May 1 - Sea World

Sea World awaits us today - however, John has done his back and is headed for the hospital. 

Claire and I are dropped off at the gates to Sea World while John heads to the hospital.  Doctors, nurses and x-rays later, it is indeed muscular so thankfully it is treated with just horse tablets, anti inflams and Valium, but it will take a few more days to recover.

The show at Sea World was very similar to the one on the Gold Coast, performing seals, dolphins, dogs and cats.  All quite predictable, and enjoyable but the real treat came later when were travelled further south to the gorgeous Hotel Del Coronado.  It is something John and I do every time we are in the States, and it is a real joy.  We have a quiet cocktail out on the back patio of the Hotel and watch the sun set over the ocean. Bliss.

We were keen for Claire to see the hotel, and the museum they had downstairs, celebrating Marilyn Monroe who filmed, "Some Like it Hot" here in the 1950's.  Alas, the museum has been dismantled, and they only had a few photos and bric a brac in a very small section of the hotel.  Shame.

The beautiful Del



Sorry about the pics being sideways again - I'm not sure what's happening there.

Someone's hijacked my iPad yet again!

A recommendation by Tony to head to a section of SD near the water paid off handsomely - we found a fantastic Italian restaurant overlooking the water, and we were entertained to a gorgeous evening of fabulous food - and fireworks.

May 29 - Thursday - Disneyland: California Adventure

Well, it's just 45 minutes till we leave Anaheim and head for the airport so it's the last minute packing and showers all round.  We did intend on having a rest here for an hour or so before leaving - that 15 hour plane ride is hard when you've been on your feet all day - but we're hoping we'll all be so exhausted that we'll sleep at the drop of a button.

I couldn't leave Disneyland/California Adventure without blogging (and bragging) of my big achievement just now.  I went on "California Screamin'"!  It's the biggest rollercoaster ever and it does a huge loop around mouse ears, then swoops up and around ever so high. Woo hoo!!!

Lorraine with John on the "California Screamin'" rollercoaster!!!!!

Claire and (California Adventure's) Minnie Mouse at "Planes World"

Claire made a friend on the very first ride we took this morning, "Soaring California" which was a fantastic ride.  So we hooked up with Lilly and her Mom and Grandmother and 3-year old brother, till we left at 6 pm.

Lilly and Claire

We went to the Maleficent and saw their "Exclusive Sneak Peek" of the movie.  It was truly fabulous in 3-D.  The very end of the show, we got a little excited when the seats sort of rumbled a bit - like a tickling of our fancies (John's explanation!)

Claire and Lilly at the Maleficent entrance.

We finished the day at "Car's Racers" and what a ride it was.  I didn't expect it to be quite the ride it was - in fact I was video-ing on my I-Pad for Connor - and Liv then all of a sudden, we started racing another car.  It was soooooo fast, but so much fun.  Thankfully I didn't drop the I-Pad.



For you, Connor - a ride on "Cars' Racers"

What a day it's been - what a "six weeks" it's been!  So many memories for all of us. 

 

 

 

 

 

May 28 - Disneyland

Last night John went out and bought pizzas while Claire and I had a good soak in the bath.  Our feet and legs were aching from all of the walking we'd done.  Claire journalled, I blogged, and we planned today.

We got a fairly early start this morning and after the security checks and having our photos taken at the Disneyland entrance, (to ensure we do not pass our valuable tickets on to anyone else), we headed straight for Minnie Mouse and Chip 'n Dale to get their autographs and a picture. 

The gorgeous Minnie Mouse.

We waited patiently in line to meet Chip 'n Dale, and their minder called out asking if anyone knew the song to "Frozen".  Claire's hand shot up, and she was asked to sing the song, while Chip 'n Dale both danced with her.  You'd think after that they'd offer to sign her book and have her photo taken - but no, we had to get back in the queue!


And Chip 'n Dale

We headed straight away to the "Fast Pass Distribution" for "Splash Mountain".  You can get one "fast pass" every two hours and they enable you to go in the speedy lane, bypassing all those who have stood in the queue for anything between half an hour to an hour and a half!  And boy, does it feel good when you're in that lane - and horrible when you're in the slow lane!

With the cards firmly in John's pocket, we then headed to Indiana Jones' Adventures.  We had such fun. We went flat knacker around the park at a cracking pace - I wished I had brought my pedometer with me!

I was so thrilled that I got through Splash Mountain last night without ending up a mess, I was keen to do it again today.  Claire was very encouraging, "Put your hands in the air, Nana"!!!  She's a real dare-devil and while I was trying to overcome my fear, she was planning what sort of pose she'd do for the camera that takes everyone's picture just as you start the steep descent.  It's quite terrifying - but Claire absolutely has no fear and loves them.

