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.