Don
Yeah, there's loads of text and loads of pictures. I took 4500 pictures this holiday so think yourself lucky 
Hello all,
I thought some of you would be interested in the recent road trip myself, my wife and 23 month old daughter have just made. The California road trip is a pretty common holiday for most, and pretty easy to plan when there’s just two of you, it’s a bit harder to plan when you have a child so hopefully this will help those who are thinking about it.
Firstly prices, Sophia is under two so gets on the plane for ‘free’, the plane tickets for my wife and I were £1267.43. This included an internal flight from our nearest airport, Newcastle to Heathrow and then Heathrow to San Francisco and obviously the same coming back. We stayed and 9 hotels in total which cost around £1500. We then took £2200 ($3500) in spending money. We got a cash card and could use the card pretty much wherever we went in America. To rent the car with sat nav it cost us £400. We also paid an additional £70 when over there to rent a child seat.
The plan was the following:
5am start in the UK to get to Newcastle airport, fly to Heathrow and then onto San Francisco. We would get to San Fran around 3/4pm (US time, [+8 hours]). The good thing about having Sophia with us was we could get the bassinette seats so a lot of leg room. There was a table that would pull down and then a baby seat was put on it. Sophia sat in here with an iPad watching her favourite cartoons, this tablet was a must for this holiday, not sure what we would have done without it! The first flight was only an hour long so she was fine then the San Fran flight was 11 hours so she obviously needed entertaining. She watched her iPad for an hour or so then my wife had read an idea about packing some presents for them to open and keep them entertained, after all this had occurred we had been flying around 3 or 4 hours anyway and then she had a sleep for three hours so it was an easy flight and she didn’t disrupt anyone.
Leg room!
Win.
Upon arriving in San Francisco we took a shuttle train within the airport to an area where the rental car companies are homed, we used Alamo. I’d like to say we picked up the following car…
But we didn’t
We had 3 big suitcases along with hand luggage, so needed a saloon that could cater for that. A lovely Chevrolet Impala (pictures further down). Looking at the car could have sent you to sleep right there, pretty boring but the driving experience was a good one. V6, 3.6 litre and 300bhp it was a lovely cruiser with nice power to boot. In an ideal situation obviously a convertible of some kind would have been the car of choice, but we would never have got out luggage in nor would it of been very good for a sleeping baby in the back.
Unfortunately on arrival due to lack of sleep my wife got a migraine which she suffers from quite regularly so she was out of it in the back of the car and I was left it alone to drive in a country I had never had driven in before! Luckily I’m a competent driver and the whole driving abroad never bothered me It was a bit daunting at first with new sign, freeways aren’t very clear like they are in the UK with when to go off etc and the width of the car took me by surprise as I kept accidently veering over to the right lane. Driving an automatic, left hand drive and on the other side of the road never bothered me once. Driving in America isn’t the best place for people who are very nervous drivers; it’s not like the UK when people flash you to come out of a lane or people not pulling out on you. No one in the US flashes you to come out, it’s basically, look, indicate and pull out, regardless of how close the car is or how fast they’re coming. I’m not an aggressive driver but driving there might of changing me somewhat. Oh and if you’re going too slow you will get beeped at. Luckily I never encountered this..
2nd October, Day 1 - It was a 2/3 hour drive to our first destination, Sacramento, The capital of California. Sat Nav got me there effortlessly as you can imagine and we checked in at a small hotel. We pre paid for all the hotels so never had to spend anything there on them. After taking our luggage up (this was the biggest pain of the hole trip, moving the luggage) to the room we went to a nearby restaurant for some food, this was the first of many burgers I had..
We stayed at Sacramento for three nights as we thought it would give us time to get over the jet lag. This was a nice place for a family stop off, probably not enough to do for a couple wanting to go out and drink etc. We did a few museums for Sophia including California State Road Museum and the California Automobile Museum. We explored the Old Town which was interesting as it felt like a setting for an old Western Movie, I really enjoyed walking around there. We went for lunch at Fanny Ann’s that’s well renowned and again I enjoyed a burger and probably another 1500 calorie lunch!
There were plenty of shops in the main town and we also visited State Capital Building, Leland Stafford Mansion and the Cathedral of the Blessed. These things will probably not mean much but they’re the iconic things in Sacramento.
Bear Schwarzenegger left behind.
The Gallery.
We had Dinner at Biba, that again is a big restaurant in the area, unfortunately jet lag caught up with Sophia and she was a nightmare, I think we were in and out within an hour with a $120 bill.
Saturday 5th Day 4 - was the day to leave Sacramento for Yosemite, this was a 3 ½ hour drive, mainly freeway driving. We would be here for 2 nights. Our hotel was located in a place called Oakhurst, about 10 miles from Yosemite Valley. We could park in front of our room so transporting the luggage was easily. Before getting to Oakhurst we stopped off at Mariposa, a little place that again reminded me of a Western setting, we got lunch here, pizza! Oakhurst didn’t have much to it, had a lot of restaurants and shops and that was it.
