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  • Ilus Galambos
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Apr 2018 – Sep 2025

Usaaaaa

An open-ended adventure by Ilus Read more
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    Leaving LA to San Diego

    April 19, 2018 in Scotland ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    After our night at the overpriced dive bar we got up in the morning and were taken to a really cool diner by the beach by Eszter with her sister. It was famous because apparently John Wayne frequently ate there. It was good American diner food with huge portions ran by exclusively Mexicans. It was really fun to speak in English, Hungarian and Spanish at the same time with the waitress and other patrons in the diner after eating the huge meal and saying our goodbyes we stopped by a cool garden and then a historic Spanish mission on the way. It was famous for its huge amounts of swallows that would fly there at the same time every year in the beginning of marchRead more

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    A failed visit to the cinema

    April 18, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    After stopping for another round of bubble tea (they are just so good, and you can get a big cup for 3-4 dollars), we went on to Graumen's Chinese Theater. This movie theater is in the heart of Hollywood and has an auditorium with 2000 seats, that you can watch ordinary movies in! I was hoping we could catch a movie there, but unfortunately the next showing was from 10,and we didn't want to wait around for more than 2 hours. At least we found the place where the famous people's handprints are - we kind of expected to have these with the stars on the streets, and were disappointed the previous day when they were nowhere to be found.Read more

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    Great Wall of Los Angeles

    April 18, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    Again, I read about this place in a blog post, and I find it impossible to sum the place up better then he did there: by quoting from their website:

    The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of Los Angeles’ true cultural landmarks and one of the country’s most respected and largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. SPARC’s first public art project and its true signature piece, the Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’S artistic director and founder Judith F. Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.

    Its half-mile length (2,754 ft) in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley with accompanying park and bike trail hosts thousands of visitors every year, providing a vibrant and lasting tribute to the working people of California’s who have truly shaped its history. The mural has been flooded five times between 1976 and 1983, with water rising, as high as Edison’s nose,” but it is not damaged by water. More dangerous is the effect of air pollution, years of exposure to direct sunlight, and fertilizer damage from the adjoining park lawns on the colors.

    Each section takes a full year to research, organize, and execute. Youth of varied ethnic backgrounds between the ages of 14 and 21 must be recruited and interviewed. Those selected are employed as assistants and participate in both the planning and execution of the mural. These Mural Makers, mostly from low-income families, are paid through the Summer Youth Employment Program. The youths are supervised by professional artists who work with them four to eight hours a day. They also receive art instruction, attend lectures from historians specializing in ethnic history, do improvisational theater and team-building exercises and acquire the important skill of learning to work together in a context where the diversity of their cultures is the focus.

    I already really liked the whole project and how it was made, but even aside from that we had a good time walking past the wall. There were quite a few names and places and events we didn't immediately recognise (or just have never heard about) so every couple of meters we ended up googleing things to understand more about them.
    I have a few close up photos that we did with the camera, but right now I can't move them to the phone, so there's only these.    Read more

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    Eating hotdogs

    April 18, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Our drive led us back to LA, and as we haven't eaten anything since breakfast (apart from some dried mangos we bought on the side of the road) we decided to go to another eatery from Seamus's favourite food videos, this time it was a hotdog place. The guys at the shop was really friendly, he helped us choose 2 hot dogs, and we discovered he knows a few words in Hungarian as he had a good friend from Hungary when he was growing up. They were so good, that we decided to get 2 other ones, this time to go, as our parking meter was running out. We dropped in a few more quarters, and then went to the neighbouring park to eat them. This was the first park we saw apart from Griffith Park in LA, which feels very strange: there's really no public spaces around the town, no parks, no benches, no nothing. You hang out at home, or in restaurants, or I'm not sure where... We enjoyed the second hot dogs so much, that some random person told us to breathe between eating if we don't want to suffocate :D there was also a public library in the park which was nice, it had lots of books, magazines, movies, and computers free to use.
    Oh, also before the hot dogs, we "had to" get to beers in the bar next to it, as the hotdog place didn't have a bathroom.    Read more

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    Driving Mulholland drive and the snake

