Goodbye and see you again!

Over this trip we have been blessed by a constant beautiful weather oscillating between 20 and 30 degrees (celcius). The skies have shown their best colours and we incredibly witnessed the first snow of the season over the Grand Canyon during the only cold experience of the trip. We witnessed the most amazing fire red sunset over the Colorado valley in Blythe and yesterday evening the sun waved us goodbye over Venice Beach (above picture). The West Coast definitely is an enjoyable place to live in (if you can forget about the earthquake threats ans raging fires).

The Getty Museum

The Getty museum is just an 'out of this world' place. I had never visited it before but you really have to witness it to believe it. Despite the controversy on the ownership of some of the Art pieces on display (after the previous curator was arrested for trafficking) you can only be impressed by its collection of European Arts and Antiquities. But what can be even more amazing than the pieces themselves is both its location overlooking Los Angeles and offering a 360 degrees view over the city and the incredible ingenuosity of its architecture where you can clearly feel that every single detail has been carefully studied. It is particularly glowing white under a blue sky (even though the city below is not glowing because of the constant pollution as you can see above).

L.A.

It really is not difficult to guess where we are today. It is also amazing to think that a few hundred miles from here and a couple of days ago we witnessed the first snow of the season since today the weather has been particularly hot and sunny. It is like being in summer again. And those 28 degrees Celcius (82 degrees Fahrenheit as they say here) do not feel anything like 28 hot and and sticky Singapore degrees. They are just perfect! We surely had to do the touristy things from the Chinese Theatre to the Walk of Fame and from Beverly Hills to Malibu. But no celebrity spotting!

Mojave and Joshua Tree National Parks

The first time I heard of the Joshua Tree was thanks to U2 when they issued their timeless masterpiece 'The Joshua Tree' twenty years ago (see the picture here). I then drove through the Joshua Tree National Park on my way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas a few years later. A classic ride. I will be crossing the same park again today but I was amazed to go through a forest of Joshua Trees on my way from Vegas yesterday. I did not know that the biggest 'forest' of joshuas was actually in Mojave Desert. A weird and beautiful sight.

Picture of the Week

Usually Monday is the day where I post my record(s) of the week. If I had to choose some tracks this week it would actually be the trio of singles that have been in my head lately: Flobots 'No Handle Bar', Ladyhawke 'My Delerium' and Esser 'I Love You'. But as I am in the bay area vicinity - and instead of purchasing my usual fix from Piccadilly Records online - I thought it would be more appropriate to post the picture of the great Californian institution that is Amoeba Records. If you find yourself in San Francisco or L.A. please do yourself a favour and visit those places before they disappear...

Death Valley

It was a long drive down to the Death Valley but it was worth every minute. We spent the night on the outskirts since the weekenders booked out the only few rooms available in the area and had to return early this morning to make the most of this very unique park. It is the driest and hottest valley in the United States. It is also the lowest with its bottom reaching 85 meters below sea level. This season is probably optimun as the highest we got today was 24°C. In summer the average for both July and August is 46°C which means that you can easily have some peaks well over the fifties. Actually, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States was 56.7 °C at Furnace Creek, during a sandstorm in July sometimes in 1913.

yo-SEM-it-ee

Over 4 hours drive from San Francisco, we reached today the northern tip of the Sierra Nevada. The Yosemite park is gorgeous in all seasons but I admit that it is really enjoyable to take advantage of less crowds, cooler temperatures, beautiful blue skies and autumn colours at this time of the year. We did not see any bears as we did not stay long enough to explore the park anyway but we could still feed our eyes and memories on the glorious and classical views over the valley, the Half Dome and El capitan as you can see from the picture above.

Golden Gate

I remember the emotion that ran through my veins the first time I saw the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco over a decade ago. It was like a dream come true. This bridge gloriously stands over the San Francisco bay and its International Orange colour particularly makes it stand out loud and clear against a perfect blue sky. It was an intense pleasure to have the opportunity to return here today and it just confirms the position of this corner of the world in my Top 5 of cities I'd love to live in if I had the choice (up there with Barcelona, Manchester, Tokyo and New York).

Cable Cars

If there is an image that identifies automatically with San Francisco (apart from the Golden Bridge of course) it is the Cable Car coming up or down its steep streets. Even though it is more of a tourist attraction than a public mean of transport used by the locals it remains highly iconic. The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last permanently operational manually-operated cable car system in the world.

04 November 2008 (historical)

We could not have picked a better day to land in San Francisco. And what a long day! Crossing the dateline made this very special day last for nearly 48 hours! Unlike France where you have an official projection result at 8 PM revealing the face of the new President on TV, here things are more uncertain and gradual. Therefore, expectations build up and you do not have an immediate explosion of joy but we could feel the happiness growing in the streets. The picture above translates this emotional and blurry moment after that long day that lead us to live such an historical event.