Many Days: LA, Vegas and Austin

I’ve been too busy to be catching up on the blogging since we’re moving quite quickly and doing a lot of things.

We picked up a hire car (Dodge Nitro) and drove from San Fran to LA. Pretty nice drive, but it was still awkward driving on the right hand side of the road.

It was a 6 hour drive with a stop-off at “In and Out”, a fast food chain with 5 burgers on the menu – Limo had put all these expectations around it, for me to be disappointed.

Los Angeles
LA is a huge city, tonnes of people and lots of things to see and do. We arrived and drove into Bel Air – I HAD to take a pic of myself and the Bel Air gate hehe.

Things we did in 4 days in LA:

• Spent a few hours walking around UCLA – it’s an awesome school with a great campus. I’d send my kids there!
• O’hara’s – went through the real college experience, we went to a real college bar attached to UCLA.
• Magic Mountain – We went on the worlds fastest and tallest roller coasters – AND WE HAVE VIDEO!! It was an awesome day.
• Washed our clothes and Whole Foods – We spent a day on washing our clothes at laundry matt and finally found an organic place to eat some quality food – HEALTHY food. All that junk we’d been feeding ourselves was taking it’s toll.
• Parties – there were heaps of parties around in LA, we had some massive nights at places like Circle Bar (great R&B/Hip-Hop)
• Santa Barbra – Limo and I picked up a Dodge convertible and drove to Santa Barbra for a business meeting. Driving on Route 101 along the coast of the US with the top down has given me an idea of what kind of job I really want!
• Sunset Boulevard & Rodeo Drive – the shops were crazy. It’s easy to see how there’s so much money being made around there.

Las Vegas

We took the Dodge 3 hours from LA to Vegas. It was another cruisy drive but we had a quiet night the day before just in case – to keep it simple, we were preparing ourselves for the 3 days and 2 nights of debauchery of Vegas. And how it lived up to it’s reputation: (this is where Ben, Limo’s mate from Sydney joined us)

• We stayed at Bally’s hotel on the strip – across the road from the infamous Bellagio
• Vietnamese food – finally everyone decided to have Vietnamese food with me – it was long awaited! I had my Pho Tai Sach and Com Suon – yes… both!
• Pure nightclub: The first night in Vegas we went to a CRAZYYYY outdoor club on the patio of Ceasars Palace. I won on the Black Jack table and blew it on the first round of drinks – 10 Jager Bombs. We had a blast dancing to fab music and a fantastic crowd.
• Ghost Bar (The Palms) – not worth the travel and the $20 cover charge. we went upstairs and yes it was a spectacular sight (we saw the strip from a bar 55 stories up).
• Playboy – cover charge at Ghost Bar enabled us to get into the Playboy bar, again, crap and not worth the travel. ALTHOUGH, since there were tables inside the club, I saw Mekhi Phifer (from 8 Mile)
• Prive – Okay, this has to be one of the BESTTTT CLUBS IN VEGAS. It was Monday night and we didn’t anticipate much. We asked around and made our way to Planet Hollywood. After seeing a huge line we bribed the bouncers $20 each ($100 for 5 guys to skip a huge line). We got it and it was massive. Heaps of people, gorgeous women and the MC was none other than…. Jermaine Dupri (JD). We loved this place, Garreth has even become a Hip-Hop convert. Met some interesting people – a guy who owns a gentlemen’s club, another guy who was using a travel pack of “Tide” to clean his white shirt.

3 days and 5 hours sleep.. it was time to leave Vegas on a high.

Photos from Vegas:

Austin, Texas

We got home at 5:30am to catch a 7:30 flight… it was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had. We flew South West airlines (otherwise known as the sh1thole of all airlines). We arrived at our Days Inn and fell asleep straight away – nursing our hangovers and catching up on sleep. Day 1 in Austin Texas was really chill:

• Thai Food: The Tom Yum here is really different (Beach, your one is HEAPS better)
• University of Texas: Another huge campus, one of the richest Universities in the world with it’s own oil well. Largely known for it’s football team (the Longhorns) and strong allegiance of fans. We went walkabouts, saw the HUGE stadium and revisited the place of Limo’s famous broken elbow.
• The first night was a chill night of walking up and down 6th (the main strip), playing pool and learning darts!

UPDATE: oh yeah, we hired a Hummer H3 and have been driving around in it like people who dont care about how much fuel is hehe.

The second night of Austin was going out with one of Limo’s old UT friends – Patricia and her friends.  She took us out to checkout the (world-famous) live-music scene. We saw the Spasmatics play some 80’s covers and it ended up being another great debaucherous night.

Other Austin highlights:

• Barton Springs – a man made pool that is fed with water from the lake. It was a hot (almost 40 degress) day that was fun just relaxing and swimming in the cool water. A Sherrin would of been great for the occasion.
• $2 Beers and tequila on 6th – 6th Street is full of bars – literally almost 3 blocks worth. Bouncers stand at the front telling passer-bys of the $2 beers and tequilas.
• University of Texas – home of one of the biggest allegiance of college NFL teams, UT is a cool Uni. Not as “pretty” as UCLA, but the footy stadium left me in awe. This UNIVERSITY football ground has the BIGGEST jumbo-tron in America.
• The first time we’ve heard house music in America.
• Rudy’s BBQ: I now know why American’s are so big. We got drunk on meat, beef brisket, sausage and baby back ribs – all for $16.

Thoughts on Austin:

• Completely different kettle of fish to the West coast. University town with a college feel.