Above:  At Mission Santa Barbara. We have a big day today, driving from Arroyo Grande to Los Angeles (about 3h drive) before flying to London Heathrow. We had enough time on the drive to stop at the Mission at Santa Barbara, about halfway through the drive.  While the mission was founded in 1786 the existing […]

Above:  Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach. Kim, Eric and Rodger were off to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance (classic carshow) today.  That really didn’t interest me and I didn’t want to pay an exorbitant sum to see more cars.  But I couldn’t stay back at the hotel as we had checked-out for our move down […]

Above: Street scene in Carmel today. We headed out in the car this morning to Carmel and then Pebble Beach.  Along the way, Kim was distracted by a sign saying there was a car show at San Martin County Park.  Of course, he couldn’t resist that and we took a detour there. This car show […]

Arrived into San Francisco at 1225 from Auckland after an overnight flight.  We collected our rental car and despite not having tonnes of time, we did a drive around of San Fran to give Eric a look at the Golden Gate bridge.  It’s his first time here and it seems cruel not to show him […]

Above:  Beach at Fort Lauderdale. Third and final timeshare presentation We took a light breakfast at the Welcome Centre.  They didn’t have a toaster for a bagel and untoasted bagels are a little too stodgy.  It was the standard two-hour presentation which started with a general chat lasting 1h, then a tour of the property, […]

Short exploration Our stay at Daytona’s Islander Resort included a continental breakfast of bagel, real juice and a few other items. We had to arrange a timeshare presentation to attend.  We had been misled into thinking that we would be required to attend one presentation in Florida, but because we’re splitting our stay across three […]

Today we visit Kennedy Space Centre before continuing to Daytona Beach.  The drive from Kissimmee to Kennedy took less than an hour. The Kennedy Space Centre is NASA’s primary launch station for space flight.  Some exhibits were accessible by foot from the entrance area but three by bus.  Overall, we got to see some of […]

We decided to revisit Celebration today and take some photos.  It’s a lovely place, even though it is rather contrived. Text continues after this gallery.     From here, we drove to north Orlando, to Winter Park.  This is a resort community founded in the 1880s.  The homes here were very nice as well but […]