Me stealing a canal boat - more sober than my goofy expression suggests - blog to follow…
Whacking them all together to remind myself where all my money went in 2009…WORTH IT!!!
San Diego seems like it would be a great place to live – well laid out, clean, city/beach combo, kind of hip without being grimy. It’s basically part of the same urban sprawl that Tijuana is – when you look on a map it’s almost like they are East & West Berlin or North and South London. They are divided by a huge scary guarded chain link fence that runs for about sixty miles.
We stayed in a hostel that was in a great location and run by lovely friendly people. Nonetheless we agreed that we’re getting a bit old for hostelling. First off the mattress was covered in that icky plastic stuff best described as ‘wipe-clean’ – I know it makes sense but EWW. On each bed was a weird sort of bean bag thing that we weren’t sure if it was for our necks or feet or what. At 3am someone banged on the door- it was a paralytic Mancunian boy who promptly crashed out cold on the couch in front of our room. Later I went to pee in the communal bathroom and walked in on a naked surfer type who cheerfully yelled “Sorry dude, guess I should’ve locked the door”. Mancunian boy was by now crashed out in his pants in the social area.
I got up at 6 to bag a spot on the internet as we had no hotels for the next night. There were plenty of people still up from the night before and they were crossly discussing “The British” and what a bunch of booze hounds they are. Everyone it seems had encountered Mr Manchester.
At 7 I came back and found Alex strung out and teary, stressed about the driving, missing her boyfriend, worried about money, still jetlagged and a bit poorly. I can’t say I felt a million times better. But you know what the worst thing was? That bloody bean bag turned out to be our neatly packed fresh sheets and pillow cases. DUH!!!
To get to Tijuana we took the trolley that ran from near our hotel down to the world’s busiest border - San Ysidro, 41 MILLION people cross through it every year. It can take minutes to get through and hours to get back. I think the Silverlink/North London line shares a business model with the San Ysidro trolley. Basically that model is turn a blind eye to poor people not paying if they are being conveniently shipped to the wealthy areas to perform manual labour.
The fare is a very reasonable $2.50 each way but we forgot to get an advance ticket so we fretted about getting fined if an inspector got on. The other passengers mistook our fear of American border police for an upright sense of civic duty and interrupted us to intimate that we didn’t really need a ticket but “God bless you for trying”.
We hopped out at the border and breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t tried to drive – it was 20 car wide gridlock in the heat of the midday sun. On the other side we took a $5 cab to avoid the 25 minute walk in the heat and found ourselves in infamous Tijuana.
As you see below it’s a really colourful tacky place. The shop fronts basically go drugstore – tequila bar-dentist- drugstore – tequila bar-dentist and so on. Of course there are brothels too but they’re more hidden away. I’m imagining the archetypal visitor pitches up, buys some cheap prescription drugs, gets his teeth whitened and filled and then has a shot of tequila to take the edge off! Before I think I thought that people were buying exotic uppers and downers from the 70s like quaaludes or diet pills with speed or whatever, but actually even some basic aspirin can set you back $8 over there when we pay 34p in Boots the Chemists.
Anyway we had a good old amble round and some food. It was pretty poor and crummy looking as many people had forewarned. It also seemed geared up for way more people than were there. I think Swine Flu is still having a big impact on tourism.
We shopped for knick knacks and allowed ourselves to have our arms twisted into going up to a cocktail bar on the main strip even though it was barely lunchtime. Al wasn’t drinking but I had a margherita. The lady brought out two and told me it was buy one get one free. Yesss! Alex said she’d carry me to the trolley.
I had just drained a tasty margherita when a ‘shot girl’ turned up and without warning tilted my chin back firmly, thrusting a tequila bottle pourer literally down my throat. She was blowing a whistle in that sort of way that sergeant majors drill their soldiers. A bunch of overgrown frat boys (frat men) behind us started cheering and clapping delightedly. The tequila just didn’t stop coming so I closed my mouth and she carried on pouring as the stuff ran down my face. She set the bottle down and mopped my face with some linen. I came up gasping for air- laughing with all the people who were laughing at me. Then she went and bloody did it again!
When Alex had stopped laughing it was her turn to frantically defend herself against tequila molestation. She wildly made the international two-handed gesture for driving and escaped unscathed. After we tipped her move along she headed for the frat men table and it was our turn to laugh and clap along and she cradled the head of a moustachioed man and chucked shot after shot of Cuervo Gold down his neck.
I don’t know if you’ve ever drank 5+ measures of tequila in 20 minutes and then crossed through a border control, but if you haven’t I can highly recommend it. After a worrying moment in the hot bouncy cab when I wondered if I’d keep my nachos down, I had a blissed-out meander through customs where I pleaded with the officer to stamp my passport and he batted me away good humouredly. The whole strip was stress-free and fun, I say TJ aint so bad – so long as you enjoy tequila.
My damn computer keeps eating my blog posts - service will resume shortly, thanks for your patience.
