Jac’s Journey

My last stop before home.

Better make it a good ‘un.

I was excited to reach San Francisco. As well as being a vibrant and interesting city, I would be meeting up with Bill, my travel buddy from north-west China. Within an hour of dumping my bags, he’d picked me up at the hotel and we had beer in front of us. Next day he took his tour guide duties very seriously and I saw more of San Francisco in one day than I’d hoped to see in five.

Bill took me for the best Dim Sum since Hong Kong, perfect pizza, burritos that would feed an army and delectable fusion food, the inspired blending of flavours that mirrors San Francisco’s eclectic ethnic mix. Wandering around, I indulged in Vietnamese beef noodles, strong espresso, deli eats and traditional American diners. In San Francisco you can take your tastebuds on a round the world trip without crossing the street.

Wearing flowers in my hair, I followed in the footsteps of the Beat Generation and spent a delightful couple of hours perched on a wooden stool in the City Lights Bookstore, immersing myself in poetry and stories that were born in San Francisco and influenced the world.

We went along to the Chihuly exhibition at De Young’s museum, a stunning display – I didn’t realise glass could be so beautiful. We strolled through Golden Gate Park, saw almost extinct American Bison and were drawn into a debate about Iraq by a passing San Franciscan. I marvelled at the Golden Gate Bridge, enjoyed views from just about every viewpoint in the city, thanks to Bill’s Honda, and was bowled over by the vistas spead out before me.

Shopping, wandering around, quaint cable cars and trams, pastel-coloured houses gleaming in the sunshine, steep hills rewarding me with glorious views, occasional fog unrolling over the city like a fluffy blanket; San Francisco captured my heart and added itself to my list of places I could live for a while.

On my last day, Bill took me up to Napa Valley and we spent the day tasting Californian wine and enjoying the scenery, followed by more great food and a steady stream of beer, laughs and travel stories. I kept saying out loud,

‘I go home tomorrow.’

But it refused to sink in. It was a meaningless, disembodied sentence.

It wasn’t until after midnight, in a bar called ‘The Bitter End’, listening to favourite tunes on a old juke box, that I said, ‘I go home today’ and it seemed real for the first time.

Next morning, rubbing my eyes and dosing the after effects of The Bitter End with strong coffee, I took an emotional journey to the airport, bidding a sad farewell to San Francisco, a very special city, and to my incredible year of travel. I felt them both pull me back, like an elastic band at full stretch, and tried to savour every moment, to experience every sensation of this, the end of my trip.

Hollywood. Beverly Hills. Bel Air. Santa Monica. These place names are so familiar to me that it seems impossible I’ve never been to any of them before.

Arriving into LA, I was greeted by sunshine, warmth and loud Californians. Before I’d got my bearings outside the terminal building, I’d been overwhelmed by friendliness, then asked for a donation to charity and fended off an attempt to convert me to the path of Christ. After ten hours beside a ‘Messenger of Christ’ between Fiji and LA, and I wondered if the big guy was trying to tell me something.

That evening I headed over to West Hollywood for a Fiji reunion. Incredibly, four of us from Taveuni were in LA at the same time and we had a ‘Long Time No See’ Fiji reunion, which was just as much fun as all our Fiji evenings had been. Alia and Tuukka had work the next morning, but that didn’t stop them staying out ‘til 2am.

I quickly came to realise that LA is beyond massive. People had been telling me this, but having spent time in some really large cities, I put this advice in the same category as when a Singaporean tells me the weather’s cold.

In a dark room, sometime in the early 20th century, motor industry magnates and US government leaders agreed to invest in highways not railways. The system of highways is exceptional, roads are wide and long and it’s fairly easy to navigate once you get the hang of the main artery roads.

LA has developed the way it has because of the car. I was surprised at how low-rise it is. I was expecting a sea of skyscrapers, but everything is flat, which means it extends very, very far. There’s no city centre as such, just a series of neighbourhoods that are actually more like cities unto themselves, their edges fraying into one another.

As I faced a choice of walking for hours and getting not very far or open-wallet surgery in the back of a cab, I cursed that bunch of men in suits 100 years ago.

There is a complete dearth of public transport. There’s no centre, so no logical place to be the hub of a transport wheel. This makes planning public transport harder, and it’s less likely that routes will be helpful to people. So they’re not profitable. So they don’t run many buses, which makes the buses that do run inconvenient because you need to wait too long. So people take the car. It’s a vicious circle.

