And now, after everything, it’s time to go home.

I am so tired I can’t seem to think about anything but sleeping in my own bed – and that’s still a long way away.

We arrived in Los Angeles earlier than scheduled, and thus managed to get to the hotel by a little before ten. Unfortunately, they’d lost our reservation, and despite their apologies and the ‘upgrade’ they were supposedly giving us for being patient, I’m pretty sure we didn’t even get the room I booked let alone a better one. Worse, I’m pretty sure I paid in advance, but they charged us when we checked out; I’ll have to check my credit card to be sure, and that’ll have to wait until we get home, so we’ll see. It’ll be a pain if I have to chase them up over it, so I hope I’m wrong.

In any case, the hotel was otherwise fine, and only a block from Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood, which was certainly relatively convenient. We rushed the shower, and then a real bed, and that was really as much as we needed right then.

Wednesday was cool and damp but not outright wet for the most part. We witnessed a car accident within five minutes of leaving our hotel, and saw several more examples of road rage and near miss accidents in the time that followed. I am never driving in Los Angeles. Never, ever, ever.

We quite liked West Hollywood, though I am still not really a fan of Los Angeles in general. We spent quite a lot of time wandering, before eventually heading to find a bus to take us to Santa Monica, where we were eventually due to meet up with a friend of Rohan’s. Unfortunately, it turns out that only some of the 704 buses go all the way to Santa Monica – the rest stop short. Guess which kind ours was? Oh yes.

So we ended up walking the 4.5 miles to Santa Monica, which just about killed me. My joints ache. No matter.

The smog, once we finally got to Santa Monica, was intense. It made the whole thing seem almost post-apocalyptic. I am well and truly spoiled by Australian beaches, I think. We had restorative cocktails in the pier, and then walked down to the end and enjoyed the kitschy tourism of it all. When we walked back, long tables had been set up in the park: right next to all the decadence, there was a mobile soup kitchen handing out dinner to homeless person after homeless person. There are so many of them – it’s just awful.

Later, we were picked up by Rohan’s friend Ashley and her boyfriend, and we all had a pleasant dinner of vegetarian Indian food; they also saved us from the public transport system by driving us home. Where I promptly collapsed, swearing never to walk again.

Clearly, not a statement I intended to actually live up to, especially since we’d decided somewhere along the line that since we had to check out of the hotel by midday, and our flight was not until 11:50pm, we might as well go out with a bang and do Universal Studios.

More walking was definitely called for.

But first we had breakfast at a 50s style diner (which was surprisingly tasty), and rustled up some internet access to check messages – and then there was a cab ride through Laurel Canyon, past Mulholland Drive, and out towards Studio City.

I’d been to Universal Studies before– I want to say it was in 1998, when I was last in LA, but it’s possible it was before then. In either case, it was a long time ago, so I was pretty confident things would have changed since then. Actually, not everything had. I’m pretty convinced that the Waterworld show was on when I was there– despite still not having seen the film, I probably enjoyed it more this time. Although the script is terrible. That, and the Studio Tour, were obvious highlights, and definitely made the day worthwhile. The whole thing was kitsch and over-commercialised, but still fun.

Our cab on the way home took us through Hollywood itself, so I guess we ticked that box this trip, too, even if we didn’t walk down the hall of fame, or see anything in detail. Not really important to us, in the end.

We filled our last few hours with (more) cocktails and a shared pizza, and now we’re killing time at the airport.

I can’t say it feels as though this holiday has disappeared in a flash, because it’s honestly hard to remember when we left home. I will be glad to get home, though that definitely doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to the hundreds and hundreds of emails waiting for me at work… or being at work at all.

When do we get to go away next?

I am writing this entry right after writing the previous one, so this is sort of a continuation, but it’s really separate, so too bad, who cares.

Amy dropped Rohan and I off at the train station early on Monday morning, right after Rohan finally got an espresso shot he really liked. There were loads of PAX people at the station, which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have surprised me: the train is a long, but economical way to get back down the coast, and it has the added benefit of having more room – which means it’s easier to socialise and play games. It turns out it’s actually an annual thing, organised over the internet, for a lot of these people – a chance to continue the PAX experience.

