I am walking down Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, followed by three youths
wearing hoodies. They are right behind me, muttering and swearing. They are breathing
down my neck. I can smell their sweat.
They are my sons.
This is our last Big Family Holiday. The
Boys are aged 20, 18 and 16. So before they flew the nest, we flew them to
California, where under 21s are not allowed to drink alcohol. The challenge was
to find out if all the family could enjoy themselves in San Francisco, Los Angeles
and Las Vegas while respecting the local laws regarding minors. Would the boys
be too old for Micky Mouse, too young for Caesar’s Palace?
Luckily
many attractions in California reduce even mature adults to the level of
children. By the time we reached The Simpsons’ Ride at Universal Studios, Los Angeles, we had practically turned into
Homer, Marge and co.
In San
Francisco, the hippy trail on Haight
Ashbury was strangely intriguing to a generation conceived 20 years after
The Summer of Love, but the boys’ favourite stop was at the sobering island
penitentiary Alcatraz. We escaped The
Rock for milk shakes on Pier 39.
Leaving
California behind, we drove through the Mojave
Desert to Las Vegas, stopping en
route at Calico, developed in 1881
during the largest silver strike in California. Now a ghost town, it is a quaint
and rickety taste of the old Wild West where grown men and big kids alike can play
at cowboys.
Las Vegas is where Peaches Geldof married ,aged 19.
‘There probably wasn’t anything else to do’ empathised my sons. Although bouncers kept them away from the
gaming machines and the bars, star struck teenagers found the buzz and bling of
Vegas addictive enough on its own.
Flying
home across the Grand Canyon, we
agreed that although alcohol-wise this region
is as dry as the desert for the under 21s, we all got a kick out of
California and Las Vegas.
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