With ever-increasing prices for oil, I reckon LA is facing a transport crisis. The average number of cars per family is 3, and unless billions are invested in a mass rapid transit system that gets people where they need to go, the city is going to grind to a halt at some point in future.

It’s like London, stretched out over even more space, without the underground and with hardly any buses. I couldn’t conceive that there would ever be a city that size with no public transport to speak of. So now I will listen more closely when a Singaporean tells me the weather’s cold…

With a grimace, I opened my wallet and faced the inevitable exorbitant fare, taking a long run through Hollywood, Bel Air and the Hollywood Hills to the famous Hollywood sign, passing the enormous, extravagant homes of the stars. I then pounded the pavements from Hollywood to Beverly Hills, stopping for tours of the Kodak and Chinese theatres, following the path of the Academy Award hopefuls, looping around the famous Hollywood Bl, Sunset Bl and Santa Monica Bl, wandering round the shops and finding wonderful food and great service in delightful restaurants.

I enjoyed my brief time in LA. People surprised me with their friendliness – I’ve become used to a level of unfriendliness in large cities, but in LA people will interact with you and are interested in talking to you. I’m glad LA exists because it’s obsession with the silver screen has produced some of my favourite movies. It’s an interesting place, with a high-level excitable energy that I could taste and touch during my whole time there, like the energy of an aspiring actor waiting impatiently for their lucky break. The energy there runs to a different beat from me – I don’t think I could live in LA. But the city is built on chasing dreams, on working hard to make them come true.

As someone who’s a big fan of chasing dreams, how could I not identify with that?

LA

(If you’re interested, follow the links – shown in bold type - throughout this blog entry) 

Sometimes my job does my head in…other times it’s all worth it!

In an amazing stroke of luck, I was asked to join the sales team I work with on their incentive trip to NEW YORK!  All paid for by a third party supplier, I bit my boss’s hand off; right up to the elbow, lol.  Talk about over the moon – I was ecstatic!

We had an amazing time.  Imagine 49 people, who sell beer for a living, heading to New York for 4 days!  Sheer mayhem.

We flew Continental from Glasgow to Newark and onto the fabby hotel.  Lunch was followed by a bus tour with two native New Yorkers being hilarious and sarcastic yet informative – the perfect tour guides! 

We went through Hell’s Kitchen to Central Park, Strawberry Fields, the Dakota Building, past the Intrepid to the American Express Building/Winter Gardens, looking over to the Statue of Liberty and then to Ground Zero.  Seeing the site where the World Trade Centre used to be was chilling.  All excavated, just a hole in the ground.  Apparently the work has slowed as they have started to find people’s remains again.  Just awful.

From there onto the Rockefeller centre for dinner in the Rock Centre cafe.  By this time, I had been up for nearly 24 hours and the only thing to do was drink my way through the ‘wall’.  So I had my first Cosmopolitan in Manhattan – very Sex and the City!  At this point I learned about the NY ‘free pour’ approach to spirits.  No such thing as 25ml here!  Strong stuff!

While we were eating dinner, gazing over the ice rink, a commotion began.  Turns out Christina Aguilera was performing a song for some TV programme when they light the Rockefeller Centre Christmas Tree.  For some reason she was recording it a few weeks early.  So the celeb spotting had begun!

From there to an Irish bar nearby, followed by a stroll back to the hotel through Times Square.  That place is mad – slightly tipsy, I went shopping for make-up at midnight!  Luckily was sober enough to only spend 30 dollars!

Planning to turn in when I got back to the hotel, the Cosmopolitan kicked in and 2 hours later I was still in the hotel bar chatting with the folk I’d walked back with.  Massive entertainment was watching the high-class hooker try to land an older guy sitting on his own by the bar.  She was really stunning.  He bought her a drink, but then ignored her.  She moved on and then tried to land one of our sales guys.  Apparently her price was $1000! :-0

Next day, we had the ‘business bit’.  An hour’s presentation on the third-party brand that had paid for it all, followed by splitting into groups for a ‘day-in-trade’.  Our task was to vist as many pubs as we could within 3 hours and come back with one idea that could help us sell beer in Scotland.  Well, you can’t go into all those bars, steal their ideas and not buy anything…so by 2pm we were pretty pi$$ed!  On the home straight back to the hotel, someone noticed a ‘lady bar’.  Well – they are our customers too was the excuse given - and in we went – both males and females.  My first ever strip joint!  Fascinating.  Particularly how in control the girls were – male customers were kept to very strict rules.  It did beg the question exactly who was being exploited…

You can tell how pi$$ed we were by the idea that won the prize…  Another group had headed in the direction of Grand Central, but got caught at Fifth Avenue as the Veteran’s day parade made it’s way north.  One of the parade floats had a dog driving a Hummer!  So that was their idea – teach your dog to drive so that you can always get to the pub for a pint!  And a deserving idea too!!!