All shots of Maraposa ^
On the road ^^
The beast. Stopped for some strawberries!
Hotel in Oakhurst.
Unfortunately due to the government shutdown Yosemite was pretty ruined, we heard people who were driving to the area and seeing if they could get in. We also did this and managed to blag to the guard there we were going through to another place. He basically said nothing was open within Yosemite, not even rest rooms and you weren’t allowed to stop and get out of the car, something that everyone seemed to ignore. We got some great pictures and it wasn’t ruined as we imagined, Of course we had things planned which we couldn’t do.
Random Nerds!
During the stay we also visited Fish Camp and Bass Village where we got some good views and could sit by the water. We asked for Ice Cream as it was around 85 degrees Fahrenheit but they didn’t server Ice cream in the winter! That sounded strange to an Englishman.
The following day it was time to travel to Fresno. Only a night stay and it would take an hour to get there. We also travelled early so could spend as much time at the next destination as possible. We went to Fresno Zoo whilst here. The zoo was really good and we had a great meal at Yosemite Ranch, but apart from that there was nothing much else to report.
Tuesday 8th Day 7 - we travelled from Fresno to Anaheim (LA), this was a four hour drive. The location of the hotel was about a 15 minute walk from the Disney Land resort which we due to visit as my wife had booked us in for Mickey’s Halloween Party. Sophia went as a witch. Disney was ok, I’m not really interested in rides and the queues are ridiculous, however seeing Sophia meet her favourite Disney characters was brilliant to see.
The next day we drove into LA, we did the normal things, visit Hollywood sign, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood walk of fame, Grauman’s chinese theatre, California science center and Griffith park.
The next day was a day of Disney….oh the joy. The queues just infuriated me, I know everyone knows the queues are long but Disney should really sort it out. I didn’t mind queuing to see the characters, but the rides. No thanks. The park is not a patch on Florida.
The next day was a beach day as well as visiting the other beaches around the area. Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Playa Del Ray and Santa Monica. Santa Monica beach was brilliant. Venice beach was a bit of a **** hole, not the nicest of places. Manhattan beach was very nice, very upmarket, we had lunch here. There were amazing house right on the beach side.
LA wasn’t as bad as expected, and in four nights there we struggled to fit everything in. Granted we had a drink in the middle of LA and it didn’t look the nicest but the things you can do around the area are well worth visiting. Driving however was a real nightmare, it was just queues constantly on the I5, I hated driving there.
Saturday 12th Day 11 - was the day to go from Anaheim to San Diego. 2 hour drive. We’ve been to San Diego before and we loved it so I was looking forward to going back, it’s such a clean, chilled out place. I would love to live there.
We have also done the Zoo before but wanted to do it for Sophia. This time around it wasn’t very good, unfortunately it was school holidays in California so it was very busy. It became very tedious waiting to see certain animals and we had to wait 40 mins to see the Panda’s! This brings me back to Disney, because of the school Holidays it was heaving. Annoying. Sophia enjoyed the zoo, it was boiling so pretty tiring. We were only in San Diego for two nights, we explored old town and did some other things. We made the mistake of going in the outside swimming pool in the evening, we nearly froze to death despite the weather not being so bad.
Monday 14th Day 13 - San Diego to Ventura. This was the longest drive of the trip, 5 hours and was the start of the Pacific Highway, Dana point. We visited the following places on the way. La Jolla - Dana point (start of PCH) – Laguna Beach – Newport Beach – Malibu (stopped off here) – Oxnard – Ventura . We were only at Ventura for the night.
Tuesday 15th Day 14 - we travelled to Pismo Beach from Ventura. This was a 2.5 hour drive. It was enjoyable driving on the highway 1 and we stopped off at Santa Barbara, we explored Pismo beach.
Wednesday 16th Day 15 – Pismo Beach to San Simeon. 2 hour drive. More pacific highway driving taking in the views. We stopped off at Morro Bay and checked out a massive rock there. Wowzer. We did more sight viewing and went on the nearby Moonstone Beach. The sand here was more like quicksand as you sank right into it.
Thursday 17th Day 16 – San Simeon to Carmel. On the way we went to Nepenthe for lunch which is on the pacific highway, the views are amazing as you eat. The roads are lot more interesting now and very windy, you can get some great shots. Carmel is an upmarket, very nice place. We drove to Monterey and did the ‘17 mile drive’ in which you see various landmarks throughout the trip. The highlight was seeing whales from the beach, unfortunately we didn’t get a good picture, only a pic of their fins really. Also went to Pebble Beach and saw various other things. We had tea at Baba Gump’s.
