New Gadget

We have a new gadget here at my university. And of course all the PhD students got to use it :-)

Back Home

It was really great to be back home in Germany again and to see my parents, family and friends again. Our little trip to California was good, too. But after constantly travelling for 4 weeks we are quite happy to settle down here in Perth again.

Sydney

Before flying back to Perth we visited Ian's brother in Sydney. I've been there before as a tourist about 4 years ago. But driving through the suburbs now I was quite impressed with the lovely old houses and the flare. Everything is so close to the water because of the amazing natural harbour - it's great.

We went to Bondi Beach for a swim and had a fresh seafood platter for dinner *yum*

P.S.: We sat next to Hugh Jackman in the shuttle bus at LAX. Most of our Australian girl friends were quite excited about that :-)

La Jolla

We drove back from Malibu to San Diego to catch the plane back to Australia. On the way we stopped at La Jolla, a suburb north of San Diego right at the coast. It has a beautiful coast and we actually went for a swim there. It was bloody cold!

Last Dinner

Just down the road from our B&B was this veeeery fancy restaurant famous for its game. So we went there for dinner on our last night in Malibu. I hesitated a bit spending that much money on a meal, but I was worth it! It was just divine! We had
Wild Fijian albacore sashimi with pea tendril salad, toasted hazelnuts, garlic chips, scallions and melon cilantro vinaigrette

Wild mushroom agnolotti with ricotta salata, roasted wild mushroomsand shaved summer truffles


Seared New Zealand elk tenderloin with parsnip mousselin, parsnip chips, sweet potato gnocchi, ragout of braised bacon and cherries - This was my absolute favourite!!!

Warm farmers market peach beignets
caramelized whipped cream and toasted hazelnuts

Venice & Santa MonicaWe drove down to Venice and walked all the way up to the Santa Monica Pier and back. The beach is very wide and lined by a tourist walkway where they want to sell you anything - our favourite was medical marijuana ;-)
The Santa Monica Pier was a bit disappointing - much too touristy and without real flare. But I loved walking along the beach and watching people and characters showing of. Everyone likes to be seen here. And again the brown haze along the horizon, since we are close to LA again. The only good thing about that was the sunset! The haze made it look even better.

LA & Malibu

From Palm Springs we headed westwards on highway number 10 towards Los Angeles. The traffic got denser, the highways got wider - up to 5 lanes each way and the smog got thicker. There was this really brown haze at the horizon that gave it away - LA must be near.
But once we passed the civil commotion of the big city we drove through Santa Barbara and up along the coast to Malibu. There is this long wide stretch of beach, lined by houses, next to which is a 4 lane highway and next to this are cliffs. Not not much room and not at all quite like Cottesloe Beach here. We tried just stopping there to have a look around - $6 for parking!!


This is the Malibu Pier where we had a nice dinner watching the sunset and drinking Margarita - our new favourite drink since Mexico :-)

Palm Springs

We left Joshua Tree in the morning end headed east towards Palm Springs. Just before arriving in Palm Springs we were surprised to see a huge wind farm - hundreds of wind mills were lined up there. I didn't know that America has its green spots ;-)
We went on a short stroll through the centre of the city of Palm Springs, which was a party town for the Hollywood stars back in the 1950's. Some of the old houses and fancy architectures back then are still there. We then boarded the world's largest rotating tram car - the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which took us up from 800m to 2500m in about 13min. We went from the middle of the desert to this alpine forest ontop of this mountain - yes, alpine forest. The temperature dropped by about 15C on our way up. We walked through the forest, watched the sunset and enjoyed a lovely meal :-)

We spend the night camping again in the Whitewater Nature Reserve. This was a old trout farm which has been converted into a nature reserve for people to have picnics or to camp the night in the canyon.

Joshua Tree

After having enough of camping in the desert we drove back to our motel. We bought some drinks and drove back into Joshua Tree National Park just in time to watch the sunset while sitting on one of the many boulders.