Melanie's favourite ride at Disneyland was the teacups, and her favourite colour, purple.  So we had a ride for Mel in a purple teacup.  More my cup of tea too!

Melanie's favourite ride - the teacups!

We queued for just 15 minutes to go on the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - and what a fun attraction this one is.  I remember Joshua loved it too - and nothing's changed Josh in the last four years.  Except my score - I got a grand total of 518,300 and Pa got 442,200.  Four years ago we each got somewhere in the vicinity of 35,000. 

The ride got stuck today - and let me tell you, it was so much better than when we all got stuck in the, "It's A Small World" ride 30 years ago with Melanie and Travis!!!!!  We got to shoot the targets today, whilst we were stationary, for about a good five minutes, hence our huge scores. 

But after we alighted and walked down the tunnel to the exit, there up in lights was Claire!  Look closely, and you'll see her in this picture.  That's her in her spaceship shooting the targets!

The Top Space Ranger - Claire!

And here's her score (at #2) - with allegedly - 1,699,100 points - CC (Claire Cottle!)  Way to go, Claire.

We headed to Splash Mountain again after lunch, and although it's not as bad as last night's photo - I'm clearly terrified - Claire is clearly fear-free and doing the "duck face"!  What a hoot!

We nicked off for a couple of hours this afternoon and went shopping - a few last minute buys, like Sees Candy.  We will definitely be well over our kg limit for the plane, but what's new?!!!

We got back in time to get a ride on Indiana Jones again and this time we all held our hands high in the air - for the entire ride!

The parade tonight was fabulous - all of the characters appeared either in the parade or the light and water feature.  We had dinner sitting on the ground ensuring our place for the light and water show, then everyone was told we couldn't sit there.  Clearly we'd been there for some time - with half-eaten dinners in front of us - so on the quiet, we were told to go away for 5-10 minutes then when we got back, we were let into the VIP area.  Noice!




Snow White on her float.



All the characters on the "Mark Twain" paddle steamer.

Tony is coming in for brekky at frog's fart in the morning - and it's nearly 1 am.  We're heading off to Disney's California Adventure for the day tomorrow (well, in a few hours!), and I doubt I'll get to blog again.  Thanks for your posts and emails, glad you've enjoyed following our adventures.


 

 

May 27 - Disneyland

What can we say but - Disneyland is truly magnificent!  Straight after brekky we headed across the road and down one block and entered into the Magic Kingdom. 

Disneyland awaits!

Claire bought a photo album/autograph book and decided earnest to collect all of the characters.  The queues (lines) were often enormous and required a wait time of about an hour to an hour and a half. We think that many people, including students are here - having attached an extra day to the Memorial (long) Weekend.  Memorial Day (Monday) is similar to our ANZAC Day.

 

Claire with Pinocchio.

Big hugs with Tigger.

And the gorgeous Eeyore.

Basically, the day was fantastic. We rode many of the rides starting with Star Tours, 3CPO and R2D2 were the mainstays of this ride - although Claire didn't know who they were.  We didn't even think of it - Joshua certainly knew of them four years ago, but Claire's interests are in a totally different area, and clearly Travis' love for Star Wars has not rubbed off onto Claire.

 

We rode Autopia, where cars are ridden along a track in the outdoors, but being a little short, Claire found it hard to push on the accelerator, and I found it hard to keep it down for such a long ride too.  John's brother, Mike, loved riding this attraction whenever he came to Disneyland and we reminisced about our trip here with him and Travis and Melanie some 30 years ago.

 

Our favourite ride, Space Mountain is not running at the moment - it's being refurbished apparently, and with so many people here today, it was an attraction that was sadly missing, as it keeps hundreds of people off the streets and off the other rides!

 

For those interested, the other rides we took and attractions we saw:  Pirates of the Caribbean - FANTASTIC!; The Haunted House - Claire loved it; the Jungle Cruise (still as lame as before!); Roger Rabbit Spin; Toon Town rollercoaster; Indiana Jones - another FANTASTIC ride, Big Thunder and our final ride, Splash Mountain - which was super fantastic and we got absolutely soaked to the skin.  It was a very hot day today, but after the sun set the temperature dropped dramatically - and we were a bit chilly.  So we saw a small part of the light and water show, and the fireworks which was absolute magic. 

 

When you wish upon a star ... Makes no difference who you are ... all of those beautiful memories (apart from being at the Army at 7 pm on a Sunday night when we should have been at home watching Disney!) came flooding back.  Beautiful memories!

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 27 - Santa Clara 1 Anaheim

It was farewell's all round this morning after our buffet brunch in the bar where we enjoyed, "Lick, Sip, Suck" tequilas on Saturday night.  A few were bleary eyed, but not us ... we were up bright and early (even for the rest of you we were up bright and early!), at 8.30 am. 

