A British Trip Report to California/Utah/Arizona Part 1 (and thanks!)

Hello,

Earlier on this year I asked for help on a trip we were planning to
the west and south west US during May/June and received great help
from you guys. So, many thanks to you all, can't remember all your
names but thanks especially to Iconclast and Keith Willshaw. We had a
great time. Keep up the great work.

A shortish trip report follows! (in 2 parts)

Part 1

When: 28th May -- 11th June, 2004

Who: Mike - that's me!, the wife and our two sons aged 11 and 8.

Day 1: London Heathrow to San Francisco on Virgin. Long but good
flight, Virgin are highly recommended especially for the kids. Their
on-flight entertainment kept us all occupied. Arrived at SFO early
afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
fingerprinted and photographed everyone. However, we all had a great
laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!

Took a taxi to the Holiday Inn Express, Fisherman's Wharf -- nice
hotel, recommended. Took a wander around Fisherman's Wharf in the
afternoon and we all crashed out at about 8:30pm

Day 2: Up at the crack of dawn, eventually it was breakfast time,
wandered down and had breakfast, but why is nearly everything so
sweet? Saw possibly the most gross sight we had ever seen. A young man
probably in his 20s who was at least 25 - 30 stone in weight (350 -
400lb) who was waddling back from the breakfast bar holding against
his blubber a paper plate with 3 large iced doughnuts on while
stuffing his face with another doughnut. Later I saw him coming back
with a repeat load. We didn't stop to see how many times he went back
as we were no longer hungry! I know that the UK has an obesity problem
as well as the US but this nearly made us all sick! How anyone could
eat 1 doughnut for breakfast was beyond us. Our youngest son tried one
and gave up after a few bites, it was just too sickly sweet even for
him.

Walked to the start of the Powell-Mason cable car and rode it to the
end, nice and empty at 9am. Had a wander around the shops and walked
to Union Sq. Then walked to Grace Cath., nice church, lovely and cool.
Then carried on walking to the crooked street, the streets were empty,
Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning! The
wife's batteries on her digital camera had died and one of the spares
that we carried hadn't recharged properly. Disaster! Surprised to find
no shops around that area. Amazing, in Europe there's always loads of
shops around tourist areas. Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
enormous so we walked. After a quick photo shoot and a wander up and
down the street we walked back to Fisherman's Wharf via lots of shops
etc. Spent the evening on Fisherman's Wharf. Still partly on UK time
so we all crashed out about 9pm.

Day 3: 9am. Walked around the corner from the hotel to pick up our car
at Hertz. Nice car, a Nissan, but why have a 2.5l engine? 1.6 or 1.8
would have done and would have saved on petrol/gas. It was an
automatic gearbox as expected. Only driven an automatic twice before,
both times in the US, but soon got the hang of it again. The wife has
never driven an automatic before in all her 25 years of driving so
despite me saying it's really easy she was very reluctant to drive, in
the end I did all the driving on the trip. Good job it was a sunday
morning as the streets were empty! Drove to the Golden Gate Bridge,
stopped at the park and had a lovely walk. It was a really gorgeous
morning and the sunlight sparkled off the water. Drove over the
bridge, then around the bay and back over the next bridge and headed
out towards Yosemite. Got to Yosemite village late afternoon. It was
the sunday of the memorial weekend and it had obviously been chaos
there earlier that day, but thankfully everyone was going home as we
arrived. Stayed at El Portal for 3 nights -- Yosemite view, nice hotel
a bit expensive though for what it was.

Day 4, Monday: Still waking up early, so we were in the village by
8:30am. We were all getting a bit fed up with American food and how
sweet it all seemed to be so we were really pleased to see bread
advertised in the village store as French bread, bought lots along
with fruit and cheese for lunch. (We normally holiday in France where
we all live on French bread, fruit and cheese.) Hopped onto the
shuttle bus and went to Happy Isles. Saw a coyote and some deer on the
way. Hiked up the Mist Trail, excellent fun, we all got soaked by
Vernal waterfall. Had lunch, the French bread was so sweet, seemed
like they'd added half a kilo of sugar to the dough. Definitely not
like bread in France!! Is there an equivalent of the UK's Trade
Descriptions Act in the US? !! Then we left the tourists and carried
on up to Clark Point I think it was called and back down the JMT. Most
of the tourists just seemed to walk up and down the Mist Trail so it
was nice and peaceful on the JMT -- only "real" hikers! Ate at the
pizza barn in the village that evening after a wander around the Ansel
Adams gallery.

