Rosie, Sunday 24th - culture, innit

What would a day of culture in America be without including McDonalds? Exactly, pointless. So this morning we went to the McDonalds musuem, which isn't affiliated with the chain in any way. This is because, as we informed by the very knowledgeable Roy we were at the site of the original McDonalds' brothers resraurant, before they sold the rights to franchise, recipes and name to some bloke who made a ton of cash out of them. When they tried to continue business from that particular premises which we hadn't bought, did his best to ruin them, by opening a McDonalds opposite them. Anyway, the place was amazing, definitely run by enthisiastic amatures, Roy knew everything about the history of the place, they had nearly every happy meal toy ever. They were also heavily involved with an art project to get kids away from gang violence. Aparently San Bernadino apart from being the home of Maccy D's is also home to the inventor of Taco Bell, so that explains all the fast food places there - the inhabitants clearly hate cooking and love anything deep fried..

So, suitably brainwashed we decided to go for a McDonalds, I was excited as this would be my first drive through, admittedly this isn't one of the larger milestones in life, but it was a small excitement nonetheless. We had initial problems because George had stopped slightly late and had gone past the talky box, or whatever it's called. After a bit of manovering we got into a position where we could be heard only to suffer from the inevitable American problem "Have you got a vegy burger meal?" "A what?" "A vegetarian burger" "A quarter pounder?" "No, a VEGY burger" "You want a big burger?" "We'll come inside and order" a dissapointing end to my first drive through, and it turned out that they did not have a vegy burger, so we went for a Burger King instsad, which didn't agree with George very well. And then we went back to the wigwam to watch England lose on penalties to Italy in the Euros. After all that sadness we didn't know what to do with ourseleves so we did some research of things to do in San Bernadino on a Sunday afternoon, we had very limited choices and in the end we went for the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands. Mainly based on the fact that the sole.google review for the place was glowing and ended with 'go get your history on!' thus prompted, we did.

After a short drive to a much nicer town(?) which ended at a sqaure with three sides made up of all those lovely old wooden houses with fretwork porches out the front that Americans do so well. The other side was a huge old brickwork library which was beautiful. We walked around for about twenty minutes, trying to find the memorial and eventually cracked and went into the library (air conditioned, hurrah!) to ask for directions. The library was big, and looked well stocked, with a few historical artifacts in glass cases, it even had a sweet little garden. And a man using a laptop covered in 'faith', 'god is love' and cross shaped stickers, which was entertaining. I wonder if God gets angry with believers who don't decorate their laptops? Anyway, once on track, after getting lost in the library we found the memorial. It was a lovely classical style building made of white stone, with a small metal engraving outside showing the couple who had built it as a memorial to their son, who was also depicted there. It was pretty much a flat engraving apart from the noses which stuck out, making them all look a little bit like parrots.

We went in to find a small octagonal space with a wing off each side, the lady (Susan) greeted us and asked if we were there for a specific reason. We said we were just there for a nose around, she picked up on our accents and we had a nice chat about why we were there. She asked what we knew about Lincoln and the civil war (it's expanded due to the 150 year anniversary to cover different aspects the war too). I said all I knew about the civil war was from Gone With The Wind, she laughed and pointed to various exhibits which covered the English involvement. At which point her husband (curator of the museum) came in and gave us the history of the place. The man who had had it built in dedication of his son was from Derbyshire originally and had been in the mines there but had come over to the States aged 14 or so to work in mines there. He then rose quickly and stopped child labour in their mines and championed imigrant rights with Lincoln. He then made a fortune in oil, the family returned to.England each year for holidays and the son flew in the first world war, where he died and they built the Licoln Shrine in memorial for him. The Shrine had loads of amazing exhibits in a tiny space, including a wreath from his coffin and hairs cut off his head by his doctor just beforw he died.

