California or Bust Part 1

Viva Las Vegas! We're stoked to win big on twenty bucks.

So into the Treasure Island Hotel we go because they give us the best room deal under $100. With more than 150,000 hotel rooms, the city has more than New York and Chicago combined. In the wacky and wicked world of Las Vegas 40 million people lose more than 10 billion dollars in the casinos every year.

Is this one of them? No way! In the end our biggest win is $6.25 - we blow it but still walk out with our original twenty bucks.

Sacre bleu! Paris comes to Vegas complete with its own Eiffel Tower and, but of course

its fountains flowing with le vin rouge.

Onto Italia at the Bellagio Hotel with its exquisite Murano glass flower petal ceiling.

Bellagio also offers a dazzling choreographed water ballet extravaganza - the best free show in town.

Love it or hate it, one thing you can't do about Los Angeles, California is ignore it. Thanks to Hollywood in all its many guises (movies, television, the music industry), the city is always in the headlines. We were ten feet away from Paris Hilton at the Grove Theatre but she didn't see us and neither of us made the headlines.

Venice Beach - the surreal assemblage of every LA stereotype. Among stalls and stands selling everything from cheap sunglasses to Mexican blankets swirls a carnival of humanity that includes bikini-clad inline skaters, tattooed bikers, muscle-bound pretty boys, panhandling vets, beautiful wannabes, talking parrots, the occasional apocalyptic evangelist and plenty of tourists and gawkers (we're in the later category).

You can feel and look beautiful in minutes right on the beach.

Daydreaming on a beautiful November day.

Old Route 66 had its western terminus at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica on a palm-lined bluff a few blocks north of the city's landmark pier. We have driven approximately 4,000 miles across the country and will now begin our journey north along the Pacific Coast Highway.

The pier holds a small amusement park and a lovely old Loof carousel (as seen in the movie The Sting).

Cirque du Soleil returned this year to the Santa Monica Pier, where the Montreal troupe first pitched its tent in 1987. Stay tuned as we've got a lot more of California to discover.