Rohan and I paid extra to get a sleeper rather than reclining chairs. The basic sleeper isn’t huge (during the day, there are two chairs facing each other with a pull-out table in between them; at night, one bed is placed across those two chairs, while another folds down from the ceiling), but it’s cosy enough for two. Including in the price of the sleeper is all meals (but no booze), which is fun: there’s no guilt about ‘do I want dessert’ or ‘do I want a side of sausage with my breakfast’, because it’s all included anyway. You do still need to tip, which is where it’s helpful to drink alcohol – otherwise, you run out of change pretty fast.

The food is tasty, but nothing special; there’s been enough choice that Rohan hasn’t had to eat the same vegetarian option for lunch and dinner. Sleeper car passengers can enjoy free wine and cheese tasting for an hour each afternoon, too. Plus, there’s champagne when you first get on.

And the scenery is spectacular. I think that’s my favourite thing about train travel: there is stuff to see out the window, and it changes constantly. We started off seeing the outskirts of Seattle, including Boeing Field, and later moved onwards, following the Sound down through Tacoma and onwards for hours and hours. Eventually, it all turns into pine forests as you climb upwards through the mountains – and then when we woke up this morning, we were in California, and it was scrubby and barren, rather more like the scenery we’re used to.

There’s wireless in the lounge car that the sleeper cars have access to, but it’s come and go, with rather more emphasis on the ‘go’. I’ve more or less given up trying to use it – and it’s ok. I’ve been curling up and reading for hours, taking naps, and just watching the scenery pass on by. I’d much, much, much rather travel this way than fly. I’d actually argue that this trip – even in a sleeper car – is cheaper than flying and paying for a hotel and food. The same can’t be said for some of the other trips we’d like to do (like the Indian Pacific or the Ghan in Australia), but I think it’d still be worth it.

And sleeping on a train is much easier than sleeping on a plane, in my experience.

We’ve also had some interesting conversations with people we’ve met – some PAXers, some individual travellers. Rohan has found someone to talk game development with, which has been making him very happy, which is fine by me. I do kind of like the communal aspect of dining in this kind of situation, where you do end up talking to people you might not have otherwise met. Not all of the conversations are going to be good ones, necessarily, but there’s the potential for interesting things, certainly.

We’ve just passed San Luis Obispo, so we still have a few hours of travel left, but not so many. It’s all farmland at the moment (it looks like grapes, I think, but we’re travelling too fast for me to get a proper look), but we’ll hit the coast in a while, and then follow that for a while, and I’m looking forward to that.

As enjoyable as the trip is, it will be nice to sleep in a proper bed tonight. And nice to sleep next to Rohan, instead of above him (on a different bunk, obviously).

And nice to have internet access again.

I guess.

And then I stopped blogging for nearly two weeks.

Seattle was… a completely different kind of trip, I guess. Visiting people, as opposed to visiting a place – although we did that, too. I was pretty apprehensive beforehand about how it would work; before this trip, I’d only ever met two online friends before, and in neither case was I staying in their home. Or seeing them for this long. My apprehension was all for nothing, though: online friends really do translate into offline friends perfectly well. I’ve known all of them for years, and they were largely what I expected they would be, and that made it a really easy transition.

For me, anyway. I know it was a little different for Rohan, who had spoken to a couple of these people on skype before, but didn’t really know them the way I do. It’s something of a reversal from early in our relationship, when I was being introduced to all of his friends for the first time. Still, it worked out.

The Space Needle

And instead of coming back to my computer in the evening after dinner, I tended to be talking to people instead. (Which does not mean that Amy and I did not hold conversations on our laptops while in different parts of the house.) It’s unusual for me, that I was so able to cope with that much social interaction without just shutting down; normally, I’m not so resilient.

And no, we did not spend all of our time talking about the online games we all play.