If you are ever in the area I cannot reccomend it highly enough. We only had about 40 minutes before it closed but could have easily spent a whole afternoon there. Also when we bought a bullet dug up from Gettysburg she threw in an extra small one for free, which was very kind. Apparently they're still digging up loads of them so it isn't a very big deal, but it's fun to have something that's 150 years old. I've just realised though that our suitcases arw going to be full spent bullets. Hopefully they'll let us back in the country..

After the museum we went to a family owned pizza place which did huge great big pizzas all freshly made with home made dough. We had walked there, past 'House of Pain' tattoo parlour so George could drink but someone (me) forgot our passports and they are really careful about id here so we weren't even allowed weak American beer.. Boo!

Back at the wigwam I watched a new episode of True Blood live on TV instead of wating for it which was an unexpected treat. Then we watched Pulp Fiction with a rum and gin respectively until George fell asleep, not before swearing that before we left America he would have a Denver omlette.

Rosie, Saturday 23rd - ped xing, wigwams and ballgames

The drive to San Bernadino was beautiful if fairly uneventful, we had a couple entertaining toilet breaks, excuse me, restroom stops. The first at a campground lake, where the first lot of toilets were locked so we had to drive around to the other side of the lake. These were clean but basically a seat over a really deep hole in the ground. The second visit was at a tiny petrol station in the middle of nowhere where the owner was sitting chatting to his friends outsirde and swatting bees, before reccomending I use the end portaloo as he had just opened it and it would be "fairly clean" he complained about the bees. "I don't know what's going on but we've got all these honey bees at the moment and they don't go away if you swat them, they come back and sting you". We made sympathetic noises, managing to avoid the obvious comeback of "don't swat at them then"...

At some point in the drive George shouted that he finally got it, when I asked what he got he replied to my busement "Ped X-ing!" it turned out there had been all these signs with a walking man on with 'ped xing' written underneath. The clever ones of you out there would realise that this sign proceded a zebra crossing and it meant pedestrian crossing.. In our defence it hadn't come up often and it had taken a while to get used to being on the wrong side of the road.

On that note, George's driving has been very impressive with only one moment where he tried to drive on the wrong, wrong side of the road and that was deep in the desert with no one else around so it barely counted. And the only hairy moments were on the Yosemite drive when a few times (don't tell George) I nearly cried I was so scared of the drops. But you know, in a cool, brave kind of way.

The drive again was spectacular, lovely roads, big hills and mountains with funny ruins of houses abandonned presumably because they were out in the arse-end of nowehere and only a loony would live there.

We pulled into San Bernadino, expecting a nice little town, and finding a sprawling area of equal portions fast food chains, discount shoe shops and slightly shabby housing. We got to the Wigwam Motel at about 4:30 ish and it was all we had dreamed of and more. Set ever so slightly off Route 66, it was a plot with 20 concrete wigwams built onto it. We were told by the nice man on the desk that as we were staying two nights we had been upgraded to the deluxewam as I've just decided to call it. This meant that on top of the air con, wifi, flatscreen tv, bed, shower, fridge etc we had a sofa! He also asked in a genuinely confused way why were staying for two nights ans what we were planning to do whilst we were here. Luckily George had done some research, because I hadn't got past staying in a concrete wigwam and said some stuff we might do and the man looked reasurred that we weren't complete mentals. We asked if he could reccomend anywhere to eat, aftwr swearing at my choice of eating habits he reccomended a Mexican place which was delicious and had super hot, fresh, home made salsa. I was pretty set to move in but George had his heart set on going to watch the baseball and so as a dutiful wife I had to do as he said.

We were going to watch the San Bernadino 66ers play someone else whose name I forgot instantly. It took a few detours through nearly empty streets due to gps stupidity (bad reading by us in reality) to get there but once at the San Manuel (pronounced like manual not manwell) stadium it was clear, this was the thing to do on a Saturday night in San Bernadino. As we were on honeymoon we thought we'd splash out and get the best seat we could. Executive box it was at the ridiculous price of $10 each. We had a brilliant view and were behind some of the club owners and execs which was funny. Baseball is a game I now understand the rules of, if not the desire to watch. It was a great evening and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the family and community atmosphere but baseball is essentially rounders where the players are grownups and score less often. And our match lasted three and a half hours, at which point it was bedtime.

