Well, we’ve been home about a week and a half now.
We are definitely back in the swing of normal life.

The day after we got home, Bubbles was coming in from out in the backyard and he yells out to Spanky, “Where are you? This is the furthest away I’ve been from you in about 5 weeks!”. It was strange to realise that for 5 weeks we had been with each other pretty much 24/7.

Before we left the US, Bubbles swore that he wouldn’t eat a French fries/Chip for at least two weeks after we got home. So far this has been pretty easy to do, helped by the fact that when we went food shopping we didn’t buy any.

Although it has been easy not eating fries, Bubbles has had Onion Ring withdrawals. Often at dinner, we would share a plate of onion rings and were becoming quite the Onion Ring Connoisseurs.

We really did have a wonderful trip, although it is hard to sum it all up in a quick answer when people as “how was your trip”.

We both loved our time at the beach. It was very relaxing, restful and a beautiful area. Probably most like our normal holidays are.

Our favourite city was New York City. Although it is busy and has lots of people, we never felt unsafe and had a wonderful time there doing everything we did and we weren’t rushing around too much.

Spanky got very used to driving on the other side of the road and since coming home has struggled a few times when driving. Window wipers on rather than indicator, wanting to do a long left rather than a short left etc.

We made another trip out to the airport on the weekend, to pick up The President and First Lady, who arrived home from their 3wk trip to South America and the Galapagos islands. We had Sunday lunch with them, Spankys grandparents and brothers to catch up and because Spanky’s brother, Patrice, headed off to the US yesterday and he will be gone for about a year.

In other news, Bubbles’ sister, The Keeper, is in the new tourism Australia ad. Funnily enough, she is the zoo keeper holding the Platypus. Good singing!

Day 36 - Sunday 23 May - Travel/Sydney/Melbourne

Now there is no mistake in the date, we left on a Friday night and got home on a Sunday morning due to a little thing called the International Date Line.

The flight was fine but Bubbles didn’t sleep much and ended up with a stiff neck, so he was grumpy and tired by the time the flight was over. Spanky on the other hand was pretty chipper. She fell asleep shortly after takeoff, woke to eat dinner, then went back to sleep and only woke when we were about 2.5hrs away from landing.

We arrived in Sydney and had our first case of having to wait a long time for our luggage. When we finally got it we quickly got though customs and headed for the transfers desk with about 45 mins before our domestic flight to Melbourne was meant to leave. There would have been more time, but V Australia/Virgin Blue in their wisdom changed our flights a week before hand and moved us to a domestic flight 45min before the one we had booked on.

After waiting for about an hour at the transfers desk, we were given seats on a different flight (funny that as our other one had already left) and headed over to the domestic terminal. We boarded our flight for our final flight of the trip.

We arrived in Melbourne at 1115am and we met by The Golfer and The Teacher who chauffeured us home. Thus ending our five week journey.

Day 35 - Friday 21 May - San Francisco

Today started off as normal and we got up and grabbed some breakfast. We finished up our packing, somehow finding the best way to pack the large amount of shoes, jeans, t-shirts, jackerts etc that we had brought. We were lucky enough to have a midday checkout, so at about 1145 we left out room and headed down. We double checked that out taxi was booked to pick us up and went out for our last little bit of shopping.

We grabbed what we needed (another jacket for Bubbles, shoes for Spanky) and headed to get some lunch. There was a soup place that Bubbles had been wanting to go to since we arrived in San Francisco but could never get there. So after our long awaited soup lunch we headed over to Walgreens.

By the time we left Walgreens we had almost left them with no Sugar Free candy, which is for Bubbles. We headed back to our hotel and grabbed the taxi to the Airport. It was the first taxi that we had taken that cost what we expected it to. It was nice not to have a nasty surprise on being dropped off.

We checked in our luggage, 2 for Bubbles and 1 for Spanky (plus she had the small suitcase carry on), and went to our gate. The flight to Los Angeles was quick and there was nice view from the window as we flew in. This was just the first of three flights that it would take to get us home.

We grabbed out luggage and walked around LAX to check in at terminal 3. We passed the luggage weight test (we sent 4 bags down the shoot and hit right on our weight limit of 64kg total) and went and grabbed some dinner in the main international terminal. We were going to get dinner on the flight but we would have to wait until about midnight local time to get it.

After some dinner, we headed to our gate and waited. It was strange to be waiting for an international flight in the same terminal as domestic flights, but the added security in the US airports makes it ok as only passengers with boarding passes are allowed past security to the actual terminal.

Day 34 - Thursday 20 May - San Francisco

This morning we got up earlyish, had breakfast and got ready for the day. We headed out to the local Walgreens (7-11) and brought a one day muni ticket so that we could go on the Cable cars, buses and trams.

We got on the Cable car at the end of Powell just before 830am. This cable car took us up Powell Street, and along Mason Street all the way to Fisherman’s wharf.

We hopped off at the end of the line, and walked over to pier 33 where we boarded a boat going out to Alcatraz Island. We had booked the 930am boat and it left right on time. We sat up the top of the boat and soaked in the views as well as some much needed sun.


