San Francisco, CA

We traveled to San Francisco on December 2^nd by plane. The city is very nice, with a lot of ups and downs and some beautiful old victorion houses. The presence of the cablecars adds a spetial additional touch. The cablecars were introduced because of the steep hills, as the horses couldn't climb them. San Francisco is one of the only cities (if not the only one) where the cablecars are still in use.

On Friday the 3^rd we walked to the Coit tower from where the whole city can be seen. Unfortunately we couldn't go to the top of the tower, due to restructurative works. For lunch we met Pamee and Steve Collette and their son. Pamee is a 4^th cousin of Lorenzo. He contacted them through Facebook the day before departure to San Francisco. They live one hour and half from San Francisco, but they drove to the city to meet us. We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and after lunch we went to Pier 39, a very nice place on the pier full of shops and restaurants. In the evening we participated at a scavenger hunt at the Lower Heights quarter. The goal was to find specific objects placed in differents shops in that area and take a picture of the object as proof to have found it. Every participating shop offered something to eat or to drink. It was a grat opportunity to have fun and visit the shops in that neighborhood.

On Saturday we strolled throught another part of the Lower Heights which was full of strange shops. We met a couchsurfer for lunch : Gaia, a very nice girl. The Golden Bridge was next on the list, but the weather was not really golden quite cold and foggie, but the Bridge was impressie anyways.

On Saturday night we moved to the Mission District, the night-life area of San Francico. We met Gaia again and had a couple of drinks toghether.

On our last day we walked (and that was more we would ever do in the gym !) to the famous Lombard Street in the morning. As soon as we got ther it tarted to rain an it would not stop until we left. We didn't have an umbrella (and didn't want to buy one because back in San Diego it would ave been useles) and our feet were soaked again. So we spent the rest of te remaining time in the shopping mall what else ! Our flight had a delay of 2 hours becaue of the weather, so annoying.

Las Vagas, NV, Death Valley, CA and Grand Canyon, AZ

Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the desert.

It's an island of fun, lights and strangeness. The bus ride towards Vegas can easily bore after few hours, but when you arrive at night and see the city flooded by sea of lights you definitely can tell it was worth it!

Vegas is just about money and fun. There are a lot of shows and attractions, but everything is so expensive. Gambling is always possible, day and night. The best moment to go out visit Vegas is at night, cause the sunlight kind of turns out the “magic” of the city.

We didn't go to any show, but we toured all the hotels, which are attractions by their own, and watched all the free-shows.

We gambled some $ with slot-machines, just for the fact to have done it!

While in Vegas we also visited Death Valley National Park and Grand Canyon National Park.

Death Valley is famous for having the lowest point under the sea-level and great quantity of salt in the soil. The shape of the landscape is very particular, in part due to volcanic actions and different colors are due to the presence of different minerals in the soil.

The Grand Canyon has origineted from the erosion of the colorado plateau by the colorado river.

Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood, CA

On November 19^th we travelled to Los Angeles by Greyhound bus with our friend Elia. We were surprised the bus was very comfortable, with a lot of place in front of your seat and with free Internet connection. We didn't see much of Los Angeles itself, because our hotel was in Hollywood. We brought our baggage to the hotel and prepared for a night walk down the Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame. We looked for bars on the Hollywood Boulevard and were surprised to find out that there wasn't really much going on, espetially compared to the livly Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego. We took the bus to Sunset Strip, the famous « night-life » street in Hollywood. But even there we couldn't find lots of cover-free bars. We saw quite a few clubs, but it was not what we were looking for.

On Saturday 20^th a visit to the Universal Studios was on schedule. In the morning is was raining a lot and we were forced to walk around with ridicoulous jellow ponchos and uncomfortably wet feet ! But the park was lots of fun ! As the weather was not the best, it was not so crowded and the lines not so long, so we had enough time to see all the attractions, rides and shows.

On Sunday we took a guided Hollywood V.I.P tour. We passed all the most famous places like Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Rodeo Drive and we saw houses of some hollywood stars.

After the tour we visitd Madame Tousseaud's Wax museum and headed back to San Diego in the late afternoon.

San Diego, CA

San Diego is a great city with fantastic weather! When we arrived on october 9^th, towards the end of the afternoon, we were surprised by the warm temperature.

The city is carachterised by palm trees and a slight sea breeze and “sea smell”.

Our first accomodation, the J street Inn, was really not a big deal: no kitchen (which is an essential tool for pasta lovers!!), very dark (first floor – inner side), we had just one sink for a “bathroom use” and “kitchen use”. To top it off, the presence of cockroaches was likely (fortunately not in our room, but in our neighbourrooms!).

After one month we changed and moved into an apartment with other 2 students, 2 brasilian girls. We could finally cook our pasta and staying in our room didn't give us the sense of being in the middle of the night any more.

We explored a lot of San Diego. Every Tuesday there is the free museum day at Balboa Park, a wonderful park with plenty of museums. We saw the science museum, the museum of natural history, the air and space museum, the locomative museum and the museum of San Diego history.

We visited the zoo, which should be the best zoo in the U.S. It's a really nice big zoo.

Another beautiful place in San Diego is Seaport Village, a walkway in the harbour with some shops, restaurants and places to hang out.

We met so many nice people here in San Diego! Korean, American, Venezuelan, Colombians, Brazilians, Turkisch, etc ... of course also a lot of Italians, French, Germans and Swiss, but we tried not to hang out with them so much to avoid the temptation of speaking “not english”.

Visiting Boston, MA

Today october 7th, Bruce took us to the firedepartement of Northborough. The firetrucks are so big and long in the U.S, way bigger than in Switzerland.
However the equippment is pretty much the same.
Firedepartments in America include the ambulace, they all are under the same "organisation". It's much more likely to cross a fire car in the streets than an ambulance.
We even got a ride in the longes ladder they have (114 feet).
In the afternoon we spent the day in the museum of science.
Sally cooked delicious dinner and a delicious american dessert: apple pie of course!!
The following day (oct 8 2010) we drove to the city again. We toured the city a bit and then drove home to Bruce's again for another delicious dinner. In the mornings we spent with them we got the chance to have typical american breakfast with bacon and eggs! They even had crusty bread for us! I think Sally didn't put it in a plastic bag (what americans usually do with bread) just for us, as europeans like crusty bread!!
On october 9th we took the plane to Dallas, where we changed plane to finally reach San Diego, our destionation.

Start of the travel

Today october 6 2010 this faboulous trip has begun. Our trip starts from the railwaystation of Bellinzona. It's the beginning of october and it's starting to get pretty cold in Ticino, as in the rest of Switzerland. We are heading towards Zurich from where our flight to London will take off. We arrived way earlier at the airport than necessary, but at least we didn't have to hurry.
We spent some time at the airport in London before our next flight towards Boston. The flight London-Boston was pretty long, but everything went fine. At the Boston airport we had to fill out hundreds of forms for the customs, declaring everything we had brought with us. A quite annoying procedure, but when it was over we finally joined our friend Bruce who was waiting for us at the airport.
What a pleasure to meet him and his wife Sally again.
When we arrived at Bruce's home, Sally had baked brownies and a glass of "prosecco" was ready for us. Their house is a "typical american" house, with thick soft carpet, round doorknobs, veranda, etc. We love this house, very very cosy.

Introduction

Welcome everybody to our blog. We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. We have waited that both of us is finish with the respective studies for going to the USA and study English, live in America, travel through this huge country and discover some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.