Day 5: After the previous day's fairly strenous 6 mile hike (at least
it was for our 8 year old son) we took it a bit easier and hiked to
Mirror Lake and then carried on up the valley another mile or 2 to the
bridge and back down the other side -- about 4 miles flat hiking.
Again we hardly saw anyone once we were past Mirror Lake. Back to the
village by early afternoon. Joined the tourists at Lower Yosemite
Falls and then we decided to drive up to Glacier Point. Great choice!
One of our highlights of the whole trip was standing up there and
looking on Half Dome in the late afternoon sun and then looking down
on the valley. Back down to the village and pizza again in Degan's
Barn -- the kids like pizza!

Day 6: Checked out and then went for our final look at Yosemite.
Walked to the foot of El Capitan and then drove to Tunnel View to say
our goodbyes. I really liked San Francisco but I definitely left my
heart in Yosemite! Drove to Sequoia NP. Got lost a few times on the
myirad of roads in the main valley, swore constantly at the lack of
road signs and the appalling quality of the AAA maps -- just not up to
UK and European standards. In the end we resorted to using a compass
to make sure we were heading roughly in the right direction!
Eventually we made it to Sequioa by mid afternoon and had a short walk
amongst the trees.

We were on our way out of Sequioa NP going down to Three Rivers when
the 2 cars ahead of us stopped in the middle of the road, What's going
on I asked? Then a very young black bear wandered out of the trees,
crossed in front of us and walked slowly along the verge towards our
car, passing only about a metre from us. Luckily mum or dad were
nowhere in sight. One of the highlights of the trip!

Stayed in Three Rivers at the Holiday Inn Express. probably the best
hotel of the whole trip, excellent value at $60 for us all, very
clean, small but good pool and included another sugar laden breakfast!

Day 7: Long day driving to Death Valley. Thankfully, I'd bought a copy
of Stephen Fry reading the latest Harry Potter book -- 28 CDs! I just
love that guy's voice and the way he brings the Harry Potter books to
life. Kept us all occupied and the CDs ran out on the last day of
trip.

Death Valley is a strange place, way too hot for me, we loaded up with
water as you guys recommended. We got there late afternoon, still
about 45 degrees (I think that's about 113F). We watched the sunset
and then had a lovely swim in the pool at Furnace Creek by starlight.
Later I turned on the cold tap in our room to clean my teeth, the
water was hot, tried the other tap that was even hotter -- wierd!

To be continued ...

"Mike" Mike@com wrote in message
...
Hello,


Hi.

snip

Arrived at SFO early
afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
fingerprinted and photographed everyone.

I'm curious -- how long were you made to wait? I'm not particularly happy
with the way we are treating our foreign guests.

However, we all had a great
laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!

Good for you!

snip


Walked to the start of the Powell-Mason cable car and rode it to the
end, nice and empty at 9am. Had a wander around the shops and walked
to Union Sq. Then walked to Grace Cath., nice church, lovely and cool.
Then carried on walking to the crooked street,

That's Lombard. You were very close to where I live.

the streets were empty,
Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning!

The shops don't open until 10:00, and you were in a residential
neighborhood. If you'd walked three blocks south to Polk, you'd have seen
lots of people visiting the various coffee shops and markets.

The
wife's batteries on her digital camera had died and one of the spares
that we carried hadn't recharged properly. Disaster! Surprised to find
no shops around that area.

You were just in the wrong part. Where you were is called Russian Hill, and
is a somewhat tony residential area.

Amazing, in Europe there's always loads of
shops around tourist areas.

One of my pet peeves. San Francisco has tourist areas, but Russian Hill
isn't one of them (though it is nice to look at the Edwardian homes which
dot the area). We live within ear shot of the Hyde street cable car line
which, most people forget, is part of the SF municipal transport system.
During the week, residents (myself included) use it for transportation to
work downtown. On the weekends, however, it is taken over by tourists who,
evidently, think it is a thrill ride equal to amusement park rollercoasters.
On Friday and Saturday nights, we always hear tourists screaming as the
cable car comes down Hyde from Lombard, and the passes Chestnut on the way
to Bay.

Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
enormous so we walked.

The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No queue.

snip

I hope you and your family had a nice time.

"The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No queue."

I posted the same a couple of years ago and got lambasted by a San Francisco
resident who was most peeved that I (another tourist Brit) had rumbled his
"solution"!:-)

--
*****
*****The "return to" address embedded in this mail is wrong as an antispam
measure. Please address new mails or replies to
edwarddotharrison1atbtinternetdotcom replacing dot with a . and at
with an @*****
*****

"Graham Harrison" wrote in
message ...
"The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No
queue."

I posted the same a couple of years ago and got lambasted by a San
Francisco
resident who was most peeved that I (another tourist Brit) had rumbled his
"solution"!:-)

Ooops. You're right -- I should have kept my mouth shut!


--
*****
*****The "return to" address embedded in this mail is wrong as an antispam
measure. Please address new mails or replies to
edwarddotharrison1atbtinternetdotcom replacing dot with a . and
at
with an @*****
*****

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 02:55:39 GMT, "PTRAVEL"
wrote:


Arrived at SFO early
afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
fingerprinted and photographed everyone.

I'm curious -- how long were you made to wait? I'm not particularly happy
with the way we are treating our foreign guests.

Unfortunately we got into the wrong queue, our guy was taking ages to
process people and I suppose it took him about an hour and a half to
process us and the 8 or so groups of people ahead of us in the queue.
We could see our suitcases going round and round on the carousel
behind him and by the time we got through ours were the only bags
left!! Still, we didn't mind too much -- we were on holiday!


However, we all had a great
laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!

Good for you!

Yes, he obviously hadn't come across a female priest before and for
some reason it really surprised him especially as we had 2 kids. He
even asked our youngest whether we were his parents, our son gave him
a really black look and said "yes, of course we were"!

I'll tell you about our experiences flying out of LA in another
message!

That's Lombard. You were very close to where I live.

Looked a very nice area to live in. I'm not a city person myself
although I did live in London for 8 years during the 1980s, but I
really liked SF -- one of the best cities I've ever visited.


the streets were empty,
Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning!

The shops don't open until 10:00, and you were in a residential
neighborhood. If you'd walked three blocks south to Polk, you'd have seen
lots of people visiting the various coffee shops and markets.

I think it was about noon by the time we got to Lombard.

Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
enormous so we walked.

The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No queue.


We didn't mind, we'd had our cable car ride earlier and we're all very
keen walkers -- that was one of the main reasons for this trip, to go
and do some hiking in some of the national parks, so the SF hills
posed few problems for us!


I hope you and your family had a nice time.



We certainly did!

Cheers

Mike

Mike,

I was interested to read your trip report, having myself just completed an
11 week US trip with my wife and kids aged 10 and 11. I wrote various
reports from the cities and places we visited for family and friends - maybe
I should knock it into shape and post some of it here...I also am grateful
for the many helpful tips I got from members of this group. It was a very
useful resource in planning the trip.

One comment really surprised me - the bit about finding it difficult to
adjust to driving an automatic car. Surely it would be the other way around?
A driver used to an automatic would have real trouble with a manual... I
would have thought driving on the other side of the road would be the tricky
part - certainly it took me a little while to get used to it, and my wife
would only drive on the highways, not around the cities. I know in Britain
and Europe manual transmissions are probably still the norm. Here in
Australia probably it is about 2/3 automatic - not as much as the USA where
it's something like 90%.

Like you, we had trouble finding the kind of bread we were used to at home -
although in our case it was the softness of it rather than the sweetness
that was the thing. We'd buy 'French Breadsticks' or 'Italian Rolls' in the
stores only to find they were soft and soggy like those dinner rolls. If
you look around a bit you can generally find something close to the real
thing - if a baguette is labelled as a 'Crunchy French Baguette' as opposed
to simply a 'baguette', then it will be more like what you are probably used
to. This does not apply to NYC where you can visit the many delis and find
all kinds of wonderful breads, cheeses etc.