Continued...
Hello all,
I thought some of you would be interested in the recent road trip myself, my wife and 23 month old daughter have just made. The California road trip is a pretty common holiday for most, and pretty easy to plan when there’s just two of you, it’s a bit harder to plan when you have a child so hopefully this will help those who are thinking about it.
Firstly prices, Sophia is under two so gets on the plane for ‘free’, the plane tickets for my wife and I were £1267.43. This included an internal flight from our nearest airport, Newcastle to Heathrow and then Heathrow to San Francisco and obviously the same coming back. We stayed and 9 hotels in total which cost around £1500. We then took £2200 ($3500) in spending money. We got a cash card and could use the card pretty much wherever we went in America. To rent the car with sat nav it cost us £400. We also paid an additional £70 when over there to rent a child seat.
The plan was the following:
5am start in the UK to get to Newcastle airport, fly to Heathrow and then onto San Francisco. We would get to San Fran around 3/4pm (US time, [+8 hours]). The good thing about having Sophia with us was we could get the bassinette seats so a lot of leg room. There was a table that would pull down and then a baby seat was put on it. Sophia sat in here with an iPad watching her favourite cartoons, this tablet was a must for this holiday, not sure what we would have done without it! The first flight was only an hour long so she was fine then the San Fran flight was 11 hours so she obviously needed entertaining. She watched her iPad for an hour or so then my wife had read an idea about packing some presents for them to open and keep them entertained, after all this had occurred we had been flying around 3 or 4 hours anyway and then she had a sleep for three hours so it was an easy flight and she didn’t disrupt anyone.
Leg room!
Win.
Upon arriving in San Francisco we took a shuttle train within the airport to an area where the rental car companies are homed, we used Alamo. I’d like to say we picked up the following car…
But we didn’t
We had 3 big suitcases along with hand luggage, so needed a saloon that could cater for that. A lovely Chevrolet Impala (pictures further down). Looking at the car could have sent you to sleep right there, pretty boring but the driving experience was a good one. V6, 3.6 litre and 300bhp it was a lovely cruiser with nice power to boot. In an ideal situation obviously a convertible of some kind would have been the car of choice, but we would never have got out luggage in nor would it of been very good for a sleeping baby in the back. Unfortunately on arrival due to lack of sleep my wife got a migraine which she suffers from quite regularly so she was out of it in the back of the car and I was left it alone to drive in a country I had never had driven in before! Luckily I’m a competent driver and the whole driving abroad never bothered me It was a bit daunting at first with new sign, freeways aren’t very clear like they are in the UK with when to go off etc and the width of the car took me by surprise as I kept accidently veering over to the right lane. Driving an automatic, left hand drive and on the other side of the road never bothered me once. Driving in America isn’t the best place for people who are very nervous drivers; it’s not like the UK when people flash you to come out of a lane or people not pulling out on you. No one in the US flashes you to come out, it’s basically, look, indicate and pull out, regardless of how close the car is or how fast they’re coming. I’m not an aggressive driver but driving there might of changing me somewhat. Oh and if you’re going too slow you will get beeped at. Luckily I never encountered this..
2nd October, Day 1 - It was a 2/3 hour drive to our first destination, Sacramento, The capital of California. Sat Nav got me there effortlessly as you can imagine and we checked in at a small hotel. We pre paid for all the hotels so never had to spend anything there on them. After taking our luggage up (this was the biggest pain of the hole trip, moving the luggage) to the room we went to a nearby restaurant for some food, this was the first of many burgers I had..
We stayed at Sacramento for three nights as we thought it would give us time to get over the jet lag. This was a nice place for a family stop off, probably not enough to do for a couple wanting to go out and drink etc. We did a few museums for Sophia including California State Road Museum and the California Automobile Museum. We explored the Old Town which was interesting as it felt like a setting for an old Western Movie, I really enjoyed walking around there. We went for lunch at Fanny Ann’s that’s well renowned and again I enjoyed a burger and probably another 1500 calorie lunch!
There were plenty of shops in the main town and we also visited State Capital Building, Leland Stafford Mansion and the Cathedral of the Blessed. These things will probably not mean much but they’re the iconic things in Sacramento.
Bear Schwarzenegger left behind.
The Gallery.
We had Dinner at Biba, that again is a big restaurant in the area, unfortunately jet lag caught up with Sophia and she was a nightmare, I think we were in and out within an hour with a $120 bill.
Saturday 5th Day 4 - was the day to leave Sacramento for Yosemite, this was a 3 ½ hour drive, mainly freeway driving. We would be here for 2 nights. Our hotel was located in a place called Oakhurst, about 10 miles from Yosemite Valley. We could park in front of our room so transporting the luggage was easily. Before getting to Oakhurst we stopped off at Mariposa, a little place that again reminded me of a Western setting, we got lunch here, pizza! Oakhurst didn’t have much to it, had a lot of restaurants and shops and that was it.