Rosie, Friday 22nd - Scenary, sunburn and sandwiches

We woke up slightly later than intended, and walked to a motel a bit further up the road which we'd spotted the previous evening that advertised fresh ground coffee and home baked goods. And boy did it! We had fabulous coffee and delicious cherry and coconut cake sitting in a lovely green garden with lots of plants and bird feeders. There were lovely little sparrow type birds, something which might have been a cardinal and some finches. There we also yellow and black butterflies which were as big as my hand span which were gorgeous and George was very brave and got close to the biggest, fattest bees I have ever seen. They were at least an inch and a half long and an inch fat. You would not like to get stung by one of these, you would defintely lose an arm..

After a very leisurely breakfast we packed up the car and started the two and a half hour drive into Yosemite valley. This started with a beautiful, winding ascent into the mountains, quick stop about half an hour in to take pictures by a teeny hydro-electric dam and on through a toll booth where I soon remembered a small flaw in our plan to visit Yosemite. Yep, that's right, I am terrified of heights and we were driving on roads with alternating sheer drops down rocky mountains, and huge rocky outcrops from taller mountains on the right hand side. In England, I would have been a bit freaked out, but ok. In America where the passanger side is on the right I was fighting not to ask George to turn the car round so I could go foetal in the motel and never go near mountain again. Another point worth mentioning is that aparently they down believe in crash barriers here. Occasionally, for the bigger drops there were tiny little calf high walls as a sop to us big girl's blouses out there. They did not help.

We stopped about halfway there for a photo opp by a waterfall and realised as we stopped that actually when you weren't moving it was quite warm and maybe we should put some sunblock on... Or rather we should have put some sunblock on about an hour before.. George's arms had gone past pink and were well into lobster, as were my shoulders, chest and nose. We put the roof up, and suncream on and drove further into the valley with the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou playing to cheer us up. We didn't see any bears sadly. I thought I saw one twice, only to realise they were trew stumps both times.. I did see a deer with impressive horns, but it was cold comfort frankly.

We had another pause quite close to the bottom to take photos of a really high up waterfall and have a paddle in a little stream which presumably was an offshoot of the very far away waterfall. Certainly it was so cold I was worried my feet might fall off. There were also some giant ants, about the same length as my thumbnail. I don't know what they feed the insects here but all I can say is I'm glad we didn't see any spiders..

Yosemite was incredible - pretty much everything was about twenty times bigger than expected, mountains, trees, waterfalls, random giant rocks and some of the fattest squirrels you have ever seen. It was spectacular and stupendous and awe inspiring and the deli there does a banging sandwich. All in all, well worth a visit. Sadly we didn't make it to the seqoia tree bit, as it would have been another 4 hours worth of driving, but they had kindly transplated one in the 1930s so we got the idea. Donkey was very impressed.

We drove back, used a lot of aloe to try and minimise the appaling sunburn we were ineventable about to suffer with. After a lot of water and half a tube of aloe we set out on foot to the (aparently) famous Whoa! Nellie's Diner. They aren't fond of a pavement in America but we managed to find a fairly safe path along the road. George had chicken jumbolia and loved it, I had (only option, but delish) grilled vegetable pizza. More importantly they had mango margharitas, which were strong, cheap and maybe the best drink I've ever had.

We wove our way back to the motel to sleep off the booze in readiness for our drive to San Bernadino and the Wigwam Motel..

Rosie, Thursday 21st

Thursday we said goodbye to everyone, Hannah and dibs to fly back to England for Emily's birthday, Jon and Gina to San Fransisco, Emma and Bimal to LA and then the San Fran where we'll meet them for Emma's birthday. Justin left on Wednesday. On one hand it's always good to say goodbye to someone who gives you a wet, freezing cold swimming pool hug when you've been sunbathing for ages, on the other hand he made a very good witness and when there's no Cornish pasties about he makes an excellent holiday companion.

