A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step

After 12 months working as an Au Pair my time in the USA was almost over. But before I returned to Austria, 4 friends of mine (Annika, Tine and Luise, who I met in the US and Kathi, who I’ve known for more than 5 years) decided to go on one last big trip together.

August 15th, 2012 - THE day was finally here. After many hours of planning, booking hotels, a car and flights and saving money I finally boarded the plane to NYC around noon, where I met Kathi, who flew over to the USA from Austria. We spent two great days there, but since I’ve already talked about NYC in one of my previous posts I don’t want to talk about it right now. Instead, I’d like to tell you about the journey of my lifetime: 25 days, 12 cities/places, 5 girls, 1 car, countless and priceless memories. Since pictures say more than 1000 words I’m just gonna give you short descriptions of our days and will let the photos speak for themselves.

San Diego, August 17th to August 19th

On August 17th Kathi and I flew from NYC to San Diego, where we met Annika and Tine, who flew there directly from Raleigh, because they have been to NYC a couple of times before. Since our plane arrived pretty late we just drove to our hotel and went to bed.
August 18th started pretty early. Today’s plan: Seaworld!

  

LA, August 19th to August 22nd

In the morning we went to San Diego downtown and since we would come back to San Diego at the end of our journey we were ready to go to LA. After arriving at the hotel we went to the most popular sight in LA: The Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 

On the following day we went to the place “Where dreams come true”: Disneyland & Disney Adventure.

 

 

 

August 21st: We spent all day at the “Universal Studios” and went to Beverly Hills in the evening.

 

  

 

On the next day we took pictures of the Hollywood Sign and then continued our journey to our next destination: Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz, August 22nd to August 23rd

 

San Francisco, August 23rd to August 26th

In the morning of August 23rd we got into the car and drove to one of the most beautiful cities on the West coast: San Francisco. We stopped several times to enjoy the beautiful view of Highway One. In the evening we went to Berkeley.

 

 

The following day we got up pretty early and our first stop was the airport. Luise, one of our Au Pair friends, flew over from Raleigh to join us for the next 10 days. Afterwards we started the so called “49 Miles Scenic Drive” – which leads you to all the important sights, like Chinatown, Pier 39 & Fishermen’s Wharf, Lombard Street, the Golden Gate Bridge and so on.

 

 

For the 25th we had booked tickets for Alcatraz in advance (you have to book tickets about 1 or 2 months before you go, coz they are always sold out).

 

Afterwards we walked through SF downtown, Chinatown and Little Italy and did some shopping.

Sacramento, August 26th to August 28th

In the morning we woke up pretty early and left our hotel. Next stop: The capital of California, Sacramento.

 

 

Okay guys, here I’d like to stop for now, coz otherwise it would take me forever to upload all those pictures and you would probably get bored as well. I’m gonna continue my “picture-story” pretty soon – there are still 14 days left of our journey – which we continued in California and which then led us to Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

Which cities/places do you think did we go to? ;)