Joshua Tree is a paradise for rock climbers. There are about 6000 marked trails in the park. But it is also a town of artists - we saw beautiful paintings in a funky little cafe where we had breakfast.
We also checked out the local pub where we had a burger with coleslaw. When the chef took our plates said 'Oh, you actually ate the coleslaw' ;-)

Joshua Tree National Park
After staying one night in Joshua Tree we packed our tents, sleeping backs and other hiking equipment and drove to Joshua Tree National Park. We did a couple of short hikes without the packs and then hiked to our chosen spot to pitch the tent for the night.This National Park is a desert with lots and lots of cacti and of course Joshua Trees. The temperatures ranged from about 25C to 10C - so it was pretty cold at night. And during the day the extreme low humidity sucked the moisture right out of our skin, lips and eyes.
We enjoyed the first night under the stars and far away from roads and people. There were so many stars we even saw falling stars. But unfortunately we also saw lots of blinking stars... the whole horizon was full of air planes! We saw about 8 or 10 at a time. The next morning these air planes would paint clouds in the otherwise clear blue sky.We intended to stay in the national park for 2 nights but we had enough after just one ;-) It was really dry and sandy. The paths were hard to walk due to the sand and the landscape didn't change that much. So we went back and had a swim the coldest swimming pool ever.

The Salton Sea
On our way to Joshua Tree we stopped in Julian that claims to have the world's best apple pies. We tasted them and they were alright - just alright. Further along our way we stopped to have a look at the Salton Sea. Apparently Californians largest lake right in the middle of its largest desert. This is the most inhospitable place I've ever been to. It is steaming hot and it stinks. Dead fish laying on the beach. We were just hoping that the car wouldn't break down here! But there were houses - people actually live there. In fact we even saw some new house developments. I personally can't think of any reason to live there...

Tijuana

Mexico starts only about 30km south of San Diego and the trolley car drives from down town San Diego directly to border. We only had to walk across a bridge to be in the middle of the tourist strip. Apparently this is one of the most travelled border in the world and the difference between down town San Diego and Tijuana is most significant - they are like different worlds only kilometres apart. The 'beautiful' Tijuana river was the first thing we saw.
Along the main tourist street there were lots and lots of pharmacies advertising for cheap medicine, tablets, pills - of course viagra ;-) Also many Californians go to the dentist in Tijuana as it is much cheaper. We saw several signs pointing to a dentist. But we also found nice spots like the local markets where they were selling of course lots and lots of chilli :-) but also other herbs and spices in huge bags. I love these sort of markets.
Another thing we learnt is that the Caesar Salad and the Margarita apparently both originated in Tijuana. So of course we went to the Caesar Hotel and had a Caesar Salad freshly prepared for us at our table - yum. And yes, we also had a Margarita which was fantastic!
We saw a local tradesman selling these cactus fruit and thought great - I have to try them! So we bought a small bag and tried a bite. Some locals were watching us and had this grin on their faces. One of them spoke English and told us that we had to cook them first :-) which we then tried (unsuccessfully) in the hostel ;-)

San Diego Impressions
loud & noisy - San Diego seems to be a very noisy city. Maybe we only had this impression because our hotel was quite close to a main road and a train station. Whenever the train had to cross a road (with gates installed) the driver sounded the horn several times - even at 2am in the morning!

wheel chair friendly - I was a bit surprised to see that there were wheel chair ramps & elevators everywhere. Even the trolley car was equipped with a special door for wheel chairs. I mean that is a good thing! But.... (read next point)

fat people - I must say that I really noticed the large number of fat, overweight people in down town. Which also explains the wheel chair friendliness. The majority of people I saw sitting in wheel chairs weren't disabled they were just fat and choose not to walk. I saw young people with walking sticks because their legs couldn't support their weight any more.

fatty food & big portions - One morning I ordered pancakes for breakfast, they came in a stack of 3 and I managed to eat ONE. They were huge! And even the porridge I ordered the other day was drowned in butter. The bread tastes sweet, a slice of bread (43g) contains 5g of sugar!! Scrambled eggs on toast therefore tastes really wired. In the end Ian and I always shared a main.

Business Trip

Please don't think that this whole trip was just a holiday. No, no, no, I actually worked ;-)