California

I met Jim Quillen on a tour of Alcatraz in San Francisco in about 1992. I had gone on one of the self-guided tours where you are given a headset with a narrated talk of the island and can do the tour at your speed.

I took my Uncle Dave with me to America in 2012. This would be his first visit to most of the places we would visit. The tour started with a few nights at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

I went to Mission San Juan Capistrano with my mum and dad as a teenager, and I loved the gardens and the bells on the walls. 

While I was at home watching the movie Karate Kid, I remembered meeting Pat Morita in Los Angeles, California.

In the mid-1980's I stayed in Los Angeles and went to Universal Studios for the day. When I got there, I met Renate Blauel and spent a morning with her on a backlot tour.

We didn't spend much time at San Diego Zoo, and for that, I was grateful. At the time of our visit, the zoo was looking very old and in my opinion, needed closing down.

I added a stopover in San Francisco, California, to my Monuments & Parks tour in 2011 and went there after visiting Las Vegas.