Rhys Bowen Jones...IS BACK. Dun dun dun.
So, where to begin? Well, I think my holiday is a good start as there were only 4 days between me leaving and the end of school, in which absolutely nothing happened. So, I shall take you on a journey, in a person-with-a-deep-voice-you-always-hear-in-horror-film trailers kind of way. Or, if you want, read the dates I post in the Big Brother Geordie Narrator's voice. It could give many a chuckle, although only to me and my 5 year old mind. Actually I think I'll write the whole thing like the Geordie Guy.
The times of days I post are just random approximations, I didn't pay attention that much.
Day 1. Tuesday, July 21st. 11:04 AM.
Today is the first day of the Bowen Jones' family holiday. It's been 7 minutes since they arrived at Cardiff Central Bus Station, waiting for the 201 National Express bus to take them to Gatwick. Naturally, disaster occured for the writer of this blog. He chose the wrong place to sit on the bus, as the bus toilet leaked urine onto his hoodie on the bus floor. Not a great start for Rhys.
5:31 PM.
The Bowen Jones family arrived at Gatwick, and checked in using the Virgin Atlantic Twilight method, leaving them staying the night at the Gatwick Hilton Hotel. The rest of the night was taken up by a pleasant meal at a Gatwick Airport Pub/Restaurant that was actually very nice indeed. Then, the family went off to the room, getting some rest before the 10 hour flight to Las Vegas the next day.
Day 2. Wednesday, July 22nd. 9:12 AM.
As the Bowen Jones family were staying at the airport, there was no pre-flight rush regarding check-in and what not. But, usefully, Rhys was still using his crutch, leaving him and the rest of the family to jump nearly every queue they joined.
Ah, fuck it. I just want to write freely now. Feel free to make up some days in your head for the Geordie voice in your head to say.
So, yeah, the crutch did prove useful at the airport, but from then on, it was an absolute disaster, which I shall talk about when I start talking about Las Vegas. But, for now, back to the airport.
The flight was very painless indeed, with a good selection of films on the seat back TV's for me to watch. I watched I Love You, Man (very funny), Slumdog Millionaire (brilliant) and maybe one other film but I can't remember which one. Obviously, it wasn't very good. The return flight was a much more enjoyable one, film wise. Read on to see what enjoyment I had on that flight home, for those of you who really don't have anything better to do than read my blog.
We arrived in Vegas at around 3 PM on the Wednesday because of the time change and all that jazz, which was a bitch to try and get used to for the first few days. But anyway, we arrived in blistering heat that really thwacked you in the face as soon as you walked outside. The heat in Vegas was unbelievable. It was at least 104 Faranheit everyday, I think, which is around the 36 Celsius mark, but I'm not quite sure, because I find faranheit very confusing. 37 Faranheit is 0 Celsius? Which genius thought that up?
To Las Vegas itself. It was really nice there, but it was the most tiring place ever. Walking from hotel to hotel (well, hopping) which were so far away from eachother. They were definitely worth going to, every single one of them were just breathtakingly stunning, but couldn't they have some sort of bus service going to each place...they did, but we didn't find out about it until the 3rd day. Clever. The best hotels were the Venetian, New York New York, Paris Las Vegas and the Bellagio who were all amazing inside. Just amazing. We did a lot in the 3 nights there, but the two highlights for me were the Fremont Street Experience and the Nathan Burton Comedy Magic show.
Fremont Street was absolutely amazing. Fremont Street is the original Las Vegas before it got famous, and every night from 10pm to the easrly hours of the morning, once every half hour, the glass roof above the street comes to life. It shows a very colourful lazer show from the roof to We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions by Queen. Pictures and videos will be up on the book of my face as soon as possible.
And Nathan Burton is possibly the most amazingly hilarious show I've ever seen. I laughed harder watching that show than at Lee Evans Live and The Hangover, and for those of you who do read my film reviews, you know how much I laughed at The Hangover. There were 3 acts in the show. Nathan Burton was the magic, and 2 others were the comedy. The first comedy act was really funny, but I can't remember the guy who did it's name, sadly. But the second act was comedy genius. His name is Michael Holly and he's a comedy variety act, but he did comedy and juggling when we were there, and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. Both me and my mum were crying with laughter - my Dad and brother were laughing, but you had to be quite zany to get his humour, and me and my mum are on a different level of zany to those two - at every line he said and everything he did. He managed to juggle TWO BOWLING BALLS and an Apple, taking a bit out of the apple at every throw. It was brilliant! But it was his comedy that was the highlight. His delivery and the way he worked the audience was absolutely hilarious, and the highlight was this: Throughout the beginning of the show (when he was juggling), he was joking about throwing a bowling ball in to the air and bouncing it on his head. He threatened to do it twice by throwing the ball up, putting his head under it, but catching the ball at the last minute. But the third time, he picked a ball up from his box, threw it up and bounced it on his head! It wasn't a real bowling ball, obviously, but the way he did it was just incredibly funny. I was still chuckling at it a week after the show! I'm smiling at it right now while writing about it! Just brilliant.
And that's it for Vegas, boy it was good. Following Vegas, we drove down to Sedona, Pheonix for two nights and it was stunning there. The place is surrounded by big red rock mountains and it's beautiful. The only thing we did in Sedona was drive down to see the Grand Canyon which was absolutely breathtaking. The scale of the place is unreal, it makes you feel so small when you stand on the edge - yes, I stood on the edge, much to the annoyance of my Mum - and it does make you think. No matter how fucked the world is right now, it still holds so many brilliant things that you just have to see. Awesome.
