Zoë Johnson

It's now been almost a week since I've got back and I have only just fully recovered from my jet lag! It's been a wonderful week being reunited with friends, family and my lovely dogs, and I've also started making a few changes to myself and the blog!! Change Number One: New hair!! Almost the first day home I went to the hairdressers and made a spur of the moment decision to get my hair cut short! I had gotten so sick of it during our travels so I was definitely ready for the change! However it really shocked my family as I've had long hair forever and they never expected me to actually go through with it! And here it is! I am very happy with it, it's a lot easier to manage now! Change Number Two: New blog name! I also have decided to change the name of my blog from zoenailust to 'Dots Above The E', as I'm not just writing about nails anymore and I wanted a new name that could include everything I wanted to blog about and that would be s

Hello everyone! Tom and I are officially settled back into UK life! To celebrate our return we held a dinner party for both of our families. We decided on a menu that would give everyone a taste of the USA! We chose typically American dishes and made everything in miniature! Here is the menu! Appetizers: Chips n dips Entrées: Deep dish pizzas Hot Dogs Soft Tacos Burgers Philly Cheesesteaks Served with salad and fries! Desserts: Strawberry cheesecake Blueberry pancakes Brownies It was a super fun night, we all ate far too much, which is always good!! We also gave our families the gifts we had brought back with us which was lovely. :) Here are a few photos of what we made (though not everything, as my camera died halfway through the evening!) Zoë x

First video on my Youtube account is a video edit made by Tom and I (mostly Tom!) of our recent trip to America! Zoë x

On Tuesday 18th July Tom and I began a series of journeys that would take us back home! Our first flight from San Francisco to Seattle was late afternoon, which meant we could actually sleep in!! After we had woken up and finished packing our bags we went back to the Westfield Mall for breakfast, as Tom was jealous of the crepe I'd had yesterday!! We then went back to our hotel and waited for our shuttle to the airport!  When we got to San Francisco airport we were sent on a wild goose chase to find the right place to check in, each person seemed to point us in a different direction!!! We were then put on an earlier flight to Seattle, which was good as we would then have more time to spare before our next flight!! The airplane taking us to Seattle was tiny and we were there in about 2 hours! There were some amazing views throughout the short journey, we even think we saw Mount St Helens! When we landed in Seattle we had a lot of time to kill before our n

Today we were up pretty early as we had a lot to fit in!! The first thing we did after leaving the hotel was get a streetcar to the place where our tour was leaving, which was really cool!! We then boarded the open air tour bus which took us through a bit of San Francisco and over Golden Gate Bridge! Typically, the top part of the bridge was in the fog, but it actually made the pictures look pretty cool! It was really amazing to see it, it's such a cool piece of engineering!!  The bus then dropped us back in Fishermans Wharf where we then got lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp, which was right at the end of Pier 39 and had lovely views over the Pacific! We got popcorn shrimp to start and then I had the Of course we have scampi pasta and Tom had Forrest's seafood feast! The food was great and we love how it was Forrest Gump themed! Made Tom want to watch the film!  After lunch we did a bit of gift shopping on Pier 39, saw the beautiful sea lions and then walked to the bottom of Lombard

Today we got our last ever bus from LA to San Francisco! It was a pretty good journey as journeys go and the bus had wifi!!! Before we left we had breakfast at our hotel- more waffles!!!  For lunch we had a subway at a truck stop, yay!  We got in to San Francisco at about 8pm and went to bed!! Tomorrow is our last day in America! Zoë x

Today we begin our series of bus journeys back to San Francisco, where we will then fly home!!!  We slept in til 9 am and then got breakfast at the hotel!! Made our own waffles in a scary machine that didn't like Tom very much!!  We then went out to The Strip to do some last minute shopping before catching our bus! We got some great gifts and Tom got some very cheap Levi's jeans in Urban Outfitters which he was very chuffed about!! We also got lunch in Starbucks, yay!!  Then we got on our bus to LA. It was another awful journey... The woman in front of us thought she would grave everyone with her beautiful taste in music by playing it out loud, full volume. We weren't such happy bunnies!! We got dinner at a Burger King at a truck stop, I wish they did chicken fries back home!!!  We got in to LA at 10pm and went straight to our hostel!! Tomorrow we go to San Fran!! Zoë x

Today we got up super early to go on a tour of the Grand Canyon, which is 6 hours away from Las Vegas!!!  We got to the National Geographic Visitor Centre at 12.30 pm and were rushed into the cinema to watch an IMAX movie; Grand Canyon, The Hidden Secrets. It is apparently the most watched IMAX film in the whole world! It was almost a little boring and we just wanted to go and see the canyon!! After the film we then continued our drive to the East Rim and Bright Angel Point! Our first view of the canyon was just breathtaking! It was so much better and more amazing than I'd thought it would be!! You could just look at it for ages and not get bored!  Then we drove to another viewpoint called Mathers Point, which was also amazing!! By this time the sun had really come out and was creating some beautiful shadows across the canyon!  It didn't feel like we had long at all before we were hurried back into the bus to be driven back to Vegas! However to pass the time on the journey the

Today we slept in and had a lazy morning sunbathing and swimming!! Then had a quick lunch from the hotel bar and waited for our tour to start at 1 pm!! These are the 'crispy taquitos' we shared for lunch! We were picked up from our hotel in an amazing neon pink jeep and driven out to the Red Rock Canyons! There were absolutely amazing rock formations and the colour of the rock is so vibrant due to the presence of iron!! Our tour guide Bob Hall was really great and even let us pretend we were driving the jeep!! As we drove the tour guide chatted to us about Vegas and its history, and mentioned that it is the driest city in the U.S. and gets only 2-3 inches of rain per year!! After serval photo stops and some exploring the skies started to grow very dark and we felt a few drops of rain. This quickly turned into a fully blown thunderstorm with lightning and torrential rain; I don't think our tour guide could quite believe it!! We were even being sent government warnings to our