Because I lack creativity

Here I am, in my hotel room in Dubai, (we finally found an apartment, and we’re moving in this weekend!) finally writing about the West Coast tour!

Hopefully, we wrote down the things we did in California, in order to keep them vivid in our minds. I’m really glad that we did it, because I wouldn’t be able to remember anything this clearly.

Here we go! –-Get ready for a really quick list of all the things we did in 10 days.

The tour started with our arrival to Los Angeles from New York on the 18th of February. My in-laws flew in from Istanbul the same day. We stayed in LA for three nights, and started driving towards San Francisco on the 21st. On our first day in LA, we saw the Walk of Fame, Beverly Hills and the Rodeo Drive. For dinner we went to Orange County to visit some old friends of my mother-in-law, which was really great since we had a nice boat trip with them. The next day, we went to the Universal Studios and then went to see the Hollywood sign. We then drove to Santa Monica for dinner, which turned out to be a longer drive than we thought! Tuesday morning, we saw the Chinese Theater that has the foot and hand prints of the celebrities, before getting on the road to go to Carmel. Of course, we stopped at the Camarillo Premium Outlet to do some major shopping! Our initial plan was to go to San Francisco using Route 1, which everyone says is magnificent. We did stick to that plan, but we obviously didn’t take into account the sunset, and had to take the Route 1 in complete darkness :) So, no Route 1 photos available!! 

We arrived at Carmel that night, and did the famous 17 mile drive the next morning. 

Then off to San Francisco! 

We directly went to Sausalito through the Golden Gate Bridge, right after leaving our luggages in the hotel room. That day we also saw Haight & Ashbury, Castro, Chestnut St, Union St and Fillmore St. The next day was actually the most tiring day of the vacation for me, because we actually left the car and walked everywhere the whole day. We started with a tour of the Downtown and Union Square, and did some shopping at TJ Maxx. Then, we saw Chinatown, Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square. We took the cable car back to the hotel, after waiting a loong line in order to be able to get in it. The next day (24th), we went to Alcatraz and after that we continued our road trip towards Las Vegas. We stayed in Bakersfield that night, since it was a really long drive. 

On the 25th, we arrived at Las Vegas and we saw the Venetian, Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio and MGM Grand Hotels and went to the show called Crazy Horse Paris. On the 26th, we went to the Grand Canyon West Rim where we saw the Eagle Point, Guano Point and the Skywalk. (I couldn’t do the Skywalk since I have a fear of heights!) When we arrived back to Las Vegas, we continued our hotel tours with the Excalibur, New York New York and Mandalay Bay. That night we saw the David Copperfield show, which was really good. The next morning we saw Wynn, just before getting on the road again to go back to LA.

Our flights back to NY and Istanbul were on the 28th.

I honestly can’t believe how we managed to do this many things in ten days, but it was all worth it. Also, my father-in-law did all the driving (2,000 miles!), which was good for us, but probably not-so-good for him :)

After all the writing, here comes the photos in the following posts! They were mostly taken by my father-in-law, and some by me.

Enjoy!

P.S.:

Here are the names of the hotels and restaurants I’d recommend from this trip:

Hotels

LA: Roosevelt Hotel (we found a great deal on priceline.com), San Francisco: Andrews Hotel, Las Vegas: Mirage Hotel

Restaurants

LA: Kitchen 24 (for breakfast), The Ivy, Tiago (for breakfast), Sushi Roku (in Santa Monica)

Carmel: Nepenthe (famous for its burgers)

San Francisco: Poggio (my personal favorite), Betelnut (my second favorite), Pier Market

Las Vegas: Enoteca Otto Pizzeria, Kokomo’s (a bit pricey —we were staying at the Mirage, so we had hotel credit to use in one of their restaurants)