The end of March is "Spring Break" for the Oregon schools, which is also the time we chose to head down to California and visit Mickey and friends at Disneyland. We headed out on Friday March 23rd, in the afternoon - parked the car in the long term car park at PDX, and flew to LAX.
When we arrived, the weather was warm - not hot. We grabbed our bags, and headed for the Shuttle which took us to our hotel in Anaheim. The trip took quite a while, because there was an accident on the freeway, which slowed traffic for quite some time. One thing we noticed very quickly - the traffic in LA/California was significantly worse than the traffic in Portland!
The trip lasted over 1 hour, but we made it safely, and went straight to our room to dump the bags. We were around 2 blocks away from Disneyland - which by the end of the trip were the longest two blocks we had ever walked! On our first night, we headed to "Downtown Disney" an area around the Disney owned Hotels, which had restaurants, stores, and a lot of nightlife.
We also made sure we picked up our tickets that first night before the mad rush on Saturday morning. It was a good thing we did, the lines to get tickets on Saturday were HUGE!
The next day we had planned to be a late day at Disney, staying for the fireworks which were at around 9.25pm. The night we arrived, the fireworks were canceled due to "high winds" so we hoped that we were not going to have that happen to us the next night!
We had breakfast in the hotel, and headed into Disney around 10am. Saturday was to be our lazy day around the park, getting a feel for the rides that we wanted to go on, and the shows we wanted to see, etc. We had a great day. We only saw a small part of the Disneyland park, the kids picked rides to go on - sadly for Jessie, her ride was closed for renovation - but we enjoyed walking around anyway.
We found out pretty quickly that anything we wanted to purchase in the park was going to be pretty expensive, food, water, drink, anything pretty much. We kind of expected it - but our suspicions were found to be true when we started looking for food for lunch!
We did get to see the fireworks, but sadly not closely. We had watched the night parade, which is in the second of the two Disney Parks - California Park, which meant we missed the timing to get across to see the fireworks first hand. Nevertheless, we did see most of them, and enjoyed them from afar.
Sunday and Monday we had organised a rental car. We picked up the car on Sunday morning, a small Toyota Corolla, and headed in to LA - specifically to look at Hollywood. Well, what can I say - the traffic in LA is horrendous. We got stuck behind an accident, that took us around 30 minutes to go around 2 miles! Yes - you read that right. Once we passed the accident though, it was smooth sailing all the way until we hit Hollywood. We then had to find a place to park.
Because we were also looking for a specific place, we ended up driving through Beverly Hills, and kept going - heading up to Mulholland Drive, which goes across the Hollywood hills, and allows you to see LA from above.
Hollywood was also busy, because of the World Premiere of "Meet