    April 18, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    After we gave up on ever renting anything from Turo, and Ester convincing us to stay another night, we decided to do the drive that Seamus originally wanted to. We drove up past Malibu on the 101 that we missed coming down the coast (as we turned east towards Las Vegas). We stopped at a nice seaside park called point Dume, but unfortunately there were no free parking spaces, so only I took a short walk, while Seamus waited in the car. Nearby we spotted a sign about an open house, and thought we might as well check it out and pulled into the driveway. We walked up to the house and a big living room and enormous terrace greeted us with a sea view. Eventually the realtor showed up, and freaked a bit out, as she was only supposed to let agents in... After we started walking back to the car she calmed down a bit, and chatted with us, apparently the rent for the house is 18500$ a month (but only in the down season, in the summer it's more). After this we drove up the mullholland highway and drove a famous short road known as "the snake" (the road with the most accidents in America) it is about 2 miles long but very twisty and narrow by American standards. We drove down it once with Ilus being thrown around everywhere by the sharp turns and then another time with Ilus deciding to sit it out and read instead :D the car being an SUV wasn't really made for this kind of driving so the poor engine was screaming and it had all different wheels wanting to slide around at different times going into the corners, luckily there were no accidents. At some point on the Mulholland drive suddenly quite a lot of cop cars appeared, and the road was closed off for a few minutes. Once we cod drive past, we saw lots of people and vans, and this strange big rolling trolley that they had a car on. We realised that they must be filming something, but we didn't know what. So we decided to pull over and ask the nearest person - who admitted it is the least glamorous thing of all: a mayonnaise commercial! On our way back to LA we drove through more very rich looking suburban little towns.Read more

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    The Griffith Observatory

    April 17, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    The Griffith Observatory is on top of a hill in the middle os LA, surrounded by a park. There's the old La zoo in the park, that has no animals anymore, but you can still visit the cages and everything, which sounded really cool, but unfortunately the sun was already going down as we pulled into the parking lot, so we could only go to the observatory. It was a nice walk going up (we didn't want to take the bus after spending all day in the car). The building of the observatory looks really pretty with the background of the lights of LA. Also inside we found lots off cool and informative exhibitions, all for free! But most of our time we spent on the balcony looking out over the city, it had a really amazing view. We stayed so long looking at it, that traffic became bearable, and it took less than an hour to get back to Esther's place.Read more

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    Korean bbq <3

    April 17, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    We decided since we hadn't had the most eventful day we would get a crazy gratuitous dinner. We went to a recommended all you can eat Korean bbq restaurant which had around 20 different types of amazing meats on the menu including short ribs and thin sliced kobe style. As soon as we sat down we got the usual Korean assortment of 20 different little side dishes like pickled cucumbers covered in a red smoked chilli sauce, rice skins, different spicy vegetables and some other extremely spicy things. Seamus was a bit scared for his stomach since almost everything we ordered was quite a high level of spiciness so asked the waitress if there were any milky things - they just laughed and said there is beer, rice wine, or soju (basically rice vodka) so we had no escape from the spiciness :D we ate about a kilo of different meats than they would come and help grill us at our table to perfection. There's round little grilling stations in the middle of every table. They regularly swap out the metal bit, as soon as some meat starts sticking to it, someone comes along with a brand new clean one. We could order 3 different things at one time. We got super thin kobe beef, pork belly, tenderloin, beef short ribs, skirt steak, hanging tender (?) which was one of the nicest meats we had actually. It was an incredible feast of delicious meat, and we only left when we got really really full. By the time we left, the restaurant was quite full, and it finally made sense why they had valet parking, which seemed silly when we arrived: the cars were fit in the parking lot in multiple rows completely blocking each other in! Thankfully as we arrived early our car was not buried in 4 lines of cars, so we could get away easily. Afterwards we went and got us some bubble tea as dessert.Read more

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    The day Turo ignored us

    April 17, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    For a few months now Seamus has been talking to anyone he met about Turo, the airbnb of cars, where you can rent out people's own cars for a day or so, and try cool cars for cheap. He was really looking forward to trying something truly American, and he already had the roads in mind near LA, where he wanted to drive them. Unfortunately the previous night we didn't discover yet, that t-mobile works in Esther's house, but at&t doesn't so we didn't really have Internet in the house. So he started verifying his account in the morning, and started waiting and waiting and waiting for them to look at pictures of his driving licence. In the end he found the address of one of the car rental places, so we drove there hoping that in the meantime he will get approved. The two owners of the place kept trying to get him to rent different cars, but as they only accepted payment through the app, we could do nothing. We went to have lunch to pass some time, we found a hawaian restaurant nearby. Seamus tried loco moco which is basically lots of Japanese rice, gravy, hamburger with runny fried eggs on top. Apparently it's a classic hawaian lunch dish. I had some banana pancakes which were really nice, but the amount totally defeated me, it was way too much. After some more calls with customer service it turned out they were completely useless so we still couldn't rent a car. We walked down the hollywood walk of fame which had lots of ceramic stars on the pavement for celebrities who we had mainly never heard of! Also the whole walk of fame was just filled with weird shops that sold souvenirs and countless sexy underwear shops - interesting selection for the home of cinema.Read more

