Dialog - Seite 61

"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!" - so goes a famous quote. On the flight towards the U.S. I had watched "The Hangover" - and it didn't get that wild for us:-) Las Vegas is absolutely stunning and it overwhelms you when you get there. You do get used to the glittering, blinking, advertising-everywhere-everything after a while thougn and it's absolutely worth a stay, even if you're not planning on gambling or getting drunk! We had a room for the weekend in the TI Hotel and Casino.

This was the longest of our road trips, leading us from Santa Maria through Santa Barbara county southeast through Malibu, crossing Greater Los Angeles Area (with almost 18'000'000 inhabitants one of the most populous regions in the U.S.), finally turning northeast on to I-15 heading to our day's destination, Las Vegas. This last part gave us a feeling for the wide open areas in the States.

We had planned for two overnights in Santa Maria, so we went out exploring the region, starting with the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes and spending a lazy afternoon at Avila beach (about 15 km northeast of more well-known Grover Beach).

Leaving Monterey, we continued southwards on CA-1, a winding road along California's pacific coast. This scenic highway keeps it's promise: Every corner you turn around gives you a "wow!" kind of view. We reached our destination for this day, Santa Maria, where we stayed at The Historic Santa Maria Inn.

After we picked up the rental car at the San Francisco airport, the first part of our daytrip took us down to Monterey, where we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The $30 addult admittance is definitely worth it!

The next day, I proposed to walk through Golden Gate Park and all the way over to the Golden Gate Bridge. By the time we arrived at the latter, it was all covered in a fog patch, which did make for some interesting pictures but at the time was kind of disappointing. Walking back all the way to St. Hyde Pier, we were happy to catch a cable car to Market street. We estimated later from tracing our walk on maps we had walked about 20 km.

After arriving at our hotel in Market Street the evening before, we were too tired to really go out exploring, so instead decided to have a sandwich, watch some TV and fall asleep. The next morning, starting out with a coffee at Starbuck's, we started walking up and across Nob Hill down to Ghirardelli Square, over to Pier 39 and through the Financial District to SoMa, where we had our first burger in the U.S. inside an American Diner (what else?). It started to rain around 3 in the afternoon, so our tour stopped there and we went back to catch up some more on sleep.

On a bike tour around the Klingnauer Stausee, down to the hydroelectric power plant in Albbruck and back along the Rhine river to Waldshut.