Westcoast - Vancouver to Los Angeles

1.  I will miss the big cars (a V6 is small here ....)

2. Canada is a very diverse and unique place

3. You are allowed shoot and drive before drinking alcohol? 

4. Canada has so much beautiful nature, you can spent years there

5. Due to the diversity there is a lot of great food from all over the world

5.1 Much food is so unhealthy .... I weigh 4 kilos more now ....

6. They are not that strict concerning the drinking age as everybody sais

7. Travelling is awesome!

8. You have to have the windows up parking your convertible rooftop down, Otherwise the insurance does not pay if something is stolen (wtf?)

9. Going to a bar in Canada you need two pieces of identification

All in all I met so many nice people, had a lot of fun, shared a lot of thoughts and therefore changed my mind on some topics.I am looking forward to Fiji and Samoa now, countries more different from Germany and hope you enjoy reading my website.

Me shooting for the first time, at the end a hot shell lands in my shoe and burned my foot, but fun anyway!

Driving from LA to LV is quite boring on the Highway, at least try to get to LV in the evening to see the huge amount of lights suddenly appearing in the dry area and between mountains.

Besides the famous casino strip (oceans 13, hangover....) downtown is a nice area too, they renewed it some years ago. Also you can find buildings not finished, they stopped working there after the crises, some of the great shows arent shown anymore either. But still people in the casinos spent lots and lots of money, I was impressed by that. Some definitly are addicted.

Well, we went shooting once, due to the fact that you can not do this in Germany. The food here is great either, I just realized that I gained 4kg more of weight during these two months in Canda and the US.

The casinos spent soooo much money on the decoration and setting. You find parts of Venice, even with a canal running through the building, old ceasar and a lot more.

In LA we did not do that much, it was 45 degrees celcius in the city and around 35 at the beaches. We drove the Mulholland drive with the airconditioning on and also through the city. Afterwards we spent the rest of the time laying at the beaches, walking around and meeting at least one actor, Jamy Fox speding his saturday at the beach too. 

Except the walk of fame and all the tourism stuff in Hollywood there is not much to see in LA I guess, shopping of course but I can not transport that much in my backpack.

My brother joined me in San Fran, we rented a car and started driving down to LA, enjoying the beaches, weather and the car of course. With some luck we got a Mustang V6, 308 bhp and a cabrio! 

Our plan was to drive down Highway 1, the old one along the coast. We did this but I always looked on the map for some curvy roads through the mountains or near the coast to have some more fun driving. We gased up each day ;) 

Again some pictures to show you the beautiful beaches and the more south you get the warmer is the water. 

By the way I forgot about the beautiful houses and estates we saw, wooow!

Definitly the nicest city I have been to so far, except the temperature of the water. It simply is a beautiful city with its hills, trams, cablecars and the harbourfront. Wow! Again there are homeless people and shady areas but that is usual in a big city. I bought some local newspapers from a nice guy trying to earn some money. To put the long in short I will show you some pictures, you simply can not describe SanFran. 

Must see and do: Walk the city, the center is not that big, book a alcatraz tour in advance, rent a bike and cycle around and over the golden gate bridge, enjoy the great food.

Another small city I stayed in was Redding, CA. The weather was bad and I felt very lazy, I simply enjoyed having a own room again and relaxed watching TV and eating a lot of great maxican food and some awesome Pizza. 

The center of this town looked very new, but many stores where closed. Most of the people just stop by for some days and then head out into the beautiful nature. I visited the sundailbridge, which was in walking distance.

On my way down to SanFran I stop in two cities, one of them is Medford. Its a typical american town with some great nature around and a lot of nice people, but some shady either. 

One guy asked me how to get to the motel I stayed in, later I saw him with an envelope going in one of the rooms,quite sure it was about drugs. Another mexikan gave me a ride and he told me that there are a lot working in this region for earning money and sending it home.

Arriving in Portland we, the girls from Nanaimo went there too, arrived in the cute Northwest HI hostel. The city is quite small but anyway a great place to hang out, especially with so many awesome people in the hostel. The evenings and partying was hilarious! Save travels and see you guys on the coast, australia or germany.

 Leaving behind awesome people in Nanaimo, thanks again for the great evenings we had, I took a waterplane to Vancouver and got on a Bus to Seattle. I asked for a snack but he did not stop at the water gasstation ;) Seattle looked great in the sunrise, I really recommend taking such a plane somewhere.

After some ours in a bus I arrived in Seattle. The area seemed to be a little shady, Internat district and Chinatown. I met two girls from Nanaimo again and we explored the city, two other already left to Portland. Seattle is a nice city but to me it is to dirty and full of homeless people, all the way up from chinatown to the center. The residential areas are great, on capitol hill live a lot of different and nice people, enjoyed having some coffes there. 

Renting a kayak and paddling around is a great way to explore the area.

After spending some hilarous days in Vancouver, the last night we played dodgeball and our team was the 5th out of 14, the pub was great, I moved into the painted turtle guesthouse. Its a nice simple place to stay, my room was never full, more or less empty. I got to learn a lot of students having a semester abroad there. Moreover some lokals and a few travellers of course. After spending so many weeks in big cities I enjoyed the rural area. Vancouver Island is a great place to stay at for some week, the only thing you need is a car. That is why I only stayed there 4 days and exploree nanaimo. On my way to Seattle I took a waterplane and then a bus down from vancouver.

Good bye Canada! You guys where always friendly and eass going, I really enjoyed my trip so far.

The first four days I spent in the HI Vancouber central hostel. After staying in some very big and crowded cities in the east, vancouver is a smaller city perfect for hanging out at the beaches, spent hours, days months in one of its parks and hike in the sorrounding mountains.

The Grouse Trail is very crowded, it is fun to go up there (2,5km with 860 m in height) but I prefer hiking on the smaller trails in the nature and not the ones prepared for hundrets of tourists and some who should not hike ;)

Vancouver is a very green city with a lot of trees and cycling trails (quote busdriver: "they builds a lot of cyclinglanes, but do not teach the cyclists how to cooperate with motorvehicles"). Moreover it has a very big harbour, one of americas largest. 

All in all it is a great city. Maybe not that much for sightseeing tourist running from one place to another but spending time outside in the parks and walk along its green roads.