Alan's Travel Blog
Rambling and nonsense from the road

There it is.  The only movie shooting location I saw on Alcatraz.
It turns out that most of the great things I came to San Francisco to see were all shot on sound stages.  The awesome kitchen shoot-out scene in The Rock?  Sound Stage.  The “Roads” cafe from So I Married An Axe Murderer?  Interior is [...]

Climbing up the Coit Tower is one of the few tourist-trap destinations in San Francisco (along the cable cars).  It was hardly worth the $5 entrance fee, given its relatively small size, but it did enhance San Fran’s already wonderful viewpoints into the most incredible vistas.

I also cycled across the Golden Gate bridge – a [...]

If LA is a city defined by its people, and New York by its layout, San Francisco is the perfect blend of the two.  Due to the hill-based layout of the city, almost every intersection has a beautiful, stunning viewpoint in at least one direction.  This is a city where just wandering up and down [...]

I’m sorry, East Coast Railways – as wonderful as the many trips you’ve ferried me on from Edinburgh to Inverness, you’ve a long way to go to top Amtrak’s coach service up the west coast of the USA.  Legroom, comfy seats, big windows, an elevated position and a lounge car with huge bay windows.  The [...]

There’s a lot to see in LA.  The views from Runyon Canyon pictured here are just some of many views of amazing architecture, huge sprawling landscapes … and lots of smog.

I also took the only actual walking tour of the stars’ homes, but seeing the Beverley Hills sign, Micheal Jackson’s mailbox and the gates to [...]

This post comes to you from a shiny new Asus eeePC.  Ordinarily, the purchase of a new PC is cause for celebration in my life.  In this case, however, not so much.

It’s amazing how quickly you can lose $300.  Still, nothing a quick trip to Best Buy and a few more Ramen noodle dinners won’t [...]

I feel a little like I’ve missed a blog post, because I didn’t really get a chance to properly wrap up my experiences in Washington.  I’d like to say that it was because of technical issues, like the sketchy Wi-Fi here in the Chicago hostel, but the fact is all the walking I’ve done over [...]

I am officially done with museums.
Washington is a great place for them – the Smithsonian Institute making most of them free to the public – but there’s only so much information one man can assimilate before it becomes too much, and I’ve already been to museums in NYC, London, Glasgow and Edinburgh in the past [...]

When someone is kind enough to pose for a picture, you just have to take it.

Despite all the amazing sights you can see in Washington DC, I was more taken aback by finding ducks in strange places.  The ones on the left here were photographed in Farragut Square, in the middle of the city, miles [...]