We also did do a fair amount of sightseeing. Seattle is probably not a city I would have visited were it not for having friends, and that would be a shame: I really like Seattle a lot. It’s a very food-focused city, which suits me perfectly. They have farmers markets where you can buy all kinds of amazing fresh produce, for example, and an amazing chocolate factory that is doing some pretty cool stuff with fair trade (and have salted caramels to die for). And then there’s Puget Sound, which is huge, and all the lakes: it’s a very water-focused city, which suits me fine. In other words, it’s the kind of city I could actually see myself living in. It probably helped, however, that we had ten sunny, warm days there – I know full well the weather is not always that nice.

We made these!

We ate some amazing meals at places like Mistral Kitchen, RN74 and Purple. We went wine-tasting (and Rohan even went whisky-tasting). We took a ferry across to Bainbridge Island, and went to the Pacific Science Centre. I finally got to go to a Fluevog store and try all the shoes on in person. Rohan went to PAX Dev, and we all went to PAX itself. We did the Seattle Underground tour, which was fantastic. Some of us went kayaking, toured the chocolate factory, and– well, the list goes on. There were cinnamon rolls. And sadly, I’m already having trouble remembering what we did on all the different days.

In short, I was so busy doing stuff and talking to people that blogging did not happen. Or e-mailing. Or… much of anything online, really. Whoops.

I think Rohan and I were both sad to leave. We had amazing hosts (people we would definitely hang out with on a regular basis if we lived close enough to do so; alas), and between them and the others in our group, there was no shortage of good company. It’s a little strange, really, going back to the kind of trip where Rohan and I see huge amounts of each other, but not necessarily anyone else.

Together at last!

Someone needs to invent teleportation now, please, so that we can do this more often.

It’s now been pretty much a week since we arrived in Hawaii; how the hell did that happen? Seriously? I know time always goes extra quickly when you’re enjoying yourself, but it doesn’t seem possible for it to have disappeared that quickly. On the other hand, I guess I can look back and count up an awful lot of awesome, so it’s not like the time has been wasted.

I am nonetheless sad to be leaving. It’s a tragedy. It really, really is.

Tonight, we pack everything up and get ready to head in to stage two of the holiday: Seattle. I am both enormously excited and quietly apprehensive about this – we’re going to be staying with, and spending time with, people I have known for a long time, but never met before. The potential for awful is there, but the potential for awesome is definitely greater. It should be good.

And Kona? What have we done since I wrote last? Well!

We shopped on our first night, which meant we had enough supplies on hand to cook breakfast at home again. Thus, we were ready to go out and explore Kona pretty early – certainly long before we needed to be there for our pre-planned submarine tour. The Atlantis Submarine company does underwater tours in a specially designed submarine; there’s a lot to see beneath the water in Kona, and we saw an impressive amount of it from 100ft below the water. Taking photos was pretty difficult, and even the ones we did get were pretty bleached of colour given the depth– but the video is representative.

It was pretty epic.

But since we were so early, we had to stop and fill in some time, which we did via coffee and ice cream, never mind that it was about 10am. Kona coffee is a definite improvement over previous attempts at coffee; they actually do a decent espresso, at least in some places. The ice cream was also impressively tasty.

After the submarine, we headed up to the Kona Brewing Company so that Rohan could try what beers he had not yet had of theirs– plus lunch. It was pleasant in the shade, and the food was good, even if they did not serve cocktails. (Sadface: who doesn’t serve cocktails?) The walk back to our condo was less nice– it’s a bit over a mile each way, and when the sun is high and the humidity is likewise… well. After that, even Rohan wanted to get into the pool.

That was yesterday. The pool was followed by dinner (and cocktails), and eventually bed. Today? Well – we ate out, this morning, and had eggs and coffee (and an apple and cinnamon bagel for me; yay!) at a little place right on the water. Our plan had been to hit the pool again afterwards, but it was full of kids, and we demurred. Instead, there was a coffee plantation to visit. Kona coffee has a great reputation, and after seeing the process they go through to pick the beans (which are, of course, not beans at all), I can see why. Plus, it tastes really good. It was amazingly cool up in the hills: 69 degrees, according to the thermometer in my car, compared to 84 down by the coast. We had intended to try and find a beach afterwards, but you really need to know where you’re going to find beaches around here; there just aren’t that many of them. Fail.

We swam in the pool, instead.