We spent about 2 hours on Alcatraz, wondering around looking at all the buildings. We took the free audio tour of the main cell block and heard about what it was like for the guards and the inmates. Bubbles even spent some time in a cell, but Spanky declined the offer.

When we got back into the city it was just after noon, so we walked down to pier 1 and the Ferry building for some lunch. They had transformed the old building into a farmer market type location that fresh food and local produce to pick from. Originally this building was a Ferry terminal for everyone coming into the city for work from other areas of the bay, but when the bridges (Bay & Golden Gate) were build it was not needed very much. A freeway was build over it, but in the last major earthquake (late ‘80’s) the freeway collapsed. Instead of rebuilding the freeway over it again, they moved the freeway and redid the building up to its past grandeur.


We stopped by a chocolate store on the way back to pick up some more presents, but strangely Spanky declined some free samples.

We took a walk up Market Street and then hopped on a tram and then a bus to get us to a sports store we had found online. We finally found a place that had shoes that would fit Spanky and Bubbles got some things too. So we were much much happier than we were yesterday arvo.

We took the bus back to Union Square and headed for the hotel for a rest and to start packing.

At 530pm we headed out the front of our hotel and were picked up by Martha & Terry (it was perfect timing by all of us!). They drove us a few blocks away and we went and had dinner at this great little Italian restaurant. The food was wonderful and we all left the restaurant feeling very full. Terry took us on a bit of a drive of the city, and we headed out to the Golden Gate Park. We went to the beach as well, and saw the Pacific Ocean. On the way back to the hotel, Martha pointed out places to us, like the area her grandparents lived in, the hospital where she was born and other places she used to go to as a child.

We were all pretty tired by the time we got dropped off to the hotel (we’re sure the food helped with that), but it was great to be able to see Martha & Terry one last time before we left.

Day 33 - Wednesday 19 May - San Francisco

Today we had a bit of a sleep in and then headed for our 11am bus tour out to the Golden Gate Bridge. The tour gave good views and we stopped for about 15min on the other side of the bridge for photos. It was drizzling the whole time, but we still sat on the top level of the bus and got wet.

On the way back, we got off the bus at Lombard Street to go check out the crooked part of the street. We walked up and up and then down and down Lombard street. It is easy to see why it is called the “crookedist” street in the world.



After our picture taking, we walked a few blocks south to go find a sports store we had heard about. We looked around the store for about 30min and brought only one thing. We stopped for lunch at a Deli and then made our way to the Cable Car Museum.


After the museum, we were pretty tired from all the hill walking, so headed to the hotel for a rest.




After our rest, we went out to try to find some sneakers to buy. After lots of frustration going to all the shops in the area that sold them, we gave up and had some dinner. For some reason they only stock standard width shoes and in limited sizes, which we found strange being in the land of the giants.

We went to the 8pm show of Wicked. The show was good, we had seen it in Melbourne 2yrs ago. The theater is in a very seedy part of town, so we walked very quickly back to our hotel after it was over with some other people going the same way.

Day 32 - Tuesday 18 May - San Francisco

Today we did three hop-on hop-off bus tours.

The first one we did took us out to Golden Gate Park (this park is not near the Golden Gate Bridge). This tour took us past some of the seedier parts of the city but also gave us a good look at the different types of houses that make up the city. The most interesting of those houses had such intricate detail with the painting that they looked amazing. We went past the famous 'Painted Ladies', which are shown in many movies and TV shows.


We next did the downtown tour. This tour took us through the city and we hopped off at Fisherman’s Wharf. We went for a look around the Wharf area. We checked out Pier 39 and the seals and then walked over to Fort Mason. We got on the bus again and headed back to Union Square.




When we got back to the Square, we stopped off at the discount Ticket booth and picked up tickets for Wicked for tomorrow night at a good discount price.

After a short rest, we did the night bus tour (that was at 5pm, and it was nowhere near being dark outside, thank goodness it took us on a different route from the day tour).

We grabbed some dinner at Wolfgang Pucks Express and then headed back for the night. As a note it was still light out when we got back to the hotel after dinner. Not a very good night tour on the bus.

Day 31 - Monday 17 May - San Francisco

Today we packed up our stuff and Terry took us to our hotel in San Francisco just before lunchtime. We said goodbye and thank you to Terry, but would be seeing him and Martha later in the week before we left.

We were able check-in to our room when we got there. The room was very nice and we both thought that the upgrade in the room was well worth it for the extra space that it gave us.

Our hotel is at Union Square. Union Square is a tourist area which has lots of shops and restaurants.

We spent the arvo walking around the area looking in the shops and getting wet from the rain. We both bought some things to go with the ever expanding pile that we have accumulated.

For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory at the top of Macy’s. It was great! The meals were huge and we each ordered a cheesecake to take away (very very good cheesecakes. Bubbles had a low carbs one, while Spanky had a triple choc one). It was our first restaurant that we had to wait for a table to be available, which is pretty good this far into the trip. We left dinner wishing we had been to the Cheesecake Factory a few times in our trip.