We made it to St Louis! (hey, did you know it was named afer the French King?)

We arrived on Saturday 13th, after a short stopover at Chicago. It was already freakin' cold: -8 degrees!

As soon as we arrived in St Louis, we said a quick "Hello!" to Tiffany, Carlos and the kids Meli and Catalina.

An hour later and "Titi Yumi" and I were at the Scottrade Center to watch the blues against the Capitals. It was a great game and the spectators were really living it up, our neighbour screaming every single time the Blues had the puck.

On Sunday we went to downtown St Louis; it was cold. Really cold: -13 degrees! Brrrr.
The Gateway Arch on the Shore of the Missouri River is impressive. We couldn't get to the top as it was fully booked -how? we don't know as there were only a handful of people around!- and the visibility was really bad too.

On Monday we tried the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, 5 miles down the road, only to find it closed. It was Presidents' day...

Today we made our way to the "Magic House" with Tiff and the girls. It was good fun seeing Yumi playing with electrostatic generator and the giant pin screen. We got some cool impressions with it.

 

 

As soon as we get home, the TV is normally switched on and we follow the Olympic Games. Niiiice. :)  Thomas is obsessed with hockey.

St Louis!

On Saturday 13th of Feb we'll be going to St Louis, MO. to visit Yumi's best friend Tiff and her family.
We'll keep you updated on this, it should be another fun trip!

Byyyyye

Mount Lowe Experience

Tomorrow we'll be back in the plane, so today we thought about going to the mountains on the North side of LA. I don't know how, or where from but we heard good things about Mount Lowe. So we went there.

It was really nice. After a couple of hours we arrived at the The Mount Lowe Railway Station. It was the third in a series of scenic mountain railroads in America created as a tourist attraction on Echo Mountain. It burned down at the beginning of the 1900s and was never rebuilt.

We got some good pictures and headed back to a fast food for a deserved drink before we came back home

Little Tokyo

Today we went to play a but more of basketball and this time Shin was with us. We left home to check out the posters available at the video rental shop where Shin works and Yumi picked up an "Up" and a "Wolverine" poster (the latter being for Anita...so she says). Thomas chose the Transformer 2 one. Another one for the bedroom :)

We then walked to Yumi's primary school and found out they put new fences so we couldn't play basketball. We decided to check out her Junior high but same thing, so we went back home...and drove back to Yumi's high school to finally get the chance to play again.

After that we met Yumi's cousins at Little Tokyo for some Japanese food and also played arcade game. It was a lot of fun!

Griffith Park Observatory

As soon as we could out of the Hollywood Jungle, we went to the Obervatory, which sits on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in L.A.'s Griffith Park, it commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, including downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest.

We witnessed our first sunset of 2010 and the view was splendid.

Hollywood!

Hollywood. AAAAAagghhh! It's nice, no really. For 10 minutes. It's full of tourists, it reminds me of London, you can't walk 5 minutes before 5 people ask you if you want to go on a bus tour and see the celebrities' houses.

Teeeeeeemptiiiiiiiiing. We resisted.

After a nice quick walk on the Walk of fame where we spotted the stars of TV stars such as Erik Estrada and Bugs Bunny. We also found Jacky Chan's, Arnie's and Marylin Monroe's :)

It was ok to do a touristy thing for once, but I guess it's not really our "cuppa tea"...

Day 5: NYE!

To finish the year on a good note, Shin, Yumi and Thomas decided to revisit Yumi's youth and go to her High School and played a bit of basketball.

We came back at about 5pm to get ready and go to Yumi's uncle place in Diamond Bar, about 12 miles North East of La Habra.

The funny thing is that, at 6pm, Thomas saw the news showing the celebrations in Western Europe and he thought they were showing last year's celebrations! Not used to spending NY in the Pacific Time Zone...

We ate a lot of good Japanese food and played dominos. :)

Needless to say we couldn't fit anything more in our stomachs!