Julie Dalton | Your Blogs | Your Say | Homepage - Runcorn and Widnes World

It's a small world

Posted on 1:56pm Monday 12th January 2009

I haven't updated my blog for a while, had a few technical problems logging on and been very lazy at times so I can only apologise, but i've almost brought you up to speedwith where I have been, so i'll let you know where we are now. After honky tonkying it up in Nashville, Tennessee, we took a twenty hour long coach journey from Memphis to Orlando. It's only when you leave the UK you realise what a brilliant mass transit system we have. I could hop on an express train from Runcorn to London in no time but many countries just don't have a train network and other transport options like bus or coach are limited to cities. In the USA they have the Greyhound coach service which runs from most cities and towns so we booked the journey for a hundred dollars each and waited at Memphis coach station for the first leg of our trip. It was like a scene from a film, having watched a programme the night before billing Memphis as the violent crime capital of the whole of America we were very aware that any of the shady looking people around us could be carrying anything from knives and guns (which as you know are legal here). There were people with significant tattoos connecting them to different gangs, and I overheard one girl talking to a friend on the phone about the number of people she knew who were in prison for murder! We didn't feel comfortable one little bit. When we arrived in Orlando I heard a security guard comment on the people who had just got off our coach saying they definitely weren't from Orlando - I hope we weren't included in the ghetto bunch ha ha. Steven's family have joined us in Florida for Christmas and New Year which is nice as we haven't seen anyone we know now for 11 months and we have both been missing our family. Luckily for us they have rented out a beautiful villa which is luxury compared to the Motel 6 joints we have been staying in across the US! The day they arrived Steven went to meet them at the airport (his mum, dad, sister and her boyfriend) on his own as I was in bed with the flu - I don't know whether everyone at home has been hit with it too but this was the worst i've felt since I can remember being sick as a child. And it is just our luck that just as I was getting over it Steven's dad got it followed by Steven and then his mum. Despite that though we have had a great time in Florida, it's a really surreal experience waking up to sunshine on Christmas Day and not having to wrap up warm when you leave the house. Last night was New Year's Eve so we spent the day at Universal Studios and stayed until midnight to watch the fireworks. After spending hours in queue's at Starbucks to get coffee to keep us awake we finally made it to ten to twelve and got in our position along the waterfront. I remember thinking as the fireworks went off that i'd seen much better ones at Spike Island when my dad used to take us there and just as we were rushing back to the car amongst crowds and crowds of other crazy people, I heard "You get better ones at Vicky Park". I couldn't believe it, out of all these hords of people I had managed to bump into someone from Widnes! That's probably the first person i've met who has ever heard of Widnes, never mind come from there! It's a small world after all...

Graceland, Johnny Cash, Las Vegas and more...

Posted on 1:51pm Monday 12th January 2009

< p>We were both really excited to get to USA because of what you see on tv and because we were visiting some places we had only dreamed of like LA, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Memphis, Nashville, Florida and New York! We didn't really have anything booked when we got to America, we just wanted to be able to stop wherever we liked and not follow any real plan which was a great feeling. America has the most diverse bunch of people I think we have ever come across in one country and all the states are so different, it's no wonder over 90% of Americans have never travelled outside their own country and don't even have passports (don't quote me on that figure but it's something like that). We arrived in Los Angeles from Fiji and we went from one extreme to another...Fiji run's on 'Fiji time' which is basically really slow and laid back and LA is like nothing I have ever seen before. The roads are absolutely crazy, cars beeping their horns if they have to wait for more than a minute, I don't know how Steven even drove around LA but it didn't seem to phase him. We stayed at the Motel 6 in Hollywood which is a really cheap motel chain across the whole of America but it was really well placed so we could ignore the shady people who seemed to be hanging around there all the time. We went to see how the other half live on Rodeo Drive and walked along Hollywood Boulevard trying to spot some token celebrities. The nearest we came however was a guy driving a flashy sports car who Steven thought was Dennis Rodman. A tout for a local restaurant heard Steven and was getting all excited that he might be able to get a picture and so he asked him if he was Dennis Rodman and whether he could have a picture and this lookalikey looked horrified and said "damn he wishes he looked as fine as me". Only in America do you get that sort of self confidence! It had me chickling for days though. I did meet Spongebob Square Pants though and managed to get a snap for my little nephews - I didn't tell them however that Spongebob Squarepants fleeced me for 5 bucks just to have a photo taken! We also saw the legendary HOLLYWOOD sign and went to Venice Beach which was jam packed with people break dancing, power walking, running, playing basketball and volleyball, it was probably one of the coolest beaches we have come across.

Some more photos for you...

Posted on 4:23am Monday 5th May 2008

Kangaroo Collision!!

Posted on 2:16am Thursday 24th April 2008

We have spent the last seven weeks in Australia touring around in a campervan and I hoped I would see a kangaroo or two, I just didn't realise I would see so many - read on for more...

Flaking out at the Malaysian Golf Open 2008

Posted on 6:18am Sunday 23rd March 2008

After Phuket we caught a flight to Kuala Lumpur where we had booked in to the 5 star Hyatt Saujana Golf Resort, where the Malaysian Golf Open was held last year. When I booked it 6 months ago on the internet I hadn't imagined how we would look at this stage in our trip arriving at Malaysia's number one golf resort carrying our backpacks with trainers and sleeping bags attached ha ha. Steven was mortified, I was almost crying with laughter at how embarrased he was arriving in a clapped out taxi looking just like travellers do....scruffy. The resort was brilliant although it was hard on a budget when a drink in the bar was about 5/6 pounds! We did the usual touristy things and saw the twin towers and the KL Tower and then the next day at breakfast one of the waiters told us that the Malaysian Golf Open was being held 5 minutes away while we were there. Read on .....