All shots of Maraposa ^
On the road ^^
The beast. Stopped for some strawberries!
Hotel in Oakhurst.
Unfortunately due to the government shutdown Yosemite was pretty ruined, we heard people who were driving to the area and seeing if they could get in. We also did this and managed to blag to the guard there we were going through to another place. He basically said nothing was open within Yosemite, not even rest rooms and you weren’t allowed to stop and get out of the car, something that everyone seemed to ignore. We got some great pictures and it wasn’t ruined as we imagined, Of course we had things planned which we couldn’t do.
Random Nerds!
During the stay we also visited Fish Camp and Bass Village where we got some good views and could sit by the water. We asked for Ice Cream as it was around 85 degrees Fahrenheit but they didn’t server Ice cream in the winter! That sounded strange to an Englishman.
The following day it was time to travel to Fresno. Only a night stay and it would take an hour to get there. We also travelled early so could spend as much time at the next destination as possible. We went to Fresno Zoo whilst here. The zoo was really good and we had a great meal at Yosemite Ranch, but apart from that there was nothing much else to report.
Tuesday 8th Day 7 - we travelled from Fresno to Anaheim (LA), this was a four hour drive. The location of the hotel was about a 15 minute walk from the Disney Land resort which we due to visit as my wife had booked us in for Mickey’s Halloween Party. Sophia went as a witch. Disney was ok, I’m not really interested in rides and the queues are ridiculous, however seeing Sophia meet her favourite Disney characters was brilliant to see.
The next day we drove into LA, we did the normal things, visit Hollywood sign, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood walk of fame, Grauman’s chinese theatre, California science center and Griffith park.
The next day was a day of Disney….oh the joy. The queues just infuriated me, I know everyone knows the queues are long but Disney should really sort it out. I didn’t mind queuing to see the characters, but the rides. No thanks. The park is not a patch on Florida.
The next day was a beach day as well as visiting the other beaches around the area. Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Playa Del Ray and Santa Monica. Santa Monica beach was brilliant. Venice beach was a bit of a **** hole, not the nicest of places. Manhattan beach was very nice, very upmarket, we had lunch here. There were amazing house right on the beach side.
LA wasn’t as bad as expected, and in four nights there we struggled to fit everything in. Granted we had a drink in the middle of LA and it didn’t look the nicest but the things you can do around the area are well worth visiting. Driving however was a real nightmare, it was just queues constantly on the I5, I hated driving there.
Saturday 12th Day 11 - was the day to go from Anaheim to San Diego. 2 hour drive. We’ve been to San Diego before and we loved it so I was looking forward to going back, it’s such a clean, chilled out place. I would love to live there.
We have also done the Zoo before but wanted to do it for Sophia. This time around it wasn’t very good, unfortunately it was school holidays in California so it was very busy. It became very tedious waiting to see certain animals and we had to wait 40 mins to see the Panda’s! This brings me back to Disney, because of the school Holidays it was heaving. Annoying. Sophia enjoyed the zoo, it was boiling so pretty tiring. We were only in San Diego for two nights, we explored old town and did some other things. We made the mistake of going in the outside swimming pool in the evening, we nearly froze to death despite the weather not being so bad.
Monday 14th Day 13 - San Diego to Ventura. This was the longest drive of the trip, 5 hours and was the start of the Pacific Highway, Dana point. We visited the following places on the way. La Jolla - Dana point (start of PCH) – Laguna Beach – Newport Beach – Malibu (stopped off here) – Oxnard – Ventura . We were only at Ventura for the night.
Tuesday 15th Day 14 - we travelled to Pismo Beach from Ventura. This was a 2.5 hour drive. It was enjoyable driving on the highway 1 and we stopped off at Santa Barbara, we explored Pismo beach.
Wednesday 16th Day 15 – Pismo Beach to San Simeon. 2 hour drive. More pacific highway driving taking in the views. We stopped off at Morro Bay and checked out a massive rock there. Wowzer. We did more sight viewing and went on the nearby Moonstone Beach. The sand here was more like quicksand as you sank right into it.
Thursday 17th Day 16 – San Simeon to Carmel. On the way we went to Nepenthe for lunch which is on the pacific highway, the views are amazing as you eat. The roads are lot more interesting now and very windy, you can get some great shots. Carmel is an upmarket, very nice place. We drove to Monterey and did the ‘17 mile drive’ in which you see various landmarks throughout the trip. The highlight was seeing whales from the beach, unfortunately we didn’t get a good picture, only a pic of their fins really. Also went to Pebble Beach and saw various other things. We had tea at Baba Gump’s.
Continued...