So we packed the car and set off for a 350 mile drive to Mono Lake. Bar some slighy dodgy satnav reading and looping around Vegas' highways until we realised that the little arrows in the top right hand corner indicated which lane we should be in the drive was very smooth and easy. Most of the way there was on one road, with stunning scenery. There were some bits through the desert where we didn't see another car for nearly an hour which was amazing and a little weird. Particular highlights of the drive were the warning signs for cows on the road which had been shot at, ditto for the welcome to California sign and, before we entered California and were still in the desert the car being hit by actual, genuine tumbleweed!

After all that giddy excitement it took about 6 and a half to 7 hours to reach the motel in Lee Vining, by Mono Lake. The motel was exactly how you'd imagine it to look, two stories with an open walkway along the front to reach your front door. Inside our room was a good size and clean, donkey seemed at home here although perhaps a little sad to have left the splender of our suite in the Bellagio.* So after unpacking a bit and having a shower we went out for dinner.

Lee Vining, although beautiful is not a large town and there were two options for tea, one had the only vegy option as a burger and we'd had Burger King for lunch so we thought to try the other one. Which had great sounding vegy meals but was, of course, closed already, it being 8:30pm. Back to Bodie Mike's BBQ place where, on being asked what vegy food she reccomended the waitress offered chicken or fish and chips. I know some countries aren't great for us awkward types, but I'd expected America to be better. Clearly I was wrong.. Having said that George enjoyed his fish sandwich and we shared a (not very healthy) delicious trio of sides. For dinner I had chips, battered jalepeno slices and beer battered zuccini (courgette) rings. They were very, very tasty and very fresh and, being green helped towards my five a day.

Stuffed full and knackered after all thr excitement of the past few days we staggered back to the motel and bed. Ready for Yosemite the following day.

*For those who don't know we were given a donkey bank of dollars as a wedding/Christmas present from Milly and we felt that he would be lonely to be left by himself in London so he's come with us for adventures. We'll have photos of him at some of our outings.

Rosie, Wednesday 20th - Venice, much like Portsmouth

Wednesday morning we had a long chat with mum and dad, mumjo and Milly. It was a real treat to see our new inlaws together. After all these years of living in sin I think they were all relived we had finally made things legal - I know none of them had approved.

Before that we had had a buffet breakfast the likes.of which none of us had ever seen before. We all had several visits, Justin enjoyed having roast potatoes and two.tupes of bacon for his first course, but dibs won with his breakfast of noodles and pizza. Gina and I found a serve yourself mr whippy style icecream station, and Emma almost definitely didn't fill her bag up with pastries..

After chatting we were supposed to go outlet mall shopping, but were running late for a very important date.. We got a taxi (I know, how dull right?) to the car hire centre by the airport to.collect our convertablr 2013 MUSTANG!! The man at the desk said we could choose which colour we had, which was exciting, especially because we'd really had our hearts set on a bright red one. Sadly we got to the car pick up place and they had two to choose from, both grey. The man saw my dissapointed face and radioed downstairs to see if they had a red one. They did and it is beautiful! George did some very good driving back to the hotel. We were all set for Thursday and to start our honeymoon tour of California.

Our last night was spent having dinner the Venetian, which reminded me a lot of Portsmouth, much like the real Venice does. The Venetian was mental, they must have spenta fortune building it - all the canals going round thw outside and through the inside of the hotel. There were gondolas with gondoleers singing as they took tourists round. There were also people putside who you could get your photo taken with dressed in traditional costumes, only with fairy lights added and there were a couple riding around on segways made to look Venetian with speakers on the backs.

I'm pretty sure this last bit is some kind of metaphor for Vegas as a whole, but I can't come up with any pithy witticism so you'll have to add your own.