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    Pasta sisters and Bel-air

    April 16, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    For lunch we tried another place off the worth it channel, a really good pasta place. Words can't explain how good the pasta was, which was made freshly in front of our eyes. I watched a guy roll out a big piece of pasta about 20 times while we were waiting for our food, and then shred them and turn them into pretty little piles of spaghetti.
    After lunch we did an aimless drive around the fancy villas of rich people. There were 2 basic different types :ones that were wide open from the street and had ridiculous architecture elements, such as 10 meter high columns, or front doors an elephant could walk through. The others were surrounded by bushes from the street and barely looked like anything - until you saw them from the hill side:they actually were enormous, with big terraces and windows overlooking valleys. Again we would only see gardeners, and signs about armed guards being present, in case we wanted to go inside...
    This time we made it home in time for dinner, and had corned beef and carrots and other vegetables that Lajos cooked for us!
    After dinner we went with Ester to the USO, some kind of charity that basically let's us military people get free food and drinks and hang around in certain areas while they wait for connecting flights to war zones. We went to Starbucks to pick up all the leftover cookies and pastries they had, and brought it over there.    Read more

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    Venice beach cycling

    April 16, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    We woke up to breakfast being served by Ester in the kitchen, with pastries, and Hungarian plum jam. After breakfast, she offered to drive us to Venice beach where we planned to rent bicycles. On the way sue had a really good sightseeing tour, on places in their lives, and just places of general interest as well. We drove through the Venice canals, which she said she only discovered recently as well. They are 5-6 little canals with nice houses on their bank, and kayaks and boats on the water, it is a really cute place, unfortunately I didn't take any photos from the car though. Then we found a bike rental place and splurged for the premium bikes at an extra dollar an hour, which had gears. They were still a bit rusty and old, but the gears were surprisingly needed on the flat beach as we had quite strong head wind at times. The beach was very pretty, although it was kind of full of weird people. It had a different feel to the san francisco homeless people though, I never actually felt scared by anyone, but regardless they were still quite a bit of the atmosphere of Venice beach. At the same time there were some definitely local people also around, riding skateboards, rollerskates, walking their dogs and kids, and doing various other sports on the beach. There was a funky weightlifting gym, padel courts, volleyball, and quite a lot of bodyweight training stuff. We played around with those, I climbed a rope, probably for the first time since I was a kid. The best was this line of rings though, that we first saw a couple play around with. Basically you had to swing to catch the next rung, and then do a heft pullup to get some momentum, and then swing to catch the upcoming one again. They made it look effortless, but when we first tried it, we both terribly failed. Eventually I managed to do it, but Seamus never managed to get the hang of it.
    Here's some videos of our monkey adventures and some other things from the day https://photos.app.goo.gl/SIMc22TJMyPFOsFH3
    We also went to the Santa Mónica pier. This used to be a huge attraction, as it was one the the first concrete piers (built to pour sewage into the sea...) but this also meant that they could build various attractions on the pier, like a merry go round, roller coaster, all kinds of food stands. It still is really nice, although it looks much bigger from far away then it actually is. I tried a corn dog for the first time, though it wasn't a super amazing experience to be honest :D
    All in all we cycled around for more then 3 hours, though the guys t the rental place was nice, and only charged us for 3!    Read more

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    The Mad Greek

    April 15, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    After getting out of the desert we needed some food for the rest of the drive, os we stopped at a funky Greek diner, that promised to have the best gyro in America and amazing strawberry milkshakes. While I can't judge if it really is the best gyro in America (it probably wouldn't be in Europe, but it was pretty good) but the milkshake really was amazing, it had actual strawberries in it, which basically won the race for it already compared to most places.Read more

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    Mojave desert & getting to LA finally