The other funny thing was the fact that the cheese is often orange rather
than yellow. At a buffet in Vegas early in the trip, my kids scooped a
whole heap of it onto their plates from the salad bar, thinking it was
shredded carrot! Generally we would just ask for 'Swiss' when cheese was
involved and it was fine.

Anyway, these issues are minor in the scheme of things and we had an
absolutely wonderful time. The American people were invariably kind and
helpful and we'll have many fond memories for years to come. Missing it
already...

Kind regards,

Dom


"Mike" Mike@com wrote in message
...
Hello,

Earlier on this year I asked for help on a trip we were planning to
the west and south west US during May/June and received great help
from you guys. So, many thanks to you all, can't remember all your
names but thanks especially to Iconclast and Keith Willshaw. We had a
great time. Keep up the great work.

A shortish trip report follows! (in 2 parts)

Part 1

When: 28th May -- 11th June, 2004

Who: Mike - that's me!, the wife and our two sons aged 11 and 8.

Day 1: London Heathrow to San Francisco on Virgin. Long but good
flight, Virgin are highly recommended especially for the kids. Their
on-flight entertainment kept us all occupied. Arrived at SFO early
afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
fingerprinted and photographed everyone. However, we all had a great
laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!

Took a taxi to the Holiday Inn Express, Fisherman's Wharf -- nice
hotel, recommended. Took a wander around Fisherman's Wharf in the
afternoon and we all crashed out at about 8:30pm

Day 2: Up at the crack of dawn, eventually it was breakfast time,
wandered down and had breakfast, but why is nearly everything so
sweet? Saw possibly the most gross sight we had ever seen. A young man
probably in his 20s who was at least 25 - 30 stone in weight (350 -
400lb) who was waddling back from the breakfast bar holding against
his blubber a paper plate with 3 large iced doughnuts on while
stuffing his face with another doughnut. Later I saw him coming back
with a repeat load. We didn't stop to see how many times he went back
as we were no longer hungry! I know that the UK has an obesity problem
as well as the US but this nearly made us all sick! How anyone could
eat 1 doughnut for breakfast was beyond us. Our youngest son tried one
and gave up after a few bites, it was just too sickly sweet even for
him.

Walked to the start of the Powell-Mason cable car and rode it to the
end, nice and empty at 9am. Had a wander around the shops and walked
to Union Sq. Then walked to Grace Cath., nice church, lovely and cool.
Then carried on walking to the crooked street, the streets were empty,
Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning! The
wife's batteries on her digital camera had died and one of the spares
that we carried hadn't recharged properly. Disaster! Surprised to find
no shops around that area. Amazing, in Europe there's always loads of
shops around tourist areas. Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
enormous so we walked. After a quick photo shoot and a wander up and
down the street we walked back to Fisherman's Wharf via lots of shops
etc. Spent the evening on Fisherman's Wharf. Still partly on UK time
so we all crashed out about 9pm.

Day 3: 9am. Walked around the corner from the hotel to pick up our car
at Hertz. Nice car, a Nissan, but why have a 2.5l engine? 1.6 or 1.8
would have done and would have saved on petrol/gas. It was an
automatic gearbox as expected. Only driven an automatic twice before,
both times in the US, but soon got the hang of it again. The wife has
never driven an automatic before in all her 25 years of driving so
despite me saying it's really easy she was very reluctant to drive, in
the end I did all the driving on the trip. Good job it was a sunday
morning as the streets were empty! Drove to the Golden Gate Bridge,
stopped at the park and had a lovely walk. It was a really gorgeous
morning and the sunlight sparkled off the water. Drove over the
bridge, then around the bay and back over the next bridge and headed
out towards Yosemite. Got to Yosemite village late afternoon. It was
the sunday of the memorial weekend and it had obviously been chaos
there earlier that day, but thankfully everyone was going home as we
arrived. Stayed at El Portal for 3 nights -- Yosemite view, nice hotel
a bit expensive though for what it was.

