San Francisco, Day 1

The 7th May was the first day of our time in San Francisco. We arrived in San Francisco at 7am, with it being so early when we arrived at our hostel it meant we couldn't check in, so we ended up going to the hostel lounge and had a nap for a few hours. After we finally checked into our room we started our first day in San Fran.
Our first stop was Union Square which was literally a 5min walk from where we were staying, we started there because it was where our hop-on-hop-off tour bus was picking us up. We stayed on the bus for a while just sight seeing and learning about San Francisco and the history behind a lot of the buildings.
We decided to get off the bus at Pier 39 which ended up being my favourite place in San Francisco. The first thing we did was go and get a corn dog!! Ever since I watched The Princess Diaries and Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews went down to the Pier and got a corn dog I have always wanted to try one and I finally fulfilled my wishes and tried one. Unfortunately I really didn't like them:'(( While we were eating them we decided to go take a seat on some benches without realising a show was about to start. The show involved this proper funny British dude doing gymnastics and acrobatics, it was a really funny and amazing show, he was also incredibly good looking and we were sat on the front row wooo.

After the show finished we finished walking around the Pier and visiting all the shops. We then went back to the bus stop and hopped on the bus again which took us to Washington Square where we had a sit down and played some card games in the sun. We also went to Golden Gate park, but didn't stay very long because we were eager to go to see the Golden Gate Bridge. We decided to sit up top obviously to get the best view of the bridge, but it turned out to be a huge mistake it was insanely windy and cold and me and Faith were dressed in vests and shorts. I'm pretty sure I almost lost my sunglasses cause they almost flew off my face. I guess the view made up for it though.

As soon as I knew I was going to America I made a list of all the restaurants I wanted to go to because a lot of places we don't have over here in England and one of those places was the Cheesecake Factory so that night we decided to treat ourselves and go to the Cheesecake Factory. The food was really good and relatively cheap but the portions were huge so I had to get a doggy bag to take back to the hotel with me, I honestly felt like I might pass out with how much food I consumed, this meant we were too full to actually get some cheesecake but we just decided to go back the next day to get some to take out. I have realised that portion sizing in America is like 10x bigger than what it is in England and I felt bad with all the food that kept going to waste cause I couldn't eat it all . We then walked back to the hostel and caught up on GOT!!!

Travelling with Take Tours, Days 7 & 8

I'm going to be combining two days into one post because day 7 just consisted of going to the Grand Canyon during the morning and the Cirque Du Soleil show at night. Then day 8 was just driving back to L.A and then getting a bus to San Francisco.

On the 5th May we made our way over to the Grand Canyon, we went to the West Rim part of the Canyon which is a separate tourist area run by the Hualapai Tribe of Indians. We got to see a lot of huts and totem poles with pieces of information along with them. We also went to some Old Western prop place full of shops and really cute horses which were adorable.
We were then left to our own devices to roam around the Canyon for a few hours. It was actually insane to see just how huge the Canyon is and I didn't even see half of it. It was pretty surreal being there because I never would have thought I would visit the Grand Canyon. I took a lot of different pictures of the Canyon but I really wanted to get a picture of my feet hanging over the edge all like Mr Ben Brown, so I asked Faith to hold my hand while I went over cause yano I didn't wanna slip and as we were getting to the edge Faith had a melt down and started saying I was going to die so I couldn't actually get the picture because she then started making me worry.
At round 1 o'clock we decided to go get some lunch, because we got given a pass for free food. I can honestly say the food there is on point. I hadn't had a proper meal for a while and it was so nice to have a good ol cooked meal.

When we got back to the hotel we spent some time chilling by the pool and trying to tan. We then started to get ready to go the Cirque Du Soleil Zarkana Show which was showing at the Aria Hotel which was an all around amazing hotel. That show was the most amazing show I had every been too, it was so mind boggling watching them do all their tricks, especially because it was like a circus but without having all the horrible animal tricks involved. When we got back to the hotel at around 9.30 we decided to have a movie night.

We got to sleep in till 9am on the 6th May it was pure bliss. The 6th May was the day we made our way back to L.A, on the way back we stopped off at Tanger Outlet which is like the Designer Outlet here in England which has a range of different shops but it is all discounted. I ended up buying a new Marc Jacobs purse for $50 which in England is like £40 which was a right bargain. When we arrived back in LA we got dropped back off in China Town and said our goodbyes to our tour guide and group. We then got an uber and made our way to the bus station where we had to wait a good 5 hours till our bus arrived at 11.30pm. Trying to sleep on the bus was proper hard so I eventually gave up and just caught up on TV seeing as greyhound buses have free wi-fi.
Finally we arrived in San Francisco at 7am and made our way to our hostel. My next post will be about my days in San Francisco.