Then we drove down to Palm Springs, which barely deserves a mention because it was bullshit. It was only for a night to break up the 8 hour journey from Sedona to San Diego. Onwards and upwards.
San Diego is amazing. The climate is so perfect there, it's amazing. And to add to the brilliance, our hotel was home to a huge gig venue, that our hotel room had a balcony view of! George Thoroughgood and Earth, Wind and Fire were performing, and they were okay. Thoroughgood was okay, and guaranteed every single person that reads this will know his song Bad To The Bone. YouTube it if you don't believe me. You'll know it, guaranteed. We stayed there for 3 nights and then we drove a short way to San Diego harbour to go on a cruise.
WHAT?! CRUISE?! Yep, that was my reaction too. Throughout the holiday me and my brother had been told we were staying in a second hotel in San Diego to see another part of the great place, but they'd booked a cruise for us. We'd been told we were staying in the Elation Inn. To make matters worse, I didn't work out we were going on a cruise even when we drove past the thing! It was to the right as we were going over a bridge and my brother said "Look, a Carnival ship!" - Carnival Cruise Lines is the company we always cruise with, and are the best cruise line ever - and it was called the "Carnival Elation", hence the Elation Inn story, and all I said was "what a coincidence!" I still hadn't clocked it! I only realised it when our shuttle bus from the car park to take us to the ship arrived when I started jumping around shouting "We're going on a cruise! We're going on a cruise!" for about 10 minutes. The cruise was a 3 day cruise going down to Ensenada, Mexico - I didn't get off, surprisingly - but the cruise was brilliant. Unlimited free food and drink for 3 days...how awesome is that?! Totally unexpected, yet totally brilliant too.
After the cruise, we drove down to Los Angeles for the final leg of our journey around California, Nevada and Pheonix. We stayed there for 6 nights, and it was amazing. We didn't do anything on the first day except stay around the pool and go to a mall. But on the second night we went to a LA Dodgers baseball game where they played the Milwaukee Brewers, and it was so much fun! The Dodgers won it 17-4 in the end, with nearly a big fight happening at the end after the Dodgers pitcher (the one that throws the ball) hit the Brewers batter purposely in the face. I chuckled. On the third day we did the main attraction of LA - Hollywood Boulevard, aka, the Walk of Fame. And it was awesome too! To start with, there were no really big names until a short distance from the Kodak Centre and I got pictures of all the stars I was interested in - Arnie Schwarzenegger, Leonard Nimoy, Jimi Hendrix and Kermit The Frog, but to name a few. We went to the Chinese Theatre and I loved that too, with all celebrities foot and hand prints and signatures, including Johnny Dep and Rupert Grint - got pictures of those too! We then went to the Hollywood sign and got pictures of that! Awesome day! But the next one was so amazingly incredible, that it'll get it's own paragraph...DUN DUN DUN.
Six. Flags. Magic. Mountain. The. Greatest. Theme park. Ever. And that's no word of a lie, I absolutely love it. There is so much to do there - we spent nearly 11 hours at the park and still didn't manage to do everything. There were 11 huge rollercoasters there and I think I managed to do 8 of them - Deja Vu, Terminator Salvation: The Ride, Deja Vu, Goliath, The Goldrusher, Batman: The Ride, Tatsu and X2. Missing out on Superman: The Ride, Colossus and Riddler's Revenge. We then threw in little rides like Go Kart racing and a couple of shows. Amazing day, but X2 is easily the highlight of the day. Actually, the whole-freaking-holiday! It was beyond insane. Basically, it's a ride with loops, corkscrews, and 3 vertical drops. Oh and your seat spins forwards and backwards as you go along the ride, with the train travelling at over 70 MPH. Absolutely freaking mental, and I loved every single second of it. Except when I banged my leg on a railing in the queue. Ouch.
After Six Flags on the next day, we went to a mall and I went to the cinema and saw G-Force (see film review for full details) with my brother and fell in love with American Cinemas. They're amazing! So comfortable, screens are huge, really really good quality, just awesome! Then the final day we packed and went to Pasadena, which wasn't all that much really. And so it ended. Easily the best 18 days of my life, and an amazing first half to the summer. Hopefully next year will top at after my free house for two weeks! SCORE. But still, awesome 3 weeks, fair play.
Oh I almost forgot - the flight home was epic too. 9 hours and 25 minutes watching films. Awesome. Watched Watchmen (was okay, too long though), Coraline (best kids film I've ever seen!), Observe and Report (funny, but very very weird...), tried to watch 17 Again, got bored, and started watching Miss March which has to be the worst first 20 minutes of a film I've ever seen, so I left it. Slept for maybe an hour, then watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory (now one of my favourite tv shows) and Live at the Apollo with Michael McIntyre, Rich Hall and Rhod Gilbert (funniest episode ever). Was good fun!
And finally, I shall give a mention to something I like to call The Converse Girls. Basically, every single girl I saw wearing converse was hot. This blog has sunken to an all time low, but America has some really pretty girls living there. And when you've seen one or two by the pool, you know you just have to live there.
Sorry, that was one of my less well written posts, but there was so much to put in, I just had to write at all out.
Ho hum, and that ends my biggest blog to date. Hope you had fun reading it, though I doubt you did.
Au revoir, pour maintenant. Hmm, doesn't have the same ring as "Ciao for now".
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