LA Flood-2010

Thanks to Cessa and Jeremy for putting us up in LA! We had a great time during our last couple of days in the US. Thanks so much for showing us around and of course for our last hot showers!

LA had the worst rain storm since 2005...we were there. Even though the roads were flooded and the LA residents were scared to go outside because they thought they were going to melt...the exploration pushed forward.

We went for dinner in Manhattan Beach because Court's brother was in town visiting friends, Tommy and Kate, for the weekend. Thanks for dinner Colin! It was nice to see him before heading off.

Good news Durham Family, LA now FARKLES!! Please see post for details on the game we are attempting to share with the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farkle

Hanging with the hipsters at Cha Cha

We spent the evening farkling in the "Cha Cha", a hipster bar in Silver Lake which used to be a gay Hispanic bar, which has hundreds of sombreros on the ceiling and nudy magazine pictures wallpapering the bathrooms. Please see photo booth pictures.

                              Hollywooooood                              

The following day, after Courtney felt pretty rough in the morning from all that farkling, the whole crew went to the Observatory that overlooks the whole city. Dash, Cessa's pup, came with. Apparently you can take dogs everywhere but Starbucks in LA. The skies were still cloudy but we got a few shots with the Hollywood sign in the background....Lee's goal of the LA trip!

To end the trip, we munched on some delicious Fat Burger (mmm, makes you want some right now), took a quick nap, and headed to the airport!

La La Land

So we're finally underway.  First stop, LA.  Highlights so far:  Lee lost his neck pillow at the airport before even boarding our first flight (hopefully not a sign of things to come), Courtney sat next to world's largest woman on flight to LA, Lee motorboated a statue at the Getty Museum, and the Taco Zone taco truck on Alverado in Silver Lake - best tacos in LA!  LA is having the most rain it's had since 2005 which is a bit of a bummer but we're still having a ball!

The Itinerary

Where are we going?

Planning a round-the-world trip is HARD.  We’ve been planning this thing for months and here we are less than 2 weeks before we leave and we still haven’t figured out all the details!  It turns out the world is quite big and you can’t possibly see it all in 8 months.  So, we tried to create a bit of a plan that will allow us to visit quite a few countries but also left it fairly open-ended so we can linger in places we like a little longer and duck out of places we’re not keen on earlier.  The only thing that is set in stone is the flight to South Africa.  We’re heading down there for the FIFA World Cup, which starts in early June and ends a month later.  Did we mention Lee likes football?

Here’s our itinerary as it stands today (Jan 5, 2010):

Los Angeles      01/17 – 01/19                       

New Zealand     01/21 – 02/10                       

Australia            02/10 – 02/23

SE Asia             02/24 – 04/08                       

Europe               04/08 – 06/01           

South Africa      06/02 – 07/19           

England             07/20 - ??