Day 4, Monday: Still waking up early, so we were in the village by
8:30am. We were all getting a bit fed up with American food and how
sweet it all seemed to be so we were really pleased to see bread
advertised in the village store as French bread, bought lots along
with fruit and cheese for lunch. (We normally holiday in France where
we all live on French bread, fruit and cheese.) Hopped onto the
shuttle bus and went to Happy Isles. Saw a coyote and some deer on the
way. Hiked up the Mist Trail, excellent fun, we all got soaked by
Vernal waterfall. Had lunch, the French bread was so sweet, seemed
like they'd added half a kilo of sugar to the dough. Definitely not
like bread in France!! Is there an equivalent of the UK's Trade
Descriptions Act in the US? !! Then we left the tourists and carried
on up to Clark Point I think it was called and back down the JMT. Most
of the tourists just seemed to walk up and down the Mist Trail so it
was nice and peaceful on the JMT -- only "real" hikers! Ate at the
pizza barn in the village that evening after a wander around the Ansel
Adams gallery.

Day 5: After the previous day's fairly strenous 6 mile hike (at least
it was for our 8 year old son) we took it a bit easier and hiked to
Mirror Lake and then carried on up the valley another mile or 2 to the
bridge and back down the other side -- about 4 miles flat hiking.
Again we hardly saw anyone once we were past Mirror Lake. Back to the
village by early afternoon. Joined the tourists at Lower Yosemite
Falls and then we decided to drive up to Glacier Point. Great choice!
One of our highlights of the whole trip was standing up there and
looking on Half Dome in the late afternoon sun and then looking down
on the valley. Back down to the village and pizza again in Degan's
Barn -- the kids like pizza!

Day 6: Checked out and then went for our final look at Yosemite.
Walked to the foot of El Capitan and then drove to Tunnel View to say
our goodbyes. I really liked San Francisco but I definitely left my
heart in Yosemite! Drove to Sequoia NP. Got lost a few times on the
myirad of roads in the main valley, swore constantly at the lack of
road signs and the appalling quality of the AAA maps -- just not up to
UK and European standards. In the end we resorted to using a compass
to make sure we were heading roughly in the right direction!
Eventually we made it to Sequioa by mid afternoon and had a short walk
amongst the trees.

We were on our way out of Sequioa NP going down to Three Rivers when
the 2 cars ahead of us stopped in the middle of the road, What's going
on I asked? Then a very young black bear wandered out of the trees,
crossed in front of us and walked slowly along the verge towards our
car, passing only about a metre from us. Luckily mum or dad were
nowhere in sight. One of the highlights of the trip!

Stayed in Three Rivers at the Holiday Inn Express. probably the best
hotel of the whole trip, excellent value at $60 for us all, very
clean, small but good pool and included another sugar laden breakfast!

Day 7: Long day driving to Death Valley. Thankfully, I'd bought a copy
of Stephen Fry reading the latest Harry Potter book -- 28 CDs! I just
love that guy's voice and the way he brings the Harry Potter books to
life. Kept us all occupied and the CDs ran out on the last day of
trip.

Death Valley is a strange place, way too hot for me, we loaded up with
water as you guys recommended. We got there late afternoon, still
about 45 degrees (I think that's about 113F). We watched the sunset
and then had a lovely swim in the pool at Furnace Creek by starlight.
Later I turned on the cold tap in our room to clean my teeth, the
water was hot, tried the other tap that was even hotter -- wierd!

To be continued ...

"Mike" Mike@com wrote in message
...
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 02:55:39 GMT, "PTRAVEL"
wrote:


Arrived at SFO early
afternoon, then stood in a long queue at immigration as they
fingerprinted and photographed everyone.

I'm curious -- how long were you made to wait? I'm not particularly
happy
with the way we are treating our foreign guests.

Unfortunately we got into the wrong queue, our guy was taking ages to
process people and I suppose it took him about an hour and a half to
process us and the 8 or so groups of people ahead of us in the queue.
We could see our suitcases going round and round on the carousel
behind him and by the time we got through ours were the only bags
left!! Still, we didn't mind too much -- we were on holiday!


However, we all had a great
laugh at the US immigration guys' expense. After a bit of a grilling
from him he asked me what I did -- computer programmer, nice and easy
and then he made the mistake of asking my wife. She said I'm a vicar,
a priest! His jaw fell open and he completely lost it! He got all
flustered and handed us our passports and waved us through. He
completely forgot to fingerprint and photograph us!

