On Holiday

Yes, I have been on holiday. "Hols" as they used to call them in the British novels I read when I was a kid. (The Famous Five were always having adventures while on "hols.")

We fled New York's wannabe spring and headed over to the west side for some sun, fun, and family. We spent a week split between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Not two of my favorite cities I must confess, but as it happens that's where some of my favorite people live, and it's the people that make it a great vacation. And those favorite folks made every effort to show us a good time.

We saw old friends we had not seen in years.

We hiked in the mountains (where I captured this shot of a little ladybird).

We ate one massive meal after another, courtesy of our hosts, and still had room to sample the local cuisine at Randy's.

We spent about 3 minutes seeing Hollywood, where I saw Johnny Depp and Marilyn Monroe lookalikes posing with the tourists, and where people kept almost colliding with me because they were so busy filming and photographing stars and hand prints on the ground.

We headed out to Six Flags Magic Mountain for a day of riding the roller coasters. And because it was a Monday, we actually did spend all day riding roller coasters rather than standing in line.


I took endless numbers of pictures and practiced a few techniques (panning, for example).


We read books in sunny gardens (where of course I got sunburned). And we saw the sunset over the Pacific. It was lovely.