Tournament of the kings

Believe it or not, there is actually a full size horse show arena in the bowls of our hotel.

You can't really explain how big these vegas casinos are until you actually see one. Just to give you an idea our hotel, which is by no means the biggest on the strip, contains two hotels (each with 31 floors) a huge casino, a wedding chapel, the horse show arena, two large theatres, two massive swimming pools. four restaurants, a shopping mall, a food court, four bars, a spa, a hair salon, a lounge bar, private gambling rooms, conference rooms, tram station and loads of other stuff. Ceasars Palace, another casino, dwarfs ours and is totally huge - we've ended up getting lost a few times.

Anyway, back to the story. We went to this arena under our hotel to see the medievil show - the tournament of kings. You may remember it from such movies as The Cable Guy starring Jim Carrey.

It's basically a bunch of americans dressed up as kings, fighting each other on horses - INDOORS people. They really throw themselves into this as well and the production values, the acting and the mostly american crowd take it very seriously.

You get a meal, which you have to each with your hands, as they didn't have cutlery in the old times, as the commentator helpfully told us. yes that's right, they even had a sports style commentator (or announcer as they say here) to keep us abreast of all the action.

I have a video of the show just to show you how much of a life changing event this is....the reaction of some of the american families in the audience has to be seen to be believed. It had it all...tears, anger, and whoops (lots of wooooos) of joy.

Elvis(es) live

ross and pinar's money has left the building (thanks to her gambling addiction)

Egypt

Here we are outside Luxor, the Egyption themed casino and hotel.

This one is really impressive and we watched the coasters play in here.

Again though, i'm led to believe the real pyrimids are a bit bigger, and not made of moulded plastic.

Excalibur

We're staying at the hilarious Excalibr hotel and casino resort in vegas.

As you can probably guess from the name, it's themed around king Arthur and the knights of the round table.

They really do go all the way, right down to the staff being dressed like minstrils, jesters etc and using those horrible ham accents that all americans seem to think we use b ack home in the "yooookaay".

Here you can also see Pinar playing on her stupid machines...

I know I said the yanks really go all the way to the fill the theme but i wonder if they realize we have real castles in England...and that they aren't made of plastic with pink and blue spires.

Vegas

The lack of updates is mainly due to sheer laziness. Most of the day is spent by the pool and then we've been up till 3 or 4 am each night.

Surfice to say Pinar has gambled us into the poor house!

More pics soon

California's favorite

I remember from the last time I was in LA in about 2002, that Newcastle Brown Ale was really popular, with most bars and hotels selling it on draught.

It must have got even bigger as we saw loads of these delivery trucks driving round LA and west Hollywood.

I can't think of anything less likely to be successful in America, but there you go...It was pretty strange walk out of the hotel into the morning sunshine and bumb straight into this!

hands and feet

Walk of fame

The walk of fame on Hollywood bvd is pretty good fun, but it runs for miles as the steet itself is huge. However, after you've gone past the main bit with starts for Elvis, the Beatles and all the big movie stars you can't help but think they're struggling a bit.

About 80% of the stars at the top end of the street I've never even heard of and stars for the likes of Jack Klugman (TV's Dr Quincy) and Henry Winkler (AKA the fonze) seem a bit of a stretch!

Hollywood

The sign (much smaller than it looks in all those movies) and a famous diner off hollywood bvd where we went for some coffee.

celebrity love island

Pinar on the set of some lame-ass TV show I've never heard of.

strange day(s)

Because of the date line that runs across the pacific we have had May 25 2006 twice.

We actually landed before we took off!

It's a 10 hour flight from Fiji to LA, but because of the time difference we set off at 11.20 pm and landed at 3pm on the same day.

We're staying in Hollywood, but have dredful jet lag after our groundhog day.

leaving the little island

Bye bye Fiji

We're leaving Fiji tonight and we are not happy about it, off to LA in a bit, we've had a great time here.. and I think we'll want to come back here again.. the people are friendly the weather is lovely and the islands are beautiful... and the food is nice too..

Anyway going to go now... we'll try and put some photo's on in LA if we can.

Last day in Fiji

We went over to another Island today (well an atol to be exact), although this one was much smaller.

Unlike bounty where we went the other day, this one (south sea island) was only about the size of half a football pitch.

Standing in the middle (with a bottle of Fiji Gold beer) you could easily see the sea on all sides. It was a bit worrying at first as you think that any big wave will swamp the whole place. All they have there is a hut that serves as a bar and a dive school - that's actually a bit grand as it's just all the gear scattered around on the sand.

Pinar seems to have conquered her feer of boats as for this one you can only get the main boat in so far, before jumping on a small (very small) landing craft to get ashore. This island was too small to even have pier so the boat lands on the sand. A bit like saving private ryan but hot and instead of bullets you just have to dodge the people with weaker constitutions!

We relcutantly fly to LA tomorrow night so we'll have to say goodbye to the south sea paradise after getting VERY comfortable here.

The climate is perfect but the only thing is the insect and sea life are pretty aggresive. Any bug or fish that can bite, scrape, nip, bump, tear or sting will have a good crack. The mozzies took a real toll on poor pinar, but left me well alone! Conversely, when we were underwater anything that could bite had a good go at me and left her alone, which I think is far more scary. She is covered in mozzy bites and i've got scrapes, cuts and fish bites all over, the most unerving of which was made by some weird fish that swam right up to my inner thight, but thankfully no further!

Pinar's posts

For some reason everything comes up as posted by Ross - The last three were by Pinar.

Jackson Browne

I forgot to say Bruce, that on our Boat back from the island, they were playing Jackson Browne, I was bobbing around to that I must say.... or maybe that was just the waves.

Ross says he must be big in Fiji, and maybe you should catch his next concert here, it would be much warmer than the arena and probably cheaper!

Happy Birthday Jen

Glad to see we were on you living room wall, and hope you had a great birthday :)xx lot s of kisses from ross and I.

Castaway

We've had a great day today, we've been out to the islands, we went to bounty island (and yes it is like the advert).

Were they filmed celebrity love island, the island is absolutely lovely, the white sand clear sea, and the snolking was fantasitic. We saw some great fish and coral.

We walked around the island to the love island part, but it was a bit of a wreak, but the beach in that area was brillient. Ross went kyaking while I sun bathed (again)... :) Ross got bit by some coral and rushed out in case the sharks could smell the blood, Ive never seen him swim so fast haha

We got on boats again.. and for the first time I was fine (but I was taking tablets) buts as long as im not ill i'll take anything.

Hope everyone at home is fine.. but i'd be lying if I said I was ready to come back

The Island(s)

Not much to add at the moment, as we've been a bit lazy the last couple of days. This part was always intended to be the R&R part of the trip so instead of running around seeing loads of sites we've just been lying round the pool and beach.

Fiji is exactly as you'd expect it - hot, tropical and a very nice place to sit around drinking beer and eating seafood. Fiji is actually a chain of more than 300 islands and atols and were staying at nadi.

The climate here (along with Oz) is probably the best we've had because it's hot (but not so hot that it cooks you) and it doesn't have the humidity of places we went in South east Asia. It's normally a consitent 30 odd degrees.

We're off on a boat trip tomorrow so Pinar is squrilling away here various pills in preparation.

We thought by this stage we might be getting sick of all the travel and sleeping in different beds but it's actually turning out the opposite. We've been nervously looking at the schedule and slowly dreading the flight back to England.

Still, it's not over yet...to the bar.

eggs

Around where we were staying near the volcano all you could smell was egg.


There was smoke and hot pools everywhere, but then agian I didn't mind when we used them for a mud bath and spa!