Travelling with Take Tours, Day 6

We started our day off early once again in Salt Lake City. Our first stop was the Great Salt Lake, which is the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth largest terminal lake in the world! I am just a bundle of knowledge I know. The lake was amazing and incredibly scenic. We spent around half an hour at the lake and visiting the gift shop where I was a really cute daughter and bought my mum a salt lake snowflake for her christmas tree, which obviously looked well good on her tree. At around 12 we made our way over to the Mormon Temple and had a tour around a few of the buildings, which were amazing and so architecturally pleasing,I could have spent many an hour just sitting and looking at the buildings (sad I know). We then had talk with a few people from over the world explaining the culture of mormons, which I found quite fascinating because in all honesty I don't know much about mormons so it was nice to learn something new. "Learn Something New Everyday" and all that jazz. I think there was some ceremony going on because it then got really busy with a lot of people hanging about so we had to leave and head over to the Utah State Capitol.

I'm pretty sure once we arrived at Utah State Capitol we were meant to go on a tour but obviously me and Faith magically got separated, so instead we just wondered around outside while we waited for everyone to come back from where ever they went. Had a pretty good time considering, after we had walked around the State Capitol we just went back over to the bus and played with the frisbee which was obviously highly amusing.
When everyone was back together, we started our 6hr drive to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Circus Circus hotel which is huge and even has a indoor theme park, I mean jeez thats big.
Everyone on the tour had the option to pay and go on a night tour of Las Vegas, but me and Faith thought it best if we just do it ourselves for free. So at around 8 we ventured down to the theme park and went on a few rides which made me feel hella sick, which if I put the picture up you can probably tell just by my face:"). After the lovely rides we went out onto the Las Vegas Strip. I think we covered pretty much all the major parts of the strip. We tried to see as much as possible but there is only so much my little feet can take.
We got to go to the Bellagio Fountains to watch the water show which was pretty spectacular, on our way home we also watched some sort of fire show!

On our way back to the hotel we stopped off at Walgreens which was our new favourite place to buy food, we stacked up on a lot of food and made our way back to the hotel to bed in.

The next post I think will be consisting of two days in one!
Enjoy.

Travelling with Take Tours, Days 4 & 5

I feel like writing about my time at Yellowstone might be difficult and in all honesty a little boring. Yellowstone is one of those places that you have to visit to understand the gravity of how amazingly breathtaking it is, I really tried to capture the park as well as I could within my pictures,but I am no professional photographer as much as I like to tell myself I am;) That is why this post is consisting of the two days I was there and will probably be more pictures than words.

Our first day at Yellowstone started at around 6am, by this point in the trip I was finally getting used to the late nights and early starts- just barely.  We started the first day off by visiting Old Faithful Geyser which is one of the parks most well known features!! We arrived at the Old Faithful Geyser just after it erupted so had to wait another 30mins till the next one, but it was worth the wait because it was amazing! We also visited the Mammoth Hot Springs and the Artist Point.
Throughout the park we visited a lot of the different Geyser Basins that Yellowstone had to offer. Near the end of the day we visited the Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake which is the largest single body of water in Yellowstone, but, we went in May and the whole lake was covered in ice.

The wildlife at Yellowstone is intense though, I live in West Yorkshire and the most exciting wild animal I have ever seen is probably a Stag. I saw hundreds and I mean hundreds of buffalos and a lot of deer. But wait. I also saw the top of a bears head! I know, try not to be too jelly. But really, I wish I saw a lot more wildlife than I did.
After a full day at the park we made our way back to the hotel. Me and Faith then decided to venture into town on an adventure for some decent food and have a wander! I found buying food in America hard, especially when half the time we were there we didn't have a kitchen. I think thats what I missed most when I was away was the good ol British food. We finally found a bar that did take out pizzas. I waltzed on in and like a normal person asked for a margherita pizza- cue the strange look from the guy at the bar asking why I wanted a drink. It means two things over on this side of the pond, a drink and a pizza!!!

The second day consisted of us visiting a few other springs that we missed out the first day (which I can't remember the names of) after that we made our way to the Grand Teton National Park, where we saw more buffalo, and took a lot of pictures of the sun rising cause it was hella early.
After that we started our 6 hour drive to Salt Lake City. Once we got there me and Faith just bedded in because we were shattered.

Ok, well I wrote a lot more than I anticipated! Oh well! I hope you like the pictures! Bye.

Yellowstone Lake!!

Artist Point.

Midway Geyser Basin.

Grand Teton National Park.

Old Faithful.

Yeah thats right, I got this close to a buffalo, but then got told off. 

Mammoth Hot Springs.

Travelling with Take Tours, Day 3

Day 3 was another early morning for moi and Faith, I think it was a 6am start. We left Denver and started the drive to South Dakota to go to the Crazy Horse Memorial, by this point we had switched drivers and now had one called Larry, who was the one who owned the frisbee and me and Faith being the childish 18year olds found a great amount of fun with it.

