 1928 and became a favourite stop of Hollywood stars during the first half of the 20th century, being one of the first high-rise hotels in the Southwest with full air-conditioning and electric elevators.

Heritage Square:
Q. What do you do on a warm Thursday afternoon in Phoenix? ('Warm' ??? Fox TV tells us it's 102 degrees here today.)
A. Walk downtown to look at some Victorian houses.
In the mid-1970s the Phoenix City Council decided to clean-up an area that was riddled with crime and, at the same time, rescue and renovate some buildings that remained as testament to Phoenix's Victorian past. With the coming of the railroad to Phoenix in the 1880s, building materials other than mud and rocks had become available: adobe huts were replaced by red-brick houses.
THE ROSSON HOUSE: was built in 1895 at a cost of $7,525. We took a guided tour with a lady dressed as a maid. Eerily reminiscent of the Black Country Museum!

THE SILVA HOUSE: built in 1900 by a liquor dealer, ironically it's now home to the 'Rose and Crown', serving traditional English pub food like bangers and mash!

SEEING IS BELIEVING: LOS ANGELES

VENICE BEACH:

New octopus made every day.

Think we saw something very similar in Hong Kong!

Geddit??

HOLLYWOOD:

Roman Empire meets dotcom

Eat your heart out Immelda Marcos.

Tinseltown!!

Never realised the Duce had made it to LA!

And finally.......one for Steve's Mum:

WEDNESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2012: CANALS AND MUSCLES

Day 4:

VENICE CANALS
Why is this stretch of SoCal coast named Venice? After its canals, of course, modeled after those in its European namesake city. The guide book promised a very different experience to the Boardwalk, but amazingly both residents we asked directions of were hazy about how to get there.
What they were missing! We both decided that the canals were the most beautiful residential area we had ever seen.

Pictures don't do justice to the beautiful houses and lush gardens.

MUSCLE BEACH:

From the sublime to the ridiculous.......on our way back from the canals we walked past this infamous chunk of sand filled with modern workout equipment and with staging erected to view the body-builders, male and female, working-out.

Photos of 'Arnie' proudly show him using the facilities in the 1970s. 

TUESDAY 18 SEPTEMBER 2012: TAKING THE BUS

Day3: 
Time to venture further afield in LA.
We could have taken one of the numerous tour buses on offer but we thought it would be more fun to try to use public transport and tailor our own itinerary. The guy downstairs in Hotel Reception was great in explaining the way bus transfers work (i.e. how to use one ticket on a number of buses) and suggesting which buses to take.
LA buses and their drivers have a lot to teach their counter-parts in the UK. Buses are frequent, clean and readily accessible by wheelchairs. Drivers are polite and really helpful, taking time to offer advice and to give us tips on where to visit. Prices are a joy too: a transfer for 2 from Venice to Hollywood set us back a mere $2.80 and, when we cottoned on later to Senior Ticket prices, the return via Santa Monica was a total of $1.10!

HOLLYWOOD:
Despite popular conceptions of it being the epicentre of the film industry,there are no movie studios in Tinseltown, and the only stars seen there are on premier nights.
The Hollywood Sign: 
We took the bus to the corner of Hollywood and Vine and got the cameras out.
No trip to LA is complete without a picture of the Hollywood Sign.

Hollywood Walk of Fame:

This has to be one of the most recognisable parts of Hollywood, opened in 1968, the 3.5 miles of pavement with more than 2,000 five-pointed stars honouring real and fictional people who have contributed to the entertainment industry.

The Egyptian Theatre:

The first of the grandiose movie houses built in Hollywood proper, its Egyptian styling followed the trend for all-things-Egyptian after the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922. The first movie it premiered was 'Robin Hood', the showing of the film being preceded by an elaborate live 'prologue' featuring real actors in costume on a stage before the screen! Imagine that at your local Cineworld.......

Grauman's Chinese Theatre:

Opened on May 18 1927 with the premiere of 'The King of Kings' and an eventual riot by the thousands of fans gathered outside. Its one screen and seats for over 1,000 are still regularly used for premieres.

Bras and push-up bras:

This building started life in 1927 as a department store opened by the man credited with inventing the bra, and a top-selling line was the world's 1st push-up bra. Been on sale for last 3 years: asking price $17.5m.

Gorgeous Art Deco:

BEVERLY HILLS:

On the bus again for some wealth-watching.

Although the truly rich don't live there, there's still oodles of money floating around in Beverly Hills.

Rodeo Drive:

Not sure quite what  we had been expecting, but, as Steve said, it served a purpose in giving the Uber Rich somewhere to go to keep them occupied! We didn't see any Beckhams, Rooneys or Versaces, or any women with pet kangaroos on a lead (as seen by a friend some years ago), but we did see Chanel, Miu Miu, Prada, Philippe Patek, YSL, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hermes etc., etc. 

We were only window-shopping......but Steve wanted to dream.

Happy Anniversary to Shane and Sheila!!! Have a great time in Hong Kong, and give our love to Mark.