After a couple of flights from this side of the Atlantic we ended up in Las Vegas!! it’s big, it’s bright and it was very busy. We stayed at The Luxor, 50 mins to check in, did I mention it was busy?

The room was clean if a little old fashioned, we were offered an upgrade which seemed to be theme of the trip, like if you wanted to go to the pool and use the lovely loungers that you see in the promotional pictures, that was extra, you could still use the pool just not the lovely loungers.

The strip is just that, a long road with hotels and casinos on both sides.

After 3 nights it was time to move on to San Fransisco, an early flight meant we arrived at the airport at 8 am. We used the BART system to get into the city, cheap and with a stop close to the Hilton. Surprisingly our room was ready so after a quick tidy up we were ready to take the cable car to Fishermans Wharf and Pier 39.

It’s a bit of a tourist trap but great views of Alcatraz and The Golden Gate Bridge, and if you walk further along there are some decent priced restaurants.

We didn’t choose to stay in San Fransisco just because that’s where the boat sailed from but because we could get to Yosemite National Park. This has been on my “list” for a long time.

Yet another early start and after a 4hr drive we were there. The day before it had snowed  and it was still lying in pockets along the road side and on the mountain tops. The first sight of Half Dome and El Capitan was amazing, it looked great from a distance but it was difficult to judge just how large everything was as there was little to put it into perspective.

Half dome is 2694m high, El Capitan is 3000ft of sheer Granite, Ben Nevis is 1345m.

Our guide was excellent, he took us to different view points and gave very informative commentary. Glacier point was a highlight as was Yosemite Village where we laced up our walking shoes and took to one of the many trails.

It’s called Mirror Lake for a reason.

The park is enormous, a day was no where near enough to do it justice. On our way back we stoped at The Meadow for one last look at El Capitan, a documentary  screened a few months ago about a guy named Alex Hunnold who climbed the mountain without any ropes or safety equipment in under 3 hrs. it normally takes 2-3 days.  Free Solo, well worth a watch.

This was worth the wait, after two failed attempts at getting here we finally made it. All too soon we were back at the hotel absolutely buzzing.

It’s easy to tell only the good things but my lasting memory of San Fransisco will be the amount of homeless people on the streets, there must be hundreds if not more. On every street corner there are two or even three, it can be quite intimidating when getting approached from all sides. We had tickets for the tour bus and the guide said that there were programs to get homeless people off the streets, in fact they were so successful that other states were sending homeless people to San Fransisco, but they could only help the ones that wanted to be helped.