Good for you!

Yes, he obviously hadn't come across a female priest before and for
some reason it really surprised him especially as we had 2 kids. He
even asked our youngest whether we were his parents, our son gave him
a really black look and said "yes, of course we were"!

I'll tell you about our experiences flying out of LA in another
message!

That's Lombard. You were very close to where I live.

Looked a very nice area to live in. I'm not a city person myself
although I did live in London for 8 years during the 1980s, but I
really liked SF -- one of the best cities I've ever visited.


the streets were empty,
Ok it's a bit hilly but was a bit surprised that we were about the
only people walking in that part of SF on a Saturday morning!

The shops don't open until 10:00, and you were in a residential
neighborhood. If you'd walked three blocks south to Polk, you'd have
seen
lots of people visiting the various coffee shops and markets.

I think it was about noon by the time we got to Lombard.

Walked down to Ghiradelli Sq. Brought 4
AAs for the camera, had lunch - nice clam chowder. Thought about
taking the cable car back up to Lombard Street but the queues were
enormous so we walked.

The trick is to walk up two blocks to the next cable car stop. No queue.


We didn't mind, we'd had our cable car ride earlier and we're all very
keen walkers -- that was one of the main reasons for this trip, to go
and do some hiking in some of the national parks, so the SF hills
posed few problems for us!


I hope you and your family had a nice time.



We certainly did!

Cheers

Mike

Well good that you didn't mind! I just came back from the Southwest too. We
even stayed at the same Holiday Inn Express Three Rivers as you and I would
recommend it too. Very nice people running the place also.

In regards to the security issue, I had to catch a connection between
Toronto and Denver and the lines were horrible. Atleast they were calling
forward people who had connections within the hour. This was only happening
after you picked up a bag that had been on terminal transfer carousels. I
waited 45 minutes for a bag to come between terminals. It only took me ten
minutes to cross. Next time I will tow my bag directly with me! We almost
missed our flight out and thank goodness they were extremely efficient in
Denver and got our bags onto our San Diego flight in the nik of time! It
still irks me that we had to go through US immigration within Canada...

Going home in Toronto we had just an hour between flights. Thank goodness
our Denver flight arrived 15 minutes early. We decided we could wait for the
next morning for our bags to arrive in Halifax if need be and started the
process of changing terminals. Not even several uniformed ground staff could
direct us to the right bus stop...we were at that time atleast 20 people
trying to make this transfer - all connecting on different flights. Finally
we got to the right stop and waited and waited for the bus to
arrive..(purportedly very fast service). It arrives and we get to the other
terminal. This time Canadian Customs and Immigration doesn't use the same
process. No calling ahead of those with impending connections..just stand in
line and pray you don't miss your flight. We got through in due process and
then got to the other side looking for our Gate Number to be posted. We go
to the gate and sit and wait with about 10 other people...it's boarding time
...no airline staff..no other passengers. People go check the gate postings
again...finally somebody shows up to say we are at the wrong gate - the
wrong gate number had been posted. They have held the plane for us and as I
look out the window from my seat I see my bag being the last one loaded on
the plane! PHEW!!

I travel a lot and yes, there can be glitches but the new services in
Toronto are terrible. I always B**ch about Heathrow...Terminal 3 ..but I
will give it a reprieve for a brief period. Denver ranks as efficient as
Schipol in Amsterdam or Kastrup in Copenhagen.

As far as the US security issues I find it all a bit overkill. The fact that
I can't lock my suitcase while travelling through the states is a bit
disconcerting. I am sure they can come up with better systems for this. The
customs/immigration line up issue needs much closer attention to efficiency.

We will see how things will improve.

So glad you had a great trip. I agree about your comment on AAA maps and the
signage for Sequoia NP...also the sugar coated breakfasts etc. We loved Zion
NP too. We were down in San Diego for a conference and loved that city.
Also, spent time in Vegas and had a bit of fun. Loved The Blue Man Group.

toodles

HeatherM

Mike@com (Mike) wrote in message ...