Thankfully Tony suggested a big family picture - fancy us all getting together and not having a picture taken - but we managed to get organised and here tis:


Claire with her "American family".

Mandy and Ryan gave Claire a gift card to their favourite lolly shop, "Powells Olde Worlde Candy Store" in downtown San Jose, so before we left for Anaheim, we took a shortcut to this store.  WOW!  Ryan used to work here part-time, and the young man working in the store mentioned that Ryan was getting married the day before.  "We knew", we told him - "we were over from Australia for the wedding".  He was quite surprised.


Every kid's dream - a money voucher for a lolly shop!

We put "Disneyland" into the sat nav for directions, and pointed the car south, heading down the Highway 5.

We arrived safe and sound at HoJo's (Howard Johnson's) on the boulevard right opposite Disneyland and after unpacking, we headed over to the adjacent restaurant, Mimi's.  The fireworks display at Disneyland was magnificent - we can hardly wait to see them tomorrow.

Fireworks at Disneyland, through the window of the restaurant, Mimi's.

I decided that the washing needed to be done - I didn't fancy the prospect of having five loads to do when we got home, particularly seeing as we arrive home at 8.30 am on Saturday and Claire leaves on Sunday at frog's fart to fly home to the Gold Coast. 

John headed out to buy some supplies whilst Claire and I did the 'woman's work'.  There are three washing machines in the basement, one was whirring away.  I lifted the lid, and sure enough, it was a steaming whirlpool in there.  The other two washing machines had "125" showing on their dial.  Darn, we had missed each of the three machines - but if we hurried, we might be able to hand-wash all of our loads, then get them back downstairs to the basement and into the driers before the other three machines had finished.

On our way out, we ran into one of the staff who advised us that there was another laundry, but in the "back building".  The back building turned out to be three buildings away in a part of the block that we thought belonged to another hotel.  So we checked it out, and the three machines were all available.  Once I had our stuff loaded, the detergent in, and the $1.25 in quarters in the slots and the machine had started filling with water, the penny dropped (no pun intended).  The "125" was not the time left on the machines, it was how much money was required to use the machine.  Claire and I left the laundry, she checked out the gift shop while I double-checked the laundry in the basement in our building - and yes, two of the three machines were available - all for "125" cents!

 

25 May - Sunday - Wedding Day!

The kids all arrived with their kids!  And Claire was in seventh heaven. They all changed into bathers and hung out at the pool: Alexis, Anthony and Ariana; Thai and Tristan; David and Dalton and it was fun times for them all. Claire is thoroughly enjoying the down time here with the "cousins". She is very much into the family tree and wants to know the relationships between everybody.  Cassie and Ryan are Elise's children and Elise is the daughter of John's sister, Margaret. So it was John's niece's son who got married today.  Then you start taking into account the next generation and their relationship to Claire ... ... Well Claire ... simply put, they're all your cousins! LOL!

The Freedom Hall is right opposite the Marriott hotel so we didn't have far to go for the wedding. Mandy had six attendants and Ryan had five mates, and a young woman he'd known since primary school as his best man. The service was written by themselves with their celebrant guiding them and it was beautiful.  

The Groom's side of the family.

Bridal photos were taken in the gardens of Freedom Hall and we snapped a few of the kids too:


Anthony, Alexis, Claire and Ariana.

Dinner and dancing followed until 10 o'clock then it was back to our room to start the task of packing - eeeuuwwwk!  As always, too much stuff ... suitcases way too heavy!

24 May - Santa Clara

Claire's inbuilt alarm clock had her awake at 6.30 am - now that's a first in nearly six weeks!  Nana was slow to rise at 9.30 am, so nothing new there.  Brekky up in the business lounge then Lisa, Tony and the four kids (ie Claire in tow) headed north to San Francisco to do some exploring of their own in Japantown before having lunch in Chinatown.  Claire is eating well and trying new foods - and she's enjoying the experience.

Maggie May, John and I sat poolside and waited for Sandra and the boys to arrive from Oregon and we enjoyed catching up with all their news before John and I took off to do some last minute shopping.  So Livvy, and Daniel are now covered. Connor has been easy to buy for, but we have noticed a huge change in the quality of fabric and workmanship in the clothing here since John's last visit four years ago, and even since my visit last year.  NYDJ, which I've been hanging out to buy are just rubbish. Rubbish fabric and rubbish workmanship. Such a shame.  Clearly it's not just our shores receiving clothing from Bangladesh.

A quick bite at TGIF (unremarkable) and back to the hotel.  We are all very excited about the wedding tomorrow.