Rosie, Tuesday 19th - Going to the Chapel

After an excellent night's sleep I woke up early and very excited. We had a date with Gina to go swimming at 9, but it turned out we were all up and awake so we went down at 8. Being able to swim first thing a luxury that is very easy to get used to, especially when it's 27 degrees at 8 in the morning. Hannah met us down there and we all had a splash about and a sunbathe. It was a marvellous start to the day, very relaxed. George and I had planned to do the traditional thing and spend the night apart, but we decided against it in the end. Partly because George didn't want to miss out on a night in our suite, and I was claiming bride privilages which meant I needed more space to get ready.

We both said how relaxed and not nervous we were that morning, and congratulated ourselves on chosing such a stress fres way to get married. After a couple of hours by the pool we split up, George and I for breakfast, arranging to meet everyone in our room for 12. George went to go get his shoes cleaned and his suit pressed so I went back to the suite to encounter possibly the most enjoyable first world problem I've ever had. Namely that I needed to wash after all the swimming, so I would be clean for my hair and make up lady Krystle who was coming to make Gina, Hannah and I less ugly for the wedding. But the room service lady was cleaning both of our bathrooms, so I had to wait.. I think the refrain for this wedding/holiday must be 'it's a tough life

So at 12 everyone arrived in our room, the boys and Emma splitting off to go to Jon's room to get ready/watch the England match which helpfully started at around 12noon Vegas time. Jon was spending most of the afternoon with the boys but coming to see me at half 3 ish to suit up and prepare for his Daddy Vegas role.

Krystle turned up promptly and did Hannah and Gina's make-up first. We were having 'airbrush' make up which is a cool new type of make-up which looks more natural and sticks for about 12 hours. I had previously had a littlw fantasy that to apply it she would have stencils and spray it like that, but sadly that wasn't true. It is amazing stuff though, we looked fantastic and didn't have that heavy, sticky feeling you can get. Anyway, I had some fairly impressive spots pre wedding and had been stressing a bit about them, but had said to Jess that Krystle should hopefully sort out all the stuff on my face. She replied asking if Krystle was a wizard to be able to do that.. Turns out she must have been, she even got rid of the mole scar on my back.

Hannah and Gina looked amazeballs all dolled up. I was a little worried just after Krystle had curled Hannah's hair because it was HUGE and she looked a little bit crazy, but then she did some kind of wizardry with hair pins and it turned into some kind of glam Mad Men-esque side sweep thing.

Just as Krystle left Jon turned up, and we realised that suddenly it was very close to wedding time. He reported that George was getting steadily more nervous and had begun pacing. I still felt very calm and relaxed. Jon went for a shower as I was assisted by H and G-Rah into my underwear and dress, so I didn't mess up my face, hair or veil. I then had a quick facetime with Jess who had stayed up way past bed time to chat. Suddenly I was really freaking nervous. This could have been due to lack of oxygen, or the fact that if I breathed in too hard my ribbon/sash popped open. Something I hadn't checked. Luckily there was a needle and thread and the girls managed to fix it, only to find out there were no scissors. I think Gina took the picture of Jon biting the thread off, which should be well worth a look when it surfaces..

H and Gina went off to put their stuff back in their rooms and Jon and I were on our own for half an hour. At this point I pretty much fell apart, which I'm sure was hilarious for Jon, but alarming for me.

Looking back I'm not sure why the nerves kicked in, it isn't like George is unknown to me. Of course maybe that was why..

We got the lift downstairs and had to walk through the casino to get to the terrace, we recieved a lot of congratulations and I got lots of compliments on my dress which was lovely. Once we reached the terrace there was a member of staff stopping people going past - it was here I discovered that American's really don't get sarcasm as the following conversation proves:

"Are you here for the wedding?"
(me) "No I just wore this dress for fun"
"Oh, then I'm sorry but you can't go past this is a private wedding"

I had to wait for about 15minutes before I could go through the doors. Luckily Jon had been paying attention at the rehearsal because I couldn't remember a thing we had to do. I don't really remember much of the wedding, apart from the officiant was mega confused about our gender switching best people and he said a poem, which we laughed at him all the way through. It was a lovely ceremony and we're both lookong forward to seeing the video to remind us of what happened. Having the fountains play just for us was so special, and the photographer and videographer were both very friendly and didn't mind us having fun with the group photos. They took dibs pretending to be the bride with my bouquet in their stride..

