L.A and onwards

Hello all

Well all good things…………………………

We have been so fortunate with everything that we have done on this holiday, that it will be difficult to tear ourselves away. Mick and Holly have been great hosts, so we have continued in holiday mode, in brilliant sunshine, until today.

We walked along the sea shore to the pier, enjoying calamares L.A style, this took up most of the day as we had slept for 13 hours, following our rather uncomfortable flight from Auckland, wedged in the middle of 3 seats with a very large man in the aisle seat. Actually every seat in the plane was full, bar one. Bren says that kiwis love to travel by Air NZ, they did that night!

We had a great trip to the Getty villa, recently re-opened after a long makeover, housing mainly Roman and Greek antiquities. It is in a stunning position overlooking the sea on the Malibu stretch. We had a very enjoyable lunch in a sea view restaurant where we scanned the horizon for more glimpses of dolphins or whales. have become a bit obsessive about wild life watching, we were somewhat placated by seeing lots of gannets in flight.

Santa Monica would not be complete without a wander along the canal and boardwalks of Venice Beach, stopping for the now mandatory ankle tattoo. You will be able to see the results of having our Chinese birth signs for sheep and dragon (guess who the dragon is) gracefully adorning our ankles. Last night we had slide shows of both our holidays in Japan and NZ, which may be of interest to only us, but we were mutually fascinated by each others exploits, I think we score highest in the spectacular scenery section, falling behind in the illustrated blogs, due to pressure of itinerary.

For anyone wanting to do a trip to NZ after seeing the photos there are loads of Kiwis really keen to do a house swap, and the air fares are really good right now, just imagine 6 months or even 2 weeks away from English winters. Perhaps Spain is a little nearer!

People have said to me that going away for nearly 5 weeks will be a life changing experience. I think I would say that the whole trip has increased my ability to travel from place to place, under one’s own initiative, and the excitement has never palled over the whole of that time. The maxim : do it now, springs very much to mind. These years of life are no time for procrastination, neither are vague ideas about what one wants to do, or where one wants to go. On second thoughts it may be just the time of life to do things on a whim, to take risks, to try something new. I am not sure, because I also recognise that the family and friends that I have back home are also important to come back to. We watched the effects of earthquakes in the fiord region of NZ scraping all the trees and moss off the mountainside, only to see the new growth changing the face of the mountain a few years later. So perhaps while it may be true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, one can become so moss clogged that new life becomes very difficult to initiate. So there you are , that is my take on it. If you want to know what Marie thinks you will have to ask her.