Venice Beach, Orange County - Newport Harbour, Capistrano, Laguna Beach

We booked ourselves into a hostel for a couple nights in Venice Beach. As money is getting a little bit tight now we had paid for the cheapest room, expecting an eight-bed dorm with no en-suite bathroom.

However, to our delight, the manager of the hostel was a huge Manchester United fan and when she heard we were northerners living not too far from Manchester she upgraded us to a four-bed dorm with an en-suite.

Los Angeles is 19 hours behind New Zealand, so as you can imagine, we were pretty jetlagged. As it was only the middle of the afternoon when we arrived we forced ourselves to stay awake and had a wander along Venice Beach. It is a gorgeous place, with lovely restaurants, bars and cafes, but it is also home to a lot of strange, obscure people!

We went for dinner at a nice restaurant overlooking the ocean where I had the most amazing philly cheese steak baguette..... I look forward to seeing if the ones in Philadelphia are actually as good!

I think I dropped asleep at around 9pm that evening and slept for 13 hours!

The next day we walked into Santa Monica and had a shopping day. Santa Monica is such a gorgeous place, with great shops, restaurants and cafes, and as a result, I spent way too much money, especially when we stumbled across Abercrombie and Fitch!

That shop is one thing England seriously lacks!

We just spent a couple of nights staying in Venice Beach before a friend of ours, Jay, picked us up and took us to his place in Newport Harbour, Orange County. We met Jay while we were tubing in Laos.

He grew up in San Diego but now lives in this lovely apartment overlooking the beach in Newport. The day we arrived it was his room mate, Bryan's, birthday so there was a big house party at the apartment, which was really good fun and great meeting all their friends.

The next day, Jay had to go to San Diego to work and Bryan was going away for the weekend so Sarah and I had the place to ourselves.

We went to Jay's local bar just for a drink but ended up staying there most of the night as we bumped into some guys who wouldn't let us buy any drinks..... Of course, we said thankyou, and kindly obliged!

American men are so generous when it comes to things like that - I feel English men could definitely do with taking a leaf out of the American's book!

The following day we were heading to nearby Capistrano Beach as Sarah's parents had booked us one of their timeshare hotels...our first bit of luxury for over 5 months!

We were very excited, and when we arrived we were not at all disappointed. The hotel was a 5* resort, and our apartment room was fabulous. We had a lounge, bug bedroom, huge bathroom with jacuzzi bath (which i took full advantage of), kitchen, balcony with a BBQ, and a dining area. It felt like heaven after all the hostels we had been in throughout Australia and New Zealand.

We were there for a week and basically just spent that time saving money and relaxing. We went into Laguna one day which was really good. It is a very wealthy place, the houses there are phenomenal. I will definitely move there if I ever win the lottery! We didn't have a car at this point so it was very difficult getting around.

Everything is so spread out you either have to walk for two hours to get anywhere, or use the bus service, which isn't really too good!
We had a great week there though, and had I not been getting a flight to Las Vegas,

I think I would've chained myself to the bed and refused to leave that gorgeous hotel!