Universal Studios Hollywood...

...Yesterday we visited the Universal Studios Hollywood which is the flagship theme park of the Universal Studios. Universal itself call this park - The Entertainment Capital of L.A. :-)
The studios are huge and quite expensive, but it was worth every penny we spent there. We did all important rides like
- The Simpson Ride
- The Mummy Ride
- The Jurassic Park Ride
- The House of Horrors (very scary)
and visited also many shows like
- Backdraft
- Waterworld (rated as the #1 show and definitely it was also my no. 1)
- Shrek 4D
- Terminator 2D, 3D (was great!)
- and the Special Effects show.
Between all these shows and rides we took some fun pictures - see more below:

The Terminator:
Jason Bourne and me:
The Zorro:
Waterworld show:
Krustyland, where the Simpson ride is located:
Dinner with Basha:
Yesterday evening Basha and me took the opportunity to meet up again. I know this very nice guy from my time in Dubai where we worked together on the successful POS launch. Unfortunately we did not meet each other since nearly 2 years - next time we will met up in Austria :-)
On the picture - Basha, Markus and me.
Today we are going to leave L.A. and we are driving to San Diego. Let's see what this place will bring...

Los Angeles - First Time...

...We arrived in L.A. on Wednesday afternoon and had already a great time here. Did lots of sightseeing (Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Blvd, etc.) and there are two more days to go here and still many places to visit. See below some first pictures:

Must have - the Hollywood sign and me:

David, Spiderman and me:
Elvis and me:
Walk of Fame on the Hollywood Blvd. - I love Austin Powers and also Mike Myers is a great actor:
Also Pepsi cheers for the new President Barack Obama:
Markus, me and the girl who asked us for a picture at Chateau Marmont in Hollywood:

Roadtrip - Canyon Tour

...Our next stop after a more than 6 hours drive away from Las Vegas was the Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. We arrived in the evening and had around -10 degrees Celsius and were at around 2,400 m above the sea level. In Vegas we had 25 degrees Celsius.
This Canyon is not as well known as the Grand Canyon and therefore not as crowded. See below some pictures...

Grand Canyon National Park:
And another long drive 6 hours, what else? - next stop - the Grand Canyon which is located in Arizona.
After around 2,200 miles we reached yesterday afternoon Los Angeles and we are now somewhere in West Hollywood. We cruised already through Beverly Hills and "inspected" some nice houses.

Off-topic:
The gas prices in the U.S. are great for us during these days, because we drive a lot.
This was not the cheapest gas station, but a pretty good one.

Pictures from the first week will come soon...

California Roadtrip - Week #01...

...To keep you guys a bit up to date see below a short overview of what we did so far. We drove already over 1,200 miles :-)

* San Francisco, California
From Saturday to Wednesday morning - we did there all important sights like the Golden Gate bridge, Golden Gate Park, Union Square, Alcatraz, Muir Woods, etc. This city is wonderful and I liked the place very much. Fortunately we could stay at the place of a friend of mine so they gave us some insider tips. Thanks again to Eszter and Jay!

* Berkely, California
On Wednesday morning we made a short stop at the famous university there.

* Yosemite National Park, California
This park was really wonderful. I have to upload some pictures - as you know they say more than thousand words.

* Death Valley National Park, California
We stayed all Thursday long at the national park. The park is very big and it's great what you can see there. Nice mountains, sand dunes, the deepest point in the U.S., etc.
In the evening we left the park and drove to Beatty where we stayed over the night. Beatty is a typical U.S. country side town where we found a nice saloon with cowboys :-)

* Las Vegas, Nevada
Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. We expected a lot from Vegas - but it was not too much. It is a crazy place and super artificial. You can gamble wherever and all the time you want. We stayed at the Excalibur hotel (its built like a castle :-)), had a great brunch at the Bellagio and went to lots of good bars and clubs like the 'Coyote Ugly' (like in the movie) and to 'The Bank'.

Today in the afternoon we left Vegas and drove to the Bryce Canyon (Utah) where we are now in a motel. We will drive through the canyon tomorrow and go later on to the Grand Canyon (Arizona).

California Here We Come...

...In a few hours we are going to New York JFK airport to catch our American Airlines flight to San Francisco. We all are totally looking forward to California...

California dreamin'

See below our planned route:
I will have my laptop with me and hopefully I will have time to update you guys from time to time...

I'm now pretty scared to leave the fabulous and wonderful and amazing and gorgeous and super fun New York City. Fortunately I will come back again for some days in February :-)

Museum Visits and Other Tours...

...The Big Apple is also very famous, because it's the home of many important museums. Due to that, I've found fortunately some spare time during the past months to visit the most important ones. See below a short selection of the "best parts" (it's just my point of view and I did not mention all of them). I have just posted some pictures of each museum - otherwise the blog post would get too long and as you know I have too many pictures of everything ;)

Guggenheim Museum
Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET)
American Museum of Natural History
United Nations Headquarters New York
Yeah - Go Austria, Go :-)


Definitely the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was also very interesting, but I did not take good pictures there. I just was totally impressed and overwhelmed and therefore I had no time to take pictures :-)

When I'm back in the city beginning of February, I also want to visit the Skyscraper Museum and also the New Museum. Let's see if I have time and if I'm still motivated for these visits after our "monster" west coast road trip with over 2.000 miles by car.

Happy New Year '09...

...To all, I missed with my New Year's post cards or e-mails. Anyway I'm pretty sure I did not forget somebody ;-)

Some good old friends from high school came over to New York City for a short vacation and also to celebrate New Year's Eve in the city. We did together some sightseeing, went to my favorite and very funny Indian restaurant
and also to some nice bars like 'The Gin Mill', 'The Heights' and to the 'Fifth 230' rooftop bar.

We started New Year's Eve with an awesome dinner in a small Thai restaurant in Brooklyn. Thanks to Bailey for suggesting this location. After that we celebrated the beginning of the New Year there and had lots of fun. It was very very cold on the 31st and therefore we decided not to go to the big traditional Times Square celebration. If you are interested in seeing the very famous ball drop - check out this YouTube video.
At around 2 AM we went back to downtown Manhattan to a party of a friend where we stayed until the sunrise of the 01/01/2009. To conclude it was an awesome New Year's Eve.

See below some pictures from our party:
Goodbye picture with the 'Austrian' group:
Unfortunately my time here in New York City comes already to an end. We are leaving the city on January 10th to fly to San Francisco to start our west coast trip. I will come back to New York for some nights beginning of February, before flying back to Austria.