    April 15, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    We woke up after a long night's sleep, and we realised we really need to try and contact Ester néni, if we want to stay with her the same night. Seamus went down to ask the front desk, to ask if we can use a phone to call her. He came back telling me excitedly that there's a breakfast downstairs. It was really surprising, as it was literally the cheapest motel we could find in the area... We had some coffee, oatmeal, and toasted waffles, and I managed to call Ester from the front desk, and get their address. We had an about 4.5 hours drive ahead of us, which at the time didn't seem too bad, so I decided we should make a detour into the Mojave desert, as we missed that on our way to Las Vegas. It turned out to be a quite long drive, but it was very pretty, and I didn't want to just drive all day, so it was good that we went. There were long straight endless roads, abandoned buildings, and the largest Joshua tree forest in the US (actually is bigger than in Joshua Tree National Park). These trees are the strangest trees I've even seen, growing in weird directions, and super spiky. We had a tomato throwing competition at one.
    Getting out of the desert we joined up with all the traffic going back to LA on a Sunday afternoon, so we had some really slow traffic. In the end we made it to Esther's House at 9 in the evening. We were a bit worried that we can't let them know that we will be slightly late, and we were slightly right, as they were waiting with dinner for us, but have already ate theirs. Still we were given a warm welcome, maybe even more so, as they gave up on us arriving that night already. We had some beer and rakott krumpli in the kitchen, and then had a super comfy night's sleep again.    Read more

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    A tired night of Mexican food and motel

    April 14, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 19 °C

    We left the desert at dusk, and we were exhausted so we just looked for the closest and cheapest motel, which turned out to be on the east side of Las Vegas.
    We were pretty hungry though, and I found this very well rated Mexican restaurant about 10 minutes away, so we headed there first. At the entrance we found about 10 people waiting for tables, and they told us that they have been waiting for 10 minutes and will probably wait for 20 more. We were almost out the door, when the hostess asked us if it would be OK for us to sit at the bar, in which case we could sit immediately. Of course we were happy to do that. The place was funnily decorated, had alive guitar player singing Mexican songs, and Gib TV playing horrifying Mexican telenovelas, with the subtitles turned on. We got 2 beers, and a huge bowl of nachos that came with it. We ordered a plate of little starters, that we could barely finish, as we already got full on nachos. All in all it was a really nice place, and afterwards we fell into our beds sometime before 11 as zombies...Read more

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    Valley of Fire State Park

    April 14, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    Another good day trip I was recommended around Las Vegas was the Valley of Fire State park. It was a bit further, about 1-1.5 hours drive, but it was worth the drive. Although after this we felt like we were deserted out a little bit, and would prefer to not have sand and sun and super dry air. Seamus gets a huge electric shock every time he gets out of the car, or tries to do any other ordinary day to day thing. On the way to the park we stopped at a shop that sells a huge amount of fireworks, and cheap alcohol - it turned out that it was a shop on an Indian reservation, so you don't have to pay tax on item bought there, and also they allow you to blow up your fireworks next to the shop in the desert. (you can't do it outside of there, unless it's the 4th of july).
    When we entered the park we were greeted near the entrance by a group of huge horned antílope creatures that I have no idea what they are but looked really cool. Here too we drove around the park, wanting to take a photo of every hill we drove past, and stopped at a couple of places to walk around at. The first one we did was famous because of the ancient drawings that were all over the walls. The second one led to a rock formation called the fire wave.    Read more

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    Brunch buffet at the Red Rock casino

    April 14, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    So Seamus has a favorite YouTube channel called wort it, where 2 guys try out 3 food places in different price categories, for example sushi, or steak, and the food always looks really good. Most of the episodes are set in LA but they had one in Vegas trying out buffet places, and this buffet was their cheap category. Unfortunately it was a Saturday, so it was brunch with unlimited champagne, which made it a bit more expensive, but it was still quite cheap for the ridiculous amount of food they had. We got in quickly without a wait, as it was still quite early at 10:30, and then got set up with some mimosas by our waiter, and then we went exploring the food options. We didn't even get 1/3 of the way, and our plates were full... They had all kind of Asian food:sushi, sashimi, all kinds of stir frys, our favorite, the walnut shrimp, Korean bbq ribs, etc and this was just the Asian section. They also had multiple hams and roasts that they hand carved for you, and you could ask for a fresh omelette to be made for you as well. There was a big American breakfast section, with pancakes, waffles, eggs benedict, and a huge pile of perfectly cooked bacon, that I added a few of to every plate that I got. It really is impossible to list all the different stuff they had, let alone taste it all, but we gave it a pretty good try. I think we spent about an 1.5 there, taking our time to be ready to eat again (it never really happened, after the first bite we always realised that we are full again). In the end we finished with 3 slices of pies, as they had a selection of maybe 8 different ones.Read more