We bounced down at a smoggy LAX at local time 5pm, landing alongside flights from Sydney and Japan. Once we got through the usual snarly jobsworth passport dudes, we saw the full extent of the chaos. The whole baggage carousel area was one big conga of frazzled people queuing to escape. We knew it didn’t auger well for the traffic situation outside. When we got to the customs bit we could see what the problem was. There were about thirty Japanese people looking mortified as the officials rifled through their exploded suitcases.
What was their crime? Smuggling bizarre foodstuffs. Ok deli counter meats? Fine. Milky drinks? Not strictly allowed but we’ll let you off. But what perplexed us the most was the eggs. Not a half a dozen in an egg box but two random, fragile, hen’s eggs hidden in a nice lady’s posh suitcase. Maybe they actually had chickens in them? Who knows…
At the car rental place the clerk tried to bamboozle us with car specs and pictures of Hum-Vs, attempting to convince us that we wouldn’t even be able to see the sea if we insisted on hiring the lame-o Hyundai. When that didn’t work he said our suitcases wouldn’t fit in the trunk when we could have fitted both cases and climbed inside ourselves it was that roomy. Americans are mental about cars - especially when on commission.
We made it to the hotel with relative ease, barring some jerk-off who shouted “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU CRAZY BITCHES?!” when we were merely a little slow in following the traffic stream at a junction.
The hotel was at Venice Beach and we had a lovely stroll along the beach. I wasn’t really expecting the seasideyness of it all, or to be able to see the stars or that there’d be anywhere that you could escape the noise of the traffic. But it was really breezy, dark and tranquil. That is until a car blew up.
Ambling along towards Santa Monica we saw some local yoot skittering around this burning car near the beach. “Erm – surely that can’t be sensible” we said in our prim English way. “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE CAR BEFORE IT BLOWS UP” came a voice from within a squillion dollar beach house. The fire was spreading and the car now totally done for, the teenagers still within a few feet of it, seemingly daring each other to get closer. We weren’t sure if we were unduly influenced by our proximity to Hollywood but we didn’t want to carry on walking in case there was a huge fireball. After a few minutes some locals started to gather on the sidewalk. “Has anyone called 911?” A mother of three asked. Hmm yes we probably should have done that. There was a bit of mild panicking about how to describe the location of the fire to emergency services and wasn’t everyone busy dealing with the forest fires? We edged back and edged back in our rubbernecking way. Then the car blew up. It was pretty loud and dramatic but it wasn’t a huge fireball that threw us to the ground like Vin Diesel. Shortly afterwards the fire brigade turned up and put the car out in seconds. We rubberneckers dispersed and we headed back towards the hotel.
On the way back we gawped in the windows and patio doors of the squillion dollar beach houses. There were plenty of deep shag carpets and baby grand pianos. We passed a handsome black guy stood in the doorway drinking a beer. “I know it was you” he said “Huh?” “Said I know it was you that lit the fire”. We started giggling and he grinned “I called 911 and said there’s a coupla girls, one has a red purse, saw them walking one way and when they came back a car was on fire”. Good opening gambit.
He introduced himself as Kermit, a music producer and anglophile. He’d been to England twice “Once for Ascot and just recently for Wimbledon”. Alright for some! He was clearly minted. He told us where the authentic bars and Mexican restaurants were and invited us in for a beer. We politely declined but took his card and said we might come dancing with him on Sunset Strip on Saturday. We gave ourselves double California points for consorting with the locals and went off to find the authentic Mexican place before we crashed out at a respectable 10.30pm.
Friday afternoon labor day weekend is the busiest driving day of the year- this was the first time the traffic cleared..
I’ve written before about how poorly suited I am for California. I’m not rich, thin, tan, I can’t speak Spanish, I don’t do shorts and I find too many choices overwhelming. And of course I don’t drive. These are the reasons I haven’t bothered to visit before. They are similar to my fickle reasons for not visiting Amsterdam “Don’t do weed or canal boats. Don’t like Van Gogh. End of”. But ten years later I was convinced that none of that mattered. Except the driving - having just one person do it all meant that it was a completely different experience for us both. Alex did amazingly well even when a 70 mile drive took us 4 hrs on labor day weekend. But I wouldn’t choose to do it like that again. So with those two notes aside I’ll get on with actually telling you about my trip. Well tomorrow anyway. Jx
A few people asked me why I didn’t really write about Lake Constance other than to scare my family with tales of how I almost drowned. I suppose it’s for the same reason I’m having trouble writing about this trip - it’s quite intense when there’s only two of you.
I had an absolutely wonderful time in Germany - I must actually go to Tripadvisor sometime to post a review of the brilliant hotel I stayed in. It has hawaiian themed breakfasts, a telescope in the bedroom AND Wii machines that you can strong-arm your way onto by scaring small children. But as this is a neurotic travelog not an actual guide I’ll save that for the good folks at tripadvisor.
NB: to that end my latest annoying ‘Poolearazzi’ habit is to not let anyone remotely muss a hotel room until I’ve snapped it from every angle, usually breaking one or more pieces of furniture in the process.
