United States: West Coast 2014 (part 1)

I have been thinking about how to write this post since it is the first one I do on travel. I think I have to do a little introduction to the subject: I was very lucky to be able to travel from a very young age, but it was different. Why? Because I traveled with my family, to rest and to see more family and of passage we knew a little, only what was near.

We went with my dad, his wife and my brothers many times to Boca Raton, Florida where my uncles and my cousin lived and so I know the whole area very well, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and also of course every trip included a few days in Orlando. But it was always repeated and I do not say it complaining because it would be very ungrateful, besides I enjoyed it a lot and I have unforgettable memories of those trips. I think they were the seed that later became in those last years the purest desire to travel almost anywhere, to know new places, its streets, its people, its culture and its food.

That to go a lot to Florida was in my childhood and adolescence, later my old one went away to live to Madrid. That is more than ten years ago, he went with his wife and two children and then I started to travel to see them. There I started to know a little more, we went with the car to several points in Spain, we went to Paris, to London also. However there were also times when I went to Madrid and I returned without having known anything new, that bullshit! Now I promised myself never to return to Europe and not take advantage to know a new place, I can not be so silly.

So the first great trip that I organized from this personal evolution that I did with respect to what it is to travel was in 2014, just a year ago. It was with my old man that he is a great traveler, both alone and I can say without a doubt that it was the best trip I've done so far but I'm sure it was only the beginning of many more, with this same style of getting to know, Travel as much as possible, not to stop for a second. Walk, take photos and eat rich things, always if possible with someone dear but if you can not, I repeat what I said, you have to do it alone. And that's why soon, now, in just two weeks we are going to undertake another trip very similar J but in addition to my dad comes my brother.

From that trip I made a year ago I'll talk about this post: I call it "West Coast 2014" and it was a two week "road trip", all with a rented car, we went to Las Vegas too, the Grand Canyon and I crowned the trip with a week in Oahu, Hawaii, but without my dad because he already knew the island and did not want to come. The text is very long, because it is more than three weeks of travel, so I will start in three or four parts.

I flew from EZE to DFW, airport that I did not know and I was quite surprised. I just fell into one of the new terminals, the D terminal I think it was and the six hour scale flew by because there was everything to see, buy and go. From there I had to take a flight to LAX where I would meet my old man who came from MAD but I had time even to comment several things on Twitter with @SirChandler readers.

The first two nights we spent in Los Angeles but I do not want to spend much time on that, for me it was kind of disappointing, I was expecting something better. Maybe something went wrong on our part and we did not get the juice, chances are, but from our small perspective we could only see a big city. With beautiful areas but also many ugly areas. Lots of people, lots of cars. Nothing special ... I liked Venice, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. Someday I will dedicate a rematch to this great city surely ... If someone really likes LA and wants to leave me some tips, you will be welcomed in the comments of the post since in a few weeks I visit a couple of nights this city.

From there we went one night to San Diego, I confess that I mainly went there because I had bought a bunch of things by Amazon (among which was the great Canon 16-35mm f2.8) and had sent them to someone who lives There, we only had 24 hours in that city and we saw very little but yes enough so that I like it much more than LA and that's why next month we come back for more! We arrived at the hotel in the afternoon, I called my mother's friend who had received my purchases to coordinate when we would pick them up (in exchange for some Cachafaz alfajores and lemon Havanna cookies) and I asked her to recommend me a place to visit with little weather. She was blunt: "If you have a few hours, go and see the sunset in La Jolla" and we left immediately because it was already mid-afternoon. I'm still grateful for that recommendation! La Jolla is a spectacular, dreamy place! It is a bay with cliffs and small mountains among which you will see lots of houses that I can not imagine the view they should have, of that giant mass of crystal clear water and very calm (at least the afternoon we went the water looked like a pool). Full of birds, and what looked like wolves or sea lions. In fact it is one of the most expensive areas in the USA to buy a property. After several hours of walking around the picturesque and beautiful area, having seen and photographed a magnificent sunset (the first of my life on the Pacific) ... we went to dinner at Five Guys!

In addition to La Jolla, in San Diego we got to see a bit of Balboa Park and Coronado Island, with its famous centennial and totally wooden hotel. Everything very nice in this little big city, is a place to stay to live seems to me. I'm coming back for good luck soon

The next day we went to Las Vegas, that night Maidana was fighting against Floyd Mayweather and then the city was quite full of Argentines. We arrived in the city as for dinner, we had driven all afternoon watching some beautiful scenery, crossing the Mojave desert.

We had planned to arrive to Las Vegas as if to sleep, to take advantage of the fact that it is a city with very cheap hotels. I say cheap considering what hotels are of course. Unless there is a big event, which in this case I had but I had paid the hotel before they announced the fight, in Las Vegas you can sleep for less than 100 dollars in a 4 star hotel (remember that around that sum They were the Luxor, Tropicana, MGM and several more) and for about 150 dollars you can access a 5 star (not the most expensive obviously). Obviously the business revolves around casinos, because lodging is cheap, and food in general as well.

All major hotels have casino and also free parking. The city has grown enormously in recent decades and has changed significantly. I once read that they intentionally wanted to make it more familiar and that shows. I had been to Las Vegas to go to a C.E.S. In 1995 and I remember that with my 15 years of age I had been quite surprised. It was a much bigger city for adults, I will never forget the amount of "paid girl's catalogs" that were given to you in every corner, even until I believe that in the hotel room they were left with photos and everything.

But now, almost 20 years later we saw almost nothing of that type of offer, obviously there must be but much less in sight, just a couple of characters in the corners that offer you now instead of whole catalogs a small cards that I suppose they will be to enter the relevant places. Today there are many attractions and all kinds, there are many shows (for example about ten different versions of Cirque du Soleil), there are constantly recitals of musicians known worldwide, there are hundreds of places to enter, see and buy things, from trinkets to All the premises of the most expensive brands in the world. There are good outlets and quite close. They are in the mega hotels on the "strip" and each one is worth getting in and walking around for a while. Just to name a few of those worth entering would say: Luxor with pyramid shape, the famous MGM, Bellagio with the imposing fountain of dancing water at the entrance and all the interior luxury, the most modern with incredible architecture like The Aria and Mandarin Oriental, The Mirage where the famous magic show with the white tigers was known, Caesars Palace that despite its long years maintains a great style and has Bacchanal, the best buffet in the city (there will be post Of this too), the super glamorous Cosmopolitan Hotel or the reproduction of the Venetian canals that are in the Venetian.