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    Second vegas night out

    April 14, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    We arrived back to the hotel around 8:30, so we had some time to shower and rest before starting another night out. We wanted to start out with watching the Mirage volcano erupt, and seeing the Bellagio fountain show, as we noted the times for these on our morning walk. We watched the volcano first, which only happens 2 times every night. I expected something small and only entertaining for children, but I was very pleasantly surprised, it was really cool to see. So there's this volcano in the middle of the lake, and there's loud grumbling noises, water that splashes up like lava, as it is illuminated by orange lights, and a few enormous flamethrowers on the top of the volcano that sometimes erupt, so strong you can feel the warmth of them on your face. There also a lot of smaller flamethrowers sprinkled around the lake, that light up together, they look super pretty as they reflect over the water. All in all it was really entertaining for something that is completely free!
    Then we walked on with the crowd to the Bellagio hotel. On the way there were tons of people dressed up in costumes, they were advertising different shows, or casinos, or strip clubs. We watched the fountain show to the 'Viva las Vegas' song, which was quite cool too, the water sometimes went really really high, and made a load splashing noise when it came down. Then we tried setting up lyft (an uber like app) on my phone too, to get some special discount, which took so long, that we saw another fountain show, which was actually much more fun then the first one. I can't really say why, it had a better choreography I guess :D. The fancy Bellagio Hotel that we were next to has exiled the ride sharing taxis to the basement, but our driver didn't seem to know about this, so it took about 20 minutes to find him, frequently talking to him on the phone trying to figure out where he was, and being chased away from the fancy entrance by employees wearing hats, as they saw we were not looking for a traditional taxi. We even ran after a car for about a 100 meters, which fit the description, which turned out to be just filled with middle aged Asian tourists. Finally we managed to find each other though, and we could start our long drive out to the Freyman Street Experience. It was really bad traffic, and we had to drive around the whole town it seemed to get there - and then the app gave us a price of less then 10 dollars, it was incredibly cheap! The freyman Street experience was something that Seamus has found as somewhere we need to go to (sorry Seamus but I do 95% percent of out planning - you do the driving though, so it's not completely imbalanced). Just a few hours ago the lady helping us in the laundromat also told us that we definitely need to go too. It turns out, that this is a much more real Las Vegas, in the "what happens in Vegas stay in Vegas" kind of way. The strip is something where you could easily take your kids (and we saw lots of families walking around). Here there was a much much higher percentage of drunk people, much more trashy ones at that too, and the streets were full of crazy performers. Like a little short white guy rapping terribly, surrounded by enthusiastic drunk people, practically naked girls, who will spank you for some money, or let you pick them up and have a photo taken, a guy holding a sign asking to kick him in the balls, and just all kinds of crazies. There were also lots of clubs to party at as well. We walked around looking at all the silly people, went into a few casinos (these also had some crazy things in them, like one of them had an aquarium big enough to have a shark in it). At around 1-1:30 we realised we were way too tired to do this anymore, so we decided to hunt down some kind of food, and then head home. We found a place with some slices of pizzas and then took another lyft home, and collapsed into sleep.    Read more

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    Laundromat and some more food

    April 13, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    This morning we both put on our last clean clothes (Seamus just wore a sweater all day even for hiking as he had no shirts left...), so after 2 weeks away from home we really needed to wash our clothes. It is quite cool we lasted this long, considering we left from Malaga with just a backpack each. We did buy a few new clothes here too, so that helped of course. We had 3 plastic bags completely full of clothes, and the laundromat had machines that were capable of washing that much at the same time. While the clothes washed and dried we sat around looking up places where we could eat something. Vegas has lots of crazy restaurants, especially buffets, so we were considering splurging on something amazing. Unfortunately by the time we would get back and take a shower (we really needed one) it would have been too late for these places to eat at. So we decided to have a breakfast/brunch buffet the next day, and just find something cheap on the outskirts where we were, near the Laundromat. I found a place famous for their philly cheese steak, so we shared one of those and some chilly cheese fries. At the end we had to walk back through the whole floor of the casino in our hotel, with our 3 plastic bags full of clothes, it was a really funny feeling. It actually sparked a conversation in the elevator, we looked so funny and out of place with them.Read more

