Jakey Jake

So i spent a quick night over in LA staying at hollywood hostels before getting the greyhound to San Francisco. The trip was about 7 hours, luckily most of which i slept. Arriving in a big city where you have no idea where you are and only an address can sometimes be unnerving, add to that you are carrying a shiteload of luggage and you are walking through the local black ghetto and you get an idea of where i was at. I still managed to make it to the hostel alive and well and decided to have a quiet night in watching some videos and sitting on the net. Its definately worth having a laptop when youre on the road, especially if you’re in the states, there are that many free wireless networks its crazy.

The hostel is in a perfect location, just a block from the beach, 2 blocks to the main shopping strip and 1 block from the main bars. South beach is what is known as the ärt deco area as all the they are mostly buildings of that style, its really fiunky and you feel like youve stepped back in time to the 50s, although there are loads of lambos hummers, ferraris, bentleys, aston martins, vettes, and some really crazy done up cars. Anyway the super clubs are pretty shit cause the area where you would normally dance is the VIP area and it costs around 6-900USD to hire out an area there. Yeah it sucks, everyone is trying to see or be seen and it seems like no one has fun, pretentious clubs arent my scene. Thank god theres a lot of funky lounges and dive bars around the area. I hung out with a bunch of irish guys who were in miami for a wedding and we went a little crazy. We went to mansion cause head kandi were playing and on the sunday we went to nikkis beach bar which i would definitely recommend.

the plane was meant to leave from melbourne at 10.30am however because of an engine problem we were delayed 1.5 hours so i didnt arrive into LAX until 8.45am. The trip was pretty uneventful, watched a couple of movies and was unable to sleep for the most part, although the times i did fall asleep i would wake up with a startle with my head on a strange mans shoulder. So arrived in LA and caught the public bus into santa monica, which is a whole lot cheaper than taking shuttles or cabs. I had to organise a ticket to miami and the only flight center i could remember was the one on venice so i scooted over there and 450USD lighter had my plane ticket to naples florida. Spent the rest of the day looking around santa monica’s beautiful shops and trying to decide whether i should go out to the airport or head in to the orbit hostel and get a few short hours sleep before heading off at 4am to catch a 6am flight. Orbit won. I caught up with katana, mohammed and steve, managed to have a couple of beers before hitting the hay, LA is just as i remembered it

Well after the 19 hour flight I was back in NY NY . This time it was for NYE. I was organizing to meet up with Tash (elliots sister) and Liese (Damo’s sister) I only managed to meet up with Liese but it was a crazy few days. Liese was over there with her friends Emma and Jane from London and they were over for a party. Needless to say this time shopping and touristy stuff took a back seat to partying. We went to a bar on 10 th and 30 th I think, or around there somewhere, and the road was blocked off as some guy had done a hit and run (the woman was ok) but the man decided to flee into a 15 story building and when the cops came for him he tried climbing down the fire escape, however he fell off and died. The next day we decided we should definitely do some touristy stuff so we went to the statue of liberty, and walked around down town. Today was new years eve and we were going to times square… the place to be for NYE. It started off early, we arrived at 5pm and the queues were already huge and we had to run up a few streets to try and get in before the others. We made it in at 57 th st and we managed to squish through loads and loads of other people to get down the front, right near the stage, however our view was obscured due to some rather large satellite dishes. So we contemplated what to do as we had a sober 7 hour wait in front of us. Shortly after we began pondering our options our minds were made up for us as the stupid police decided to close the pen we were in. so we started walking back when we made a break for it and jumped the fences into the pen next to us and then we ran out as we found another part that would give us an even better view. We were walking down some street when we decided to eat at one of the delis and I bought a heap of fruit. While sitting down we noticed a bar and decided to hit it up, the sobriety thing wasn’t too appealing. So we went in and met a bunch of aussies, of course and a bunch of new Yorkers too, especially one cute one called Kelly. So we stayed in the bar until about 11.30 when we went into the crowd to watch the ball drop. It was awesome especially when the confetti dropped, everyone was in such a good mood. Definitely a new years eve to remember.

Flying into ny I was pretty excited. Id heard good things about ny but I had no idea what I was in for. After landing and getting held up in customs cause I didn’t have a place to stay and they were pretty anal about all the immigration stuff and they went through ALL my stuff. I finally got into town and found a good little hostel called the Chelsea international hostel on west 20 th and 8 th streets. I wanted to take it easy for a while so I basically just wandered around NY doing the touristy thing. Visiting ground zero, wall st, empire state, central park, grand central station, times square yadda yadda. The shopping in NYC is the BEST, theres a massive range and so much of it is very cheap. I picked up 2 pairs of diesel shoes for 120USD and when I got back I saw that one pair was worth 300AUD, talk about a rip off!!!! Anyway after wandering around for the week it was time to come home for Katie and James’ wedding on the 11 th of December. So the flight from NY to LA took 5 hours with a 3 hour stop over.. then another 14 hours from LA to Sydney .