An hour spare for some shopping around Times Square was followed by a visit to the Heartland Brewery in Manhattan, and then out to New Jersey for an Ice Hockey game.

The New Jersey Devils were playing the Florida Panthers, and gubbed them!  “Let’s Go Devils!”  I really enjoyed it, but just didn’t get all the stopping and starting!  A game of three 20 minute segments took about 2.5 hours!!  I can’t imagine all that stopping and starting at Celtic Park – there’d be a riot!!  Live sport should never stop for adverts or quizzes with 5 year olds in the crowd!

After the ice hockey, we went to a really cool bar called Pop Burger in the Meatpacking District.  They did these delicious little mini-burgers and all the booze was free – as well as free pour!  The music was really excellent and the crowd very hip.  We all topped up on the alcohol from the earlier ‘day-in-trade’.  The group began to disperse as jet-lag kicked in for some and the music was too cool for others…lol.  I was there with the last of them, and delightedly realised we still had a bus outside waiting for us!

The bus dropped us back at the hotel around 1am, and I thought I would be sensible and turn in.  I wanted to go to a Baptist Church in Harlem the next morning and hear the gospel choir.  I popped into a 24 hour store to get some water and orange juice and on the way out bumped into Barry, who refused to let me go home and dragged me (and my shopping) into Smith’s where the rest of the gang were and a fantastic live band were playing.  It was excellent.  So, that was me (and my shopping) until after 3am!

You can probably guess – there was no gospel singing at 10am the next morning!!!

Instead, I wandered down to Grand Central Station, had a smoothie on Madison Avenue, shopped in the weekend market, had breakfast in Grand Central Station and bought a slice of the most delicious New York Cheescake from Juniors.  Wandered up Park Avenue, along to St Patrick’s Cathedral and then some serious shopping in Banana Republic, Abercrombie and Fitch, Tiffany’s, Sak’s and Bloomingdales.  By now the hangover was getting bad, so I jumped on the subway to go downtown to get the Staten Island Ferry.

A combination of a hangover, unhelpful subway staff and an out-of-date subway map meant that I ended up in Brooklyn!  I can travel the world but can’t even get a bloody subway!  What an idiot!  At least I got a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge!  Got the train back to Canal Street and by the time I got out of the station, it was absolutely tipping it down!  I bought a brolly from one of those people who magically appear when it starts raining in New York!  A brief stroll in it made me realise that even though I’m from the West of Scotland, we just don’t get rain like this.  This was rain that really meant it!  As my jeans absorbed water up to the knees, I stopped walking and decided that an hour’s kip and a bath would be really sensible and help me get through another evening with these crazy mad sales guys.  So that’s what I did!  It was bliss!

Dinner was at Gallagher’s Steak House where I had the biggest steak I have ever seen in my life.  Accompanied by wedges that were more like quarters of baked potato! It had huge pieces of meat hanging in the window – uncooked – like the backshop of a butchers!  Very bizarre.  And then, as usual, onto more bars!

Breakfast on Sunday was followed by the Empire State Building.  Even though foggy, it was an amazing experience. 

The rest of the day was pretty much spent in Macy’s – the biggest store in the world!  I loved Macy’s.  In there, I bought most of the stuff I brought home with me – some small pressies, some Christmas pressies – and some pressies for me!!  An iPod was the highlight.  Along with the iPod FM radio transmittor that you’re not allowed to buy in the UK!  Yeah!!!  Nothin’ to declare…honest!

For lunch I met up with a few of the guys and we found a typical New York Kosher deli – complete with stroppy Jewish waitress.  Just lovely!

Back to the hotel, crammed all that shopping into my case and got ready for the trip home.

An amazing experience.  So much to see and do.  I need to go back again to fit in all the things I would have liked to do and didn’t; Staten Island Ferry, close up on the Statue of Liberty, Gospel church, the Met, the MoMA, the Guggenheim, the public library (the one with all the green tiffany lamps in films!), Empire State Building on a clear day, the UN Buildings, Tribeca and Greenwich Village, Battery Park, Soho…ah, so much to see!

Travelling back to Newark, we had one final glimpse of Manhattan from the ramp coming out of the Lincoln tunnel.  Without a doubt the best view of Manhattan.  A great way to say farewell to New York…for now!