On the drive to the memorial we got to watch a whole video about the memorial- like the history behind the memorial and all about the family that are creating it. When we finally arrived, there was no surprise that me and Faith got separated from our group and ended up with a completely different group in a cinema room watching the film we had already watched on the bus :|
When we finally regrouped we had a look around the Crazy Horse Memorial museum and then tried to get some half decent pictures of the memorial, which was kinda hard with it being so far away and my zoom on my camera isn't great. When it got round to lunch I had a hotdog which was becoming a regular thing for me because lets be honest they are sold everywhere in America and they are always sooo nice, it was also the first place I had found that sold Cadburys chocolate- HALLELUJAH, went completely off topic, but couldn't help talking about the food;)
I really recommend going to see the memorial, it was so interesting to look at and learn about the history behind it, I loved that it started off as a family project and is still continuing. One day I hope to go back when its completed.

From then on we made our way over to Mount Rushmore, which I was incredibly excited for because its such a famous memorial. Once we arrived me and my friend obviously tried to remember who the 4 presidents were, I'm pretty sure I got 3 out 4 right which isn't too shabby for a non american;).
We took a lot of pictures of the memorial and had a nice sit in the sun for a while, because quite frankly it is a sight to behold. We obviously took a visit to the gift shop to get some souvenirs and ice cream. My lovely friend Faith bought me a Mount Rushmore coin though which was adorable because I'm a saddo who collects coins!

Finally we went to Devils Tower, where lots of crazy ass people were climbing up the bloody thing, thinking they were spiderman of something. We went for another hike, to try get up close and personal with the tower. But not before our tour guide told us to be wary of bears. I mean c'mon. Bears. Seriously. It wasn't the best thing to tell me before I went off with just Faith into the wilderness. After all that we finally made our way to our hotel in Gillette Wyoming, which was hella creepy by the way and I'm pretty sure it was haunted.

Hope you like the pictures!

You maybe can't tell, but in this picture is one of those spiderman people I was on about!!!!

Travelling with Take Tours,Day 2

Well, I failed miserably at posting daily about my trip to America. So lets just forget that that happened and just continue on with my travel blog, and I'm really going to try stick at it this time, life just gets in the way sometimes. So I'm sorry!!

So day 2 of Take Tours, consisted of me and Faith waking up at 4.30am and then leaving our current hotel at 5am!!! We left Utah and started driving to Arches National Park which I think is a 3hour drive but we didn't arrive till around 10 because we made a few stops to get food etc etc. The first part of the park we went to was the Courthouse Towers trail, which gave us a panoramic view of the Three Gossips - Tower Of Babel and some others which I can't honestly remember, I also had a really nice view of the La Sal Mountains.

After taking many a picture and shamelessly a lot of selfies, we made our way over to the Devils Garden Trailhead, and started a nice trek up to the Double O' Arch, bearing in mind it being really really hot and I'm from England, I don't like the heat all that much so it was rather difficult. But all in all it was worth the effort because it was really interesting seeing the Double Arch especially because if I'm not mistaken only a few weeks before a lot of rocks had been falling off the Arch.
We ended up walking to another view point, but I can't remember what it was called and I couldn't take many pictures because it was heaving!

After all that walking we got back on the bus and made our way to Denver, which meant driving through Colorado. Colorado is mad though, I felt like I was driving through a bunch of different states at once, from it being sunny one minute then to it snowing the next, it was mad. We didn't spend long in Colorado, just had one stop by a river, but I really want to go back because all the houses look amazing and I definitely want to go skiing there!

I put a few pictures down below! Enjoy.
Ciao!

Traveling with Take Tour, Day 1

Day 1 of Take Tours- L.A to Utah.
 8-Day Yellowstone National Park, Mt. Rushmore, Arches National Park, Grand Canyon West Tour Package from Los Angeles/Las Vegas 
Above is the tour I went on and the places I went to (not in order).
Lets start with that I didn't book this tour, my friend Faith chose & booked this one and initially we knew it was a Chinese based company, but the price was so amazing so we weren't fussed. So when we got ready to leave L.A & travel to Richfield Utah, it turned out that we were the only British people on the trip, which ultimately we found hilarious, the looks we got given when out with everyone was even funnier!! Luckily a lot of the people on the tour spoke english, and we met a lot of nice people especially this little boy, which we don't know the name of because as his father said "we haven't given him an english name yet" so he was just cute boy in our book.
At first it was a bit strange cause they always wanted to take pictures with us, which is nice but it was like all the time! We settled in easily and made really good friends with the two bus drivers we had, mainly the second one because he had a frisby, which later became our daily work out!

I have kind of gone off topic, anywho, we left our hotel at like 7am in the morning to then travel to Las Vegas which was around a 4 hour drive. When we got to Las Vegas we got on to a different bus, because there were a lot of people doing different tours. Once everyone was with the correct people we drove from Las Vegas to Richfield Utah which was I think another four hour drive which included stopping off a lot, we finally got into Utah at like 9pm , where we then got told that we had to get up the next morning at like 5am which we were dreading, as soon as we got in we got ready for bed and wacked on The Breakfast Club.

This was a rather boring post,but tomorrow hopefully I shall be putting up a post and pictures about my day at Arches National Park.

Ciao.