North America

Splendid Lake Tahoe Weekend: Boating & Partying – May 2025

Splendid Lake Tahoe weekend: boating & partying; getting there: JSX flight to Reno, like catching a bus; liver punishment briefly postponed; Tahoe Beach Club; oysters and filé gumbo at Oyster Bar, Stateline Nevada; living it up on the lake with Eric and Renée; Steve, the Cold Plunge Hero of Emerald Bay; exactly why Fun Ain’t Easy; Vesper martinis to die for (or from); The Lucky Beaver and The Naked Fish; Lest we Forget add-on: Solo in Durban: my solo trip for Julie’s 60th Birthday; Up Next: Singapore and Bawah Reserve, Indonesia, yay!

Lake Tahoe Weekend

Our friends Ellie and Steve have a fabulous holiday home at Tahoe Beach Club on Lake Tahoe, Nevada. To surprise us while we were spending a week with them in California, they had booked JSX flights from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport – a small airport conveniently close to their Newport beach condo – to Reno, Nevada.

Boarding a JSX semi-private jet flight to Reno

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Newport Beach, California, May 2025

Getting to Newport Beach, Orange County; Malibu still a no-go after 2025 fires; LA still a great big freeway; Roy’s Death Row birthday menu; ferry to Balboa Island; swilling Chablis at Circle Hook, sublime soft serve at Somi Somi, unphotogenic raclette at Basilic; palm tree trivia: feeble fronds and a dearly departed arborist; sublime casual dining at JOEY’s; lunch “on the beach” at Montage Resort, Laguna Beach; purveyors of boots and artichokes at San Juan Capistrano; huge thanks to our amazing hosts – next up, Lake Tahoe!

Steve, Ellie, Roy and a trio of Vesper martinis

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California Road Trip to Santa Barbara – Part Two

Road trip to Santa Barbara; Big Sur closed, and 16 miles of denial; the alternative: Salinas Valley, the salad bowl of the world; the Mexican at San Simeon; not visiting Hearst Castle; San Luis Obispo Bay – say that 10 times, quickly; the very big rock at Morro Bay; declaring a lucky day; my main problem with road trips; San Luis Obispo: two missions (church and café); Los Olivos, but alas no wine; Solvang, a little Denmark; beautiful Santa Barbara; Stearns Wharf and sausages; Derek at Joe’s Café, the world’s most generous – and ethical – barman; life-saving meatloaf and short-rib; Newport Beach, here we come!  

Prologue

This is a huge one! But I have managed to cover the whole of the rest of our Pacific Highway road-trip… so hang in to the end for some gorgeous pics of Roy and Santa Barbara. Here’s a preview:

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Big Sur Road Closure Denial

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California Road Trip, May 2025: Part 1

California road trip to Monterey via Santa Cruz; preview of 3 theme parks; the road less travelled to Santa Cruz; subdued fun at The Boardwalk, Santa Cruz; On the Carousel… or not; and then we have an ice cream; lunch at Carmel-by-the-Sea; whisky and wines of the best; a visceral flinch; Old Fisherman’s Wharf, Monterey; smelly old sea lions; Osteria Al Mare; scenes from Cannery Row and a couple of Steinbeck quotes

For my previous post about how we got to San José to embark on this California road trip (spoiler alert: by train), plus some almost inconceivably lovely photos of Roy, click here.

To Monterey via Santa Cruz

Today’s sightseeing felt like visiting a series of three theme parks, albeit with very different themes. Here’s a quick preview:

#1 The first was an actual amusement park, The Boardwalk at Santa Cruz.

#2 The second was the almost impossibly cute town of Carmel.

#3 And the third was Monterey’s Cannery Row, themed around Steinbeck’s novel of the same name.

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Seattle & Port Townsend, Washington State

By Cantrail coach to Seattle WA; one night good, two nights better; Pike Place Market; not anti-Starbucks per se; Mayflower Park Hotel and vesper martinis at Oliver’s Bar; seafood dinner at The Athenian; Travel Mode and padkos; heading to the Olympian Peninsula; delightfully historic Port Townsend; onwards to Twilight country: Forks and La Push

It’s not just trains and planes, boats bikes and cars that feature on Travels with Verne and Roy. Now it’s coaches, too!

