Back in April I had an amazing opportunity to explore California and cruise down the coastline in a 2014 convertible Chevrolet Camaro. If you’re a Transformers fan, this is the Bumblebee car but in red. It was an incredible, unforgettable experience and doing some sort of American roadtrip has always been a dream of mine so this year I decided to go for it. Straight after the high intensity, annual trip to GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco, I rented out a car with a pal from Las Vegas and we flew down the route 1, making our first stop in Monterey where we stayed at an AirBnB place for the night. This was a great location with a neat local scene. We hit up a few bars in the evening and also came across a pub called “London Bridge,” with a London tube sign logo. I guess it’s hard to get away. Also, the woman who’s house we stayed at originated from Wales, UK (where I studied at University), so again, a home from home.
After a night in the hot tub, we got up bright an early and proceeded with our journey, stopping off for lunch in Big Sur and then making our way to Santa Barbara where we stayed in a motel. These were some epic locations and driving around the windy roads was so much fun. I wasn’t used to driving on the other side of the road (In fact it’s the first time I’ve driven on the left side of the road, an automatic car and a convertible all in one go) and ended up veering towards the cliffside, so Nelson made haste that he should take over, probably for the best.
After Santa Barbara we headed to Malibu, ate at a fancy restaurant and tried to hit up a private beach but failed. Next stop was Los Angeles and the departure of Nelson, my LA buddy. Luckily my mate Fernando, who’s based in LA, tagged in and joined me for the second leg of the road trip, which was going to be to Las Vegas. Originally I was going to cover San Diego too but ended up being way to tired as we were doing this within a week and a half. And GDC was killer (in a good way), so not sure how I did any of this anyways.
I stayed in LA for around 4 or 5 days, rented a swanky-ish pad in Venice Beach and later Playa-Del-Rey. This gave me the opportunity to hang out at the local scene, meet up with fellow indie devs, check out Glitch City and chill out in Hollywood. It was a lot of fun.
Soon after this we made tracks to Las Vegas and needless to say, I was very excited. Blitzing the Camaro through the Nevada desert was dreamlike: the wind flowing through my hair, Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night by KISS blasting through the speakers and the sun beaming down. Around seven hours later we arrived into Las Vegas but it was very different to when I went in 2011. All the main casinos had turned off their lights and then it dawned on us that we had arrived to Vegas during Earth Hour. I was both surprised but also distraught and worried that they wouldn’t turn them back on that evening…as we were prepared to hit the clubs. Luckily, it was only for an hour as the name suggests.
Vegas was amazing but yeah, let’s just say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. After four days, I was ready to head home after 2 weeks of non-stop travelling and mayhem. Fernando and I said our goodbyes; it was pretty emotional. I headed to McCarran airport and embarked on the long flight home to London. If you ever get the chance to, I highly recommend doing an American road trip. It’s a lot of fun!
