Mary and Maurice World Tour 2023

To all intents and purposes, New York and Manhattan Island are pretty much one and the same. The contrast having come from Grand Abaco Island in the Bahamas couldn't be greater. Apart from the obvious numbers of people and buildings, the people seemed more hard-nosed than elsewhere in the US.  One example: A huge part of New York's history is linked to the waterfront so what better way to start our visit than a boat tour circumnavigating the island? Only we couldn't. One of the storms that skirted the Bahamas turned up instead off the US East Coast. One of the features of such storms are unexpectedly high tides, and the captain decided that we probably wouldn't fit under the lowest bridge.  The Tour Guide, Dave, carefully explained this problem before we set off and offered that anyone who really wanted to fully circumnavigate could rebook the next day at low tide. Nobody took that option so off we went on the Plan B route.  On our return, one passenger comp...

Fortunately for us, Hurricane Lee headed safely away from the Bahamas just before we arrived, with only a slight swell on the beach and some distant surf on the horizon to remind us of its presence. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian wasn't so obliging, instead sitting right on top of the Bahamas for several days. The resulting devastation was the worst in recorded history and the impact is still very evident today.  In the foreground of the photo below is all that's left of a restaurant: We were therefore very mindful that hurricanes can develop quickly, and every day the weather forecast was scrutinised in case a rapid departure became necessary.  We needn't have worried. The weather was tourist brochure beautiful most of the time, with balmy breezes and the warmest sea we have ever swum in.  Note that most of the time did not equate to all of the time, and it was the hurricane season. One night we were treated to a tru...

We only had one day in LA before heading to San Francisco, so what to see and do that we hadn't already seen and done in the USA? Easy...  Obviously, Universal Studios is aimed primarily at families and the younger generation, both in terms of the movies on which the displays are based and in terms of the style of the rides. That didn't stop us enjoying it all, even though we were the only grandparents not chaperoned by grandchildren...  The overwhelming impression was the attention to detail, especially in their Harry Potter village. However, that was all a facade, and we knew that behind the faux block walls was steel, concrete and timber framing.  There was one notable exception, one of the outdoor stages for the movie War Of The Worlds. The relevant scene called for a crashed 747 airliner. So they bought one, and 'crashed' it into a model of a town.  Yup, a real, entire 747, cut into pieces and strewn all over the set. No wonder some movie...

The overwhelming impression on this half of the trip was that everything was huge - the canyons, Hoover Dam, Mojave Desert, Las Vegas, and finally LA.  Not only is the desert huge, it is also beautiful. To our eyes the only scruffy, and at times ugly, parts were abandoned man made structures.  The desert was also not as barren as it seemed. At one point, young horses were running alongside the road, and it wasn't clear if they were running from us in fear or running with us for fun. I personally thought the latter, as they ran parallel to the bikes rather than heading away into the vast empty space. The cows we saw either ignored us or ran away, and the one evident coyote sprinted across our path, ears flattened back. It wasn't only its ears that would have been flattened if it had misjudged its run by a fraction of a second, as it was almost run over by one of the bikes. Given that at that point there were literally miles of empty road in front and miles of empty ...