Slightly Earlier Than Planned - Nov 2016 - West Coast solo trip

[pinkstargirl]

I'm aiming to see if I can get a trip report finished at some point!

I'm off on a solo jaunt again. I had 2 solo trips to Florida last year (Apr/May and November) and a trip in April with my Mum as my annual pass was still valid. Now, as much as I absolutely love my Mum, I definitely prefer holiday-ing solo.

So, the cast list is just me! Heidi, 31 years old, although I often think and act like I'm about a decade younger. Unless I'm around people who are a decade younger, then I thank everything that I'm not. I'm pretty shy and self conscious, although trying to become less so as I've moved into my 30s. Pretty impulsive, which is how many of my trips come about. I have a knack of talking too much once I know someone or there's nothing to stop me, and I generally think I'm funnier than I am.

The plans...

My trip is less than 4 months away. Nothing is booked. I don't even really know exactly how long I'm going to go for. Nothing like being organised, hey?!? But let's go back to earlier this year, and how this all came about.

I've wanted to visit the West Coast for years. I had tentative plans to visit in September of this year, but I already had quite a bit of my holiday booked at work for the year to go to Florida, and as I like taking the odd day or two here and there, I didn't want to have to go for a shorter trip as I had no holiday. Then in February, I applied for a new job. Mine was very stressful, I spend 2 weeks running the garage I was working at, and ended up in tears nearly every day.

After a few tests and interviews, I was told at the beginning of April that I had the job, and would be starting in May. I work at Heathrow Airport now, and I am loving it.

Mum and I had 10 lovely days in Florida at the end of April, and I remember saying to her that it would be my only 'big' trip of 2016, as I had nothing planned or booked for my West Coast trip, and that I would look into going in February 2017.

Slightly off topic (but not really), some of you may remember that I went to New York as part of my Florida trip to see a musical - Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I knew nothing about the storyline, but my favourite actor (Darren Criss) was playing the lead role. I fell in love with the musical, it was exactly the kind of thing I enjoy - rock, a bit raunchy, and an enormous amount of fun. I made the trip part of my Florida holiday so I wouldn't end up paying out for more flights from London to New York just for the musical. But I didn't factor in how much I would enjoy the show, and just over 4 weeks after landing back at Gatwick, I was at Heathrow flying to New York for a long weekend in which I saw the show a further 4 times.



There was a national tour of the musical announced late last year, starting in San Francisco, and I then thought about changing my plan of Sept 16 to October 2016 so I could see this show again, knowing it would be a different cast to the Broadway production, but time went on and nothing got booked, and I decided to skip the musical and plan for 2017 instead. Which brings us back to May 2016, I was innocently browsing Facebook after work (it might have been at work, I can't remember ) when I saw that one of my friends had posted something about cast for the Hedwig tour. They were bringing back the original band from the Broadway production, the original female lead, and... San Francisco and LA would have Hedwig played by Darren Criss. Damnit. I was 2 weeks away from starting my new job, with no way to book holiday, but the fangirl in me was bouncing up and down shouting "I want to go! "

Anyway, to cut this long story short, it took a few weeks but eventually I was able to get onto the system at work and I have booked from 31st October to 20th November off. I'm working right up until 30th October, I did try to book that off but the system put me onto the waiting list as thats the last day of half term.

I'm looking to go for around 18 days, and I want to do LA, San Francisco, and Las Vegas in that order, returning to LA to fly home. I will probably take 5/6 days for LA (2 for Disney, 1 for Universal), then 4/5 days for San Fran, and the rest of the time in Las Vegas, where I have never been but I just have this feeling that I'm going to fall absolutely in love with it.

My first order of business is to book my flights. I've been saving my Virgin miles in preparation, and I can definitely pay for one leg with them. I want to fly PE, as the idea of economy for 12 hours does not appeal. I need to phone Virgin and see what they can do for me with the miles I have. I will park at Heathrow because I get free parking now that I work there.

My rough plan for the first few days is to use jet lag to my advantage and do Disney on the first 2 full days there, then have a day for the sights, then Universal. I'll hopefully get to see the show at least once or twice. I plan to rent a car for LA, and was going to keep it for the whole trip but then I realised how long it will take me to drive to SF, then SF to LV, then LV to LA, and realised I can probably do everything in SF and LV by relying on public transport/cabs/my own two feet.

Other than that, nothing is planned. But I'll try to keep up with this, as it will help to have it written down!