Pity you didn't find decent food in San Francisco - one of the best
eating cities in the world. Keep in mind, you were in very middle
class hotels & sad to say, but differences between healthy food eating
patterns & demand for high quality food between the middle & upper
class are huge in the US.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:41:54 GMT, "Dominic Kelly"
wrote:

Mike,

I was interested to read your trip report, having myself just completed an
11 week US trip with my wife and kids aged 10 and 11. I wrote various
reports from the cities and places we visited for family and friends - maybe
I should knock it into shape and post some of it here...I also am grateful
for the many helpful tips I got from members of this group. It was a very
useful resource in planning the trip.

I agree!


One comment really surprised me - the bit about finding it difficult to
adjust to driving an automatic car. Surely it would be the other way around?
A driver used to an automatic would have real trouble with a manual... I
would have thought driving on the other side of the road would be the tricky
part - certainly it took me a little while to get used to it, and my wife
would only drive on the highways, not around the cities. I know in Britain
and Europe manual transmissions are probably still the norm. Here in
Australia probably it is about 2/3 automatic - not as much as the USA where
it's something like 90%.

I found it no problem, other than grabbing the door handle
occasionally to "change gear" when the car hadn't guessed that I
wanted to change!

Over in Britain, most cars are manual gearboxes. I suppose we just
prefer the better response and control it gives us while driving. The
main people who drive automatics are generally, the old, infirm,
physically handicapped, and fat, lazy BMW-driving executives! ;-)

I think the wife was just a bit scared of driving with the stearing
wheel on the "wrong" side of the car along with driving on the "wrong"
side of the road.

Once back in the UK, we were driving home up the M1 and I pulled into
a service station to get some petrol. I completely forgot that I was
in 5th gear and driving a manual and I stalled the car pulling in to
the petrol station!!


Like you, we had trouble finding the kind of bread we were used to at home -
although in our case it was the softness of it rather than the sweetness
that was the thing. We'd buy 'French Breadsticks' or 'Italian Rolls' in the
stores only to find they were soft and soggy like those dinner rolls. If
you look around a bit you can generally find something close to the real
thing - if a baguette is labelled as a 'Crunchy French Baguette' as opposed
to simply a 'baguette', then it will be more like what you are probably used
to. This does not apply to NYC where you can visit the many delis and find
all kinds of wonderful breads, cheeses etc.

Yes, we all complained about how soft the bread was too !

I think we were stopping in quite small towns and so choice was
limited.

The other funny thing was the fact that the cheese is often orange rather
than yellow. At a buffet in Vegas early in the trip, my kids scooped a
whole heap of it onto their plates from the salad bar, thinking it was
shredded carrot! Generally we would just ask for 'Swiss' when cheese was
involved and it was fine.

Anyway, these issues are minor in the scheme of things and we had an
absolutely wonderful time. The American people were invariably kind and
helpful and we'll have many fond memories for years to come. Missing it
already...

I agree, we're all missing it and the kids are pushing hard to go to
Florida next so we can compare the Disney parks there with Anaheim and
Paris!!


Kind regards,

Dom


Cheers

Mike

Mike Mike@com wrote:

Like you, we had trouble finding the kind of bread we were used to at home -
although in our case it was the softness of it rather than the sweetness
that was the thing. We'd buy 'French Breadsticks' or 'Italian Rolls' in the
stores only to find they were soft and soggy like those dinner rolls. If
you look around a bit you can generally find something close to the real
thing - if a baguette is labelled as a 'Crunchy French Baguette' as opposed
to simply a 'baguette', then it will be more like what you are probably used
to. This does not apply to NYC where you can visit the many delis and find
all kinds of wonderful breads, cheeses etc.

Yes, we all complained about how soft the bread was too !


Here in Washington DC we also have some European Style bakeries wehre
you can get good bread. When I come home from a Vacation in Europe,
especially Germany, I always go through Bread Withdrawal.

Au Bon Pain has some decent french style breads
Great Harvest Bread company also has a lot.
Gourmet Supermarkets, and places like Fresh Fields/Whole Foods
have them.
Panera


Also look for smaller local places,

Julie
--
Julie
**********
Check out my Travel Pages (non-commercial) at
http://www.dragonsholm.org/travel.htm