California
Here’s the thing; the best ride to be had in California is not in any of the studio theme parks. It doesn’t have an 84 foot vertical drop, it’s not a rollercoaster, there are no special effects, no sound track, no stunt men, no crowds, no queues and what’s more it’s a lot, lot cheaper than a day at Disney or Universal. The best ride in California is the Amtrak Pacific Starlight coastal railway trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. This beautiful old-fashioned railway line is a revelation and the eleven hour journey is a joy from the moment you enter the astonishing Art Deco building which is Los Angeles Union station. Wooden Vaulted ceilings, leather upholstered chairs, and staff wearing proper railway uniforms which make them look like Tom Hanks in ‘Polar Express’ – although of course, there is nothing polar about the weather out here. Once aboard the two storey train, with its waiter service dining-cars, glass-roofed observation carriages, games room carriages and abundant clean toilets, there are more uniformed staff – mostly over the age of sixty and actually happy in their work – who keep the generally jolly atmosphere going with remarks such as; ‘lucky I have my trusty hole-puncher with me’ and ‘I like the railways so much that when I retired I applied for this job.’ As if this – and the fact that the entire journey is costing you about as much as a single from Waterloo to High Wycombe – weren’t enough to cheer you up, there are park rangers aboard to give talks on the wild-life and scenery as it goes by; deer, buzzards, raccoons, horses, ranches, vineyards, olive groves and dolphins frolicking on the ever present Pacific Ocean to your left.
I thought I was going to hate LA, and worse, I thought my ten year old son was going to hate it too, after I told him that we wouldn’t be going on any of the usual theme park rides, nor eating the expected American burger, fries and coke-type meals. The idea was to see what else California has to offer and I’m pleased to say the answer was; tons. Both for the rather grumpy English adult and his action seeking son.
If you have a taste for the bizarre, then LA is the place for you. At the designer Andaz hotel, on Sunset Boulevarde, the staff wear no uniforms at all and don’t even have a front reception desk, but wander around the lobby holding their mini laptops and saying ‘Hi’ to everyone. In the room, the hotel information is not in a leather folder but a 1960s record sleeve. Printed in yellow plastic on the window, which overlooks the whole of the luscious but smog laden city, are aphorisms such as ‘You’re alive, do something’ and ‘it’s your life, live it’ as if this were avoidable. That the English and the Americans are two nations divided by a common language was never truer than here in California; the bill is the cheque, the cheque is the bill, momentarily means in a moment, and shops have weird names such as ‘The Territory Ahead’, ‘Lettuce B. Frank’ and ‘The Stinking Rose’.
As for the food; my suspicion that all American food would be junk food was proved wrong again and again. We ate in everything from roadside diners, where amazing salads and seafood were plentiful, to the million-star Campton Place Taj Hotel in San Francisco, where we had a zillion course meal that Heston Blumenthal would have salivated over. Our diet was rich and varied; in the Ynes mountains above Santa Barbara was an old western Mail station, now restaurant and bar called ‘Cold Springs,’ where Elk was on the menu, in Santa Monica, LA, we tasted the best Sushi known to man and boy.
But to get back to the rides; San Francisco is of course famous for its trams, cable cars and trolley buses. But there are also cycle rickshaws, mini go-karts, normal buses and then boat tours to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Alcatraz prison. The Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in mist on the day of our visit, but Alcatraz was well worth the half hour boat trip with a brilliant audio tour around the island’s jail narrated by ex convicts and guards. Favourite ride for ten year old was the hop-on hop-off cable car with all its 1920s wooden fittings still in tact and big iron levers and nobs, with an old fashioned bell cord for stopping. This cable car strains to the top of the steepest of San Francisco’s seven hills and then careers down the other side with people hanging off the sides. Luckily the health and safety people haven’t spoilt this one yet.
Our next journey was to take a hire car down the spectacular coast road of Big Sur, which winds its way precariously along the completely unspoilt Pacific Coastline. More fun for the passengers than the driver this one, I think, as to take ones eyes off the road for a second would have been highly dangerous. We stopped one day in Monterey to look round the famous Aquarium there. It’s a darkly atmospheric town, with the feeling of an Alfred Hitchcock movie about it. The shallow water stretches out to the horizon and the acres of kelp on its surface give the sea a sultry brownish hue. We stayed at the Martine Inn on the Monterey waterfront, a family bed and breakfast crammed with genuine antiques and a back yard filled, strangely enough, with classic MG cars. If it had been the right time of year this would have been the place to see the migrating whales, but as it was we had to make do with Seals, Sea Lions, Sea Otters, and countless Pelicans.
Then on down the coast, via Santa Barbara, back to the spindly palm trees of LA, this time staying in Long Beach to the south of the town. Plenty more rides to be had here too. A half an hour catamaran ferry will take you, across dolphin populated waters, to Two Harbours, a small village on Catalina island, which, like the Big Sur coastline, was utterly unspoilt; not even the slightest shred of litter anywhere. As at Big Sur, there is a $1000 fine for littering! Camp sites, wooden holiday huts, one store, lots of boats and beautiful scenery; one imagines this is what the Greek islands must have been like in the early seventies. Here, ten year old could enjoy inflatable motor speed-boat rides, kayaking, boarding and swimming in the sea. Although it has to be said the water was too cold for anyone over the age of thirty.
The point of doing as many rides as I could find, was to try and interest a child in going on real journeys, not virtual ones. Journeys where you meet real people, however strange, and have real conversations with them. The kind of journeys you take from A to B, not from ‘Level One’ to ‘Level Two’. And the Californians with their almost hysterical friendliness, were the ideal folk to populate the adventure. “Hey, how ya doing?” is not an idle pleasantry from a Californian, it invites full-on conversation at all levels of society and in all encounters. “Good choice!” was the response of a San Francisco taxi driver who I had asked to take us to the Academy of Sciences. He then proceeded to tell us all about the Academy, its state of the art Planetarium and Aquarium and about its ‘Living Roof’ where indigenous mountain and desert plants grow. Again, on a simple bus journey, the driver told us the prices of all the sprauntzy houses we passed and pointed out the one where Mrs Doubtfire was filmed. This impressed ten year old. In such a way, everything seemed to become a ride. And we did not try all the rides available by any means. There were San Francisco Fire engine tours, Amphibian truck BayQuacker tours, bus trips around the houses of the stars in LA, motorised stand-up ‘Segway’ bikes in Santa Barbara – even the bread seemed to be on a ride in Boudin’s, the famous San Francisco bakery, as it travelled across the ceiling in baskets on cables before being deposited at the counter.
All in all then, I can report that there was more than enough to do that was fun, without having to resort to the passivity of the game consul or movie-based, virtual entertainment. As my ten year old turns into a tweener, I hope he will remember this trip and not become too obsessed with his PSP, but get out there and do things. California, home of the theme park and the computer generated thrill, seemed like the toughest place to test my fogeyish theory and it came up trumps.