And now, here we are. Fed, with a load of laundry on in preparation for packing, and the last of our groceries being worked through despite the extreme feeding.

Hawaii has been awesome. We’ve already talked about whether we’d like to come back, and where to – and the answer is definitely yes. Kona has been a nice middle point between touristy and not really touristy; there’s loads of great food, and plenty of stuff to do (including a lot we didn’t have time for), but it’s still relaxed and now glitzy and plasticy the way Waikiki was. The weather has been perfect.

And the cocktails have been cheap.

What more can I ask?

Dedicated to Amy, who was impatient for it.

To be honest, I don’t think there really were any hijinks, today, but there definitely were helicopters. Or, at least, one helicopter. With us in it.

Rainbow Falls

For the second morning in a row, Rohan cooked breakfast for us (yay!), so that we could get out the door quickly– our first stop was Rainbow Falls. Sadly, we saw no rainbows in the falls, but apparently it only happens in very precise conditions, and clearly we just weren’t that lucky. The falls were still pretty though!

Hello, Turtle

Our helicopter tour wasn’t booked in until much later, though, so even after visiting the falls we had plenty of time. We packed up our room (having a car makes things much easier in that sense: dump it all in and don’t worry about it) and then went for a drive. We’d intended to visit the Tsunami Museum in Hilo, but that (along with almost everything else) was closed, it being Sunday, so we ventured further afield, and ended up at a local beach. Aside from being a really love spot, it had one definite distinction: we saw turtles. In the wild. Swimming. I hadn’t expected to be that lucky, but it was honestly amazing. There were three or four of them, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Even after that, however, we had time to kill. We needed money, though, and I was interested in coffee of some kind, so we returned to Hilo to park and find such things. Sadly, the local supermarket did not have ATM facilities, and what they did have was a parking lot arranged the Australian way (as in, the in and out lanes were reversed from the American standard)… only really badly. It was, in short, an absolutely nightmare to get in and out of. On the plus side, we found a lovely little hole-in-the-wall joint a few blocks away that served Hilo Homemade Ice Cream. And coffee. End result? We both had a milkshake made with two shots of espresso, salted caramel ice cream, coffee ice cubs, and cream. It was genuinely amazing; one of the best things I’ve had this trip. Definitely the best coffee.

Volcano!

Finallystill rebuilding in some of these areas, and land is still on sale ($1500 an acre; any takers?).

More volcano!

There is something so eerie about looking at all that land. It stretches for mile after mile, as far as the eye can see – and all of it is completely useless, now. It’ll take 200 years for the land to be useful again, unless people bring in their own topsoil and start from scratch. There are now flows all the time, depending on what gets backed up, and where it all comes out from. These volcanoes are not like the traditional explodey ones: everything just seeps out, bit by bit, until it reaches the sea. The last time I was in Hawaii, the current flow was dropping out into the sea; these ones haven’t reached that far yet, though I suspect it won’t take too much longer. If one headed in the right direction, it could cover Hilo entirely within a matter of days.

Lava Flow

On the flight from Honolulu to Hilo, I read an article about one of the last people who lived on the slopes that have now been completely decimated– a guy called Jack. It turns out that our pilot was the one who finally evacuated him, and he spoke extensively about Jack and his doggedness, the way he stayed in his home (which survived initial flows) until it was absolutely not going to survive. I can’t imagine losing my home like that, even with time to evacuate. On the plus side, losing your home to a volcano is generally not instant: you usually get some warning, and that means that although millions and millions of dollars of property have been destroyed in the past 20 years, no one has died. That’s certainly an improvement over, for example, Australian bushfires.

Driving to Kona after that amazing trip was, understandably, a little less exciting. We hit rain part way through and had to battle that on and off the rest of the way. Kona is amazingly different to Hilo – startlingly so, maybe. It’s commercial and touristy, though not in the same way that Honolulu is. It’s not glitz and glitter and plastic: it’s more real than that. But that doesn’t mean it’s not gaudy in its own way.

We’re now safely ensconced in the condo that will be our home for the next three nights. The view is spectacular, and having a full kitchen (and laundry!) is definitely nice. I approve.