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    Red Rock canyon national monument

    April 13, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    The red rock national monument is just outside Las Vegas city territory - so it's "only" 20 kilometers drive on big straight roads form the centre of the city to get to city borders. At this point you can already see the rocks, as they are really really red even from a distance. From far away they almost look small, compared to the other dark mountains surrounding the city, just a speck of redness. But once we got into the park, and parked at the first viewpoint, they felt really really big: we kept spotting hiking people and wondering how tiny they are, and realising that boulders that looked small, were the size of a small building. At this first stop we only walked around a little bit, and claimed up one empty boulder. It is really fun to climb around the sandstone, as the plastic of our shoes really sticks to it, it is like having gravity boots on! Then we drove on a bit more on the scenic 20 km route, and I chose a reasonable looking hiking trail to do. We were a bit tired and hungover at first, but walking around really helped to wake up up. It was a really really scenic walk, mostly in a canyon surrounded by various colours of red rocks. Also, quite a lot of bushes, plants, and cactuses were flowering too. In the end we were rewarded with a view of the whole city of Las Vegas, we could easily make out multiple famous casino buildings. It really made you see how big and stretched out the town is, it is crazy that only 600 thousand people live there!Read more

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    Shooting one big gun

    April 13, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    We were handed a flyer promising 20 dollars off at some shooting range, and Seamus actually wanted to go to one, as he was interested in shooting a fully automatic machine gun. When we showed up, of course it turned out that we can only use the coupon if we spend more than a 100 dollars, and we didn't really want to do that, so in the end he just settled on paying for having only one shot with a 50 caliber sniper rifle. It was only 20 bucks, and it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity. There was actually a short line, so we had to wait around in the hall, which was also a gun shop. We got slightly freaked out seeing how you can just buy a brand new gun for 200-300 dollars easily, especially with the gunshots coming from the firing range in the background, for a while we kind of decided we never want to move to this country, with all these guns around... Finally Seamus's turn came around, so we both put on ear protection and went inside. There was another guy firing an ak47 inside, which was so so loud that it really hurt your ears even with the protectors on. Actually Seamus's gun was about the same loudness as that one. He said that the recoil wasn't actually that strong, but the fireball was so bright that it hurt his eyes a little bit.Read more

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    A walk on the strip in the morning

    April 13, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    After going to bed sometime after 4, we still woke up a bit before 8, and as it felt like we were not very likely to fall back asleep, we decided to go for a walk on the strip in the daylight too. It actually stretches along for multiple miles, so we didn't even make it all the way to the end, and still walked quite a lot. The casinos look quite cool in the morning too (although they are best at night of course). Most of them have an elaborate theme going on, so the Paris casino has a replica of the Eiffel tower, that is 1/3 of the original size, and is full of fancy French restaurants. The venetian has canals around it where you can ride gondolas in, and also has a replica of the bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica. The Flamingo casino had a nice garden inside, with all kind of birds living in it, including (you guessed it) a flock of flamingos. In front of one casino they had live music, dancers, and daytime fireworks. We went inside a shopping mall, where the ceiling of the mall is made to look like it is daylight all day, and there's a part where they have a rainstorm, with lightning and actual rain falling every half an hour. Which sounds really cool (at least it sounded awesome to me when a colleague of mine told me about it back in Scotland), but it was a bit underwhelming to be honest. For breakfast we tried panda express, and had a Starbucks coffee (there's literally a Starbucks on every corner, and yet there's still a big line in most of them. It's like they don't know any other coffee exists).Read more

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    Our first night in Vegas

    April 12, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    "I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo" - Hunter S Thompson