Having kindly hosted us in Vancouver for ten days, cousin Brad and Ingrid dropped us off at Vancouver train station to catch the 11.30am Cantrail coach to Seattle. (Click here, here and here to see what a great time we had with them in Victoria B.C., Gabriola Island and Vancouver City respectively.)

The Cantrail coach leaves from outside Vancouver train station

There’d been various options for travelling from Vancouver, Canada south to the USA, and the coach turned out to have been a great decision. Around $55 each (half-price for those moderately advanced in years, thank you very much!), the four-hour journey was not only comfortable but excellent value, too.

What’s more, compared to the individual cars waiting in line to clear immigration at the US border, our coach – the only one at the time – completed formalities in double-quick time.

We were first off the bus for immigration (or rather, Roy was, me trailing in his febrile wake) and so first through a smooth and friendly immigration clearance from two nice young men.

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A Night in Seattle WA

In retrospect, two nights would have been better, in part because main attractions like Pike Place Market open only at 10am and start winding down mid-afternoon.

Seattle harbour view

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Vancouver, May 2025 – Part 3: Vancouver City

Vancouver False Creek townhouse and marina; snot quotient obstacle; famously fit Vancouverites; downtown and the skytrain; no dogs allowed, but bring on the coyotes; inukshuk welcome; marathon supporters; A-maze-ing Laughter by Yue Minjin; uber-glam quintet in Morton Park; the club of clubs; the Sandbar never disappoints; Whistler day trip; most scenically situated Lululemon in the world; not just family, but new-found friends – thank you, Brad and Ingrid, for your amazing hospitality!

Sandbar, Granville Island, Vancouver City

My cousin Bradley and his lovely wife, Ingrid (scroll down for a great picture of them), have a beautiful townhouse that’s ideally located in Yaletown, right on the False Creek marina where he keeps his boat. They are the same my-cousin-and-his-wife who met us off the HAL Westerdam a few days ago and took us to their home on Gabriola Island. (Click here for that post, Part Two of three on Vancouver.)

Marinaside, Yaletown, Vancouver

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Vancouver, May 2025 – Part 2: Gabriola Island

Where is Gabriola Island?; coffee, hiccups and kindness; Route of the Totems; dream home; Elder Cedar forest where Hobbits tread; Folklife Village, island artists and chi chi shops

Not everyone has heard of Gabriola Island, and I suspect that many of the locals would like to keep it that way. It’s about 14.5km long and 4.5km wide, located in the Strait of Georgia, between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia. We will be spending three nights here with my cousin Brad and his wife, Ingrid, who have their main home on the island … and what a home it is.

Bradley and Roy, Gabriola Island

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South Pacific Cruise, Part 5 – Hawaii: Hilo & Honolulu

Cruise to Hawaii; Aliens, like me: immigration frustration in Hilo; walking it off; Michener’s Hawaii; Hilo Highlights tour; 3 days in Oahu; shopping Honolulu’s Ala Moana; ghastly strawberry guava jam and other sugary low-lights; Round the Island coach tour of O’ahu; upscale local fare at Fete in Honolulu’s Chinatown; walking to Waikiki, wow!; seen around the ship

Our first stop in the Americas! Fun fact: Hawaii is the 50th state – the 49th being Alaska and the 48th Arizona.

Cruise to Hawaii with aliens like me

Clearing immigration into the States was a most annoying exercise, as it turned out that physical visa-holders like me (only a handful of us on board, it seemed) did need an I-94 form, without which the officials declared we couldn’t be processed. (Non-pariahs like Roy, all of whom were on the e-visa system, simply filled in the visa-waiver form.)

Eventually, a clever woman with an even cleverer smartphone was apparently able to call up the entire USA immigration admin system, match my new visa photo to their records – which included a previous 10-year US visa that expired eight or nine years ago – and let me off the ship and into the country.

Cruising to Hawaii
Reeds Bay Beach Park, with a view of the Westerdam

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