I feel very happy as Mrs Austin-Webster, we're joining names as soon as we've worked out how to do it..

We had some 'premium sparkling wine' part of the wedding package back at the room, then limo to Panevino - a restaurant I'd found through a Vegas vegan and vegy website. There we found out that Gina really loves a limo..

The restaurant was fantastic, they do a mean cocktail and really looked after us, our table had an amazing view of the sun setting over Vegas. They also made a surprise pudding plate for George and I, painted with fruit juices to have hearts, doves, flowers and a union jack on it.

Jon had a message from mum and dad which was wonderful to hear, and a total surprise as we'd spoken pre wedding and I wasn't expecting anything else from them.

All in all we had a fabulous wedding day and I'm hoping that the entrance music (thank you to Paul for organising that for me last mintue) from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers will prove to be prophetic.

Thank you to everyone who sent us messages, we miss you and can't wait for the Wivenhoe party to celebrate with you all. Xx

Rosie, Monday 18th - rehearsals, strong winds and freemont street

Monday morning saw us meeting with Lori, our wedding contact at the Bellagio and Cecelia who was taking over procedings for the actual day. The Terrace of Dreams was beautiful, if perhaps a little hilariously named. it sounds less cheesy in Italian, but I couldn't pronounce it correctly, let alone spell it.

Jon and Emma came along too, to see where they would be going and what they would be doing. Both the ladies from the Bellagio were very helpful and enthuaiastic about our wedding, which was lovely. The meeting didn't take long and was mainly stage directions with a small bit of paperwork. It was fantastic to see where we were actually getting married, we'd purposely avoided looking for it so it would be a surprise. It was positioned so you could see the Eiffel Tower across the road as well as the fountains, which I hadn't realised. Anyway, fully rehearsed we had 3 hours to kill until we were being collected to go on a hellicopter to the Grand Canyon so... Pool?

Lying in the sun it was very windy, I lost my hat and they had to switch the fountains off because everyone by the pool was getting soaked. Emma and I had a brief conversation saying we hoped that the wind wasn't going to affect our helicopter ride...

Of course it did, we found out after an hour long drive and a switch from a small mini bus to a full sized coach, and queuing for twenty minutes in a long line..

After the long bus ride back and the discovery that Gina *really* loves castles we decided to go out for dinner and see the light show on Freemont Street, something we had been told time and again that we could not miss.

Dinner was to be very special for my soon to be husband and one of his oldest friends, Justin. We were going somewhere that they had been dreaming of, and preparing for, for a long time. This place was most definitely not vegetarian friendly as even their fries had extra lard added. We were going to the Heart Attack Grill for the boys to attempt their famous Quadruple Bypass Burger. At 8,000 calories and a full two pounds of meat this is a true man challenge. If successful they would be wheeled out by nurses in a wheelchair. George finished his in around 18 minutes but sadly Justin only just didn't finish his. It was a very close thing though and impressive/gross to watch.

We got a limo to Freemont Street, which was great fun, and we all agreed that limos are the best way to travel. We went there via New York New York where most people went on the roller-coaster which goes around and through the hotel and casino. I'm a bit lame with that kind of thing and didn't do it so George will have to describe how great it was. I can report that they do a cracking cocktail in the casino though!

Freemont street itself was mad, mostly covered over with light or screens going down a large part of it. Therd where zip wires which you could go down the street on, casinos, bars, stalls, performers, bands and just people, everywhere. The light shows were stupendous, videos of Queen, set to their music with photos and graphics set inbetween the photos. It was almost unforgetable. I say almost because someone (mentioning no names *cough*Hannah*cough*) might have had a daquiri too many and forgot all the good stuff.

Taxi back to the hotels, where we arranged to meet Gina and Jon for a pre wedding swim..