    We arrived in Vegas just after sunset and it truly was an interesting experience, we weren't under the influence of LSD and ether like Thompson but it still felt like some kind of weird trip walking through the Casino floor seeing all of the weirdest examples of Americans waddling around whooping like cowboys and riding mechanical bulls in our hotel casino and bar. We didn't get a room upgrade but we did score a free bottle of champagne for being on our honeymoon which was a good start to the onslaught of free drinks we were given, about that - if you want to go out in Vegas without bankrupting yourself, play penny slots. 1 cent a spin and a waitress will be around every 10 minutes with any cocktail or drink you could ever want. They make them strong too since they want you to get drunk and gamble all your money away. We spent 2 dollars on the slot machine and won 30 almost immediately! Deciding to quit while we were ahead we only played the 1 cent slots for the rest of the evening meaning we probably spent 3 or 4 dollars visiting all of the flashy casinos drinking crazy cocktails until 4 in the morning! The casinos have crazy architecture and things inside like an enormous shark tank or full size replica of the trevi fountain or a 1/3 scale model of the Eiffel tower

    Once it gets late on the strip all of the even stranger people start to emerge in the casinos which Seamus quickly made friends with! After we could barely stand from tiredness and the horrifying mixture of cocktails we went and had fast food, there must have been something in the drinks because we managed to have an argument over a cheeseburger that left Seamus in tears :D we quickly recovered and passed out for a lovely 3 hours of sleep    Read more

  • Ilus GalambosUsaaaaaTraveler

    Arriving to Las Vegas

    April 12, 2018 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    It was definitely the best decision to drive into Vegas in the dark, as the casinos start with their funky lights and signs way outside of town. We drive past one that had an enormous roller coaster surrounding its hotel building! I'll have to update this with photos from the camera later, as I took a lot of cool ones. Thankfully our chosen casino/hotel was really easy to drive into as it is near the end of the strip, and we didn't need to drive in a crazy traffic jam or anything. Oh by the way we took forever to decide on a hotel, reading so many opinions, reviews discussions about the different hotels. God they are all so opinionated, people spend a lot of time in Vegas, however fun it was, I can't imagine personally experiencing it 10+different times in different hotels, I think I would have better ways to spend my time at that point. Anyway we decided to stay at Treasure Island, which is a slightly older one with no crazy theme, but we got a better price for it, and we can walk into all the other ones to experience them anyway. We decided to book it for both Thursday and Friday, as checking out at 10 the next day and finding a new place sounded really painful. It was a hard decision, as for Friday the price was about 5 times higher. At checkin we mentioned that we are newlyweds, hoping for a cooler room or something, and at least we managed to get a free bottle of champagne out of it! Although calling room service they told us it will be about 40 minutes until it arrives...Read more

  • Ilus GalambosUsaaaaaTraveler

    Last stop before Vegas, Baker

    April 12, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    At this point it was 7 in the evening, and we have been driving since about 9,so we were getting pretty tired. So getting an energy drink was actually the main reason we decided to stop at Baker, all its famous sights just came as a plus. Well it was also another place mentioned in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which meant Seamus definitely wanted to stop anyway. The stupid engine cover under our car started dragging on the ground again, so we also bought some duck tape to try and make it stay up. We managed to see the world's biggest thermometer, and a funky alien themed shop too just before it closed.Read more

  • Ilus GalambosUsaaaaaTraveler

    Road Zzyzx

    April 12, 2018 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    Most people only know that there's a funny sign as you are nearing Las Vegas, marking the exit to Zzyzx Road. I actually managed to read about its history, which I found really funny, so I wanted to stop and take a look around. I'll just copy and paste this as it would take forever to type out with my words...

    "In 1944, Curtis Springer, a radio evangelist in 1944, Curtis Springer, a radio evangelist from Los Angeles, decided that he would reinvent the area formally known as Soda Springs by turning the mineral springs found there into the basis for a resort. After filing a mining claim with the government, he got permission to use the lands (under false pretenses) and called it Zzyzx because he wanted to have the last word in the dictionary.
    He hired several workers to help him create his resort, developed an area for people to stay, and imported various types of plants to add to the atmosphere. From there, his resort took off and brought people from all over to try his fake medicines and experience the “relaxation and healing” that he provided. In the 1970’s the government realized what he was doing on the land he claimed to have got for mining and kicked him and his followers out. Thus the land was taking over and eventually given to the CSU system which runs it now as a desert research center. "

    In the end it wasn't the abandoned resort that really impressed us, but the 5 mile drive to it. It rove past a huge salt flat, that just became bigger and bigger as we drove past it (this salt flat is what the research center is here to study). We had to stop multiple times to wake around, take photos, and taste the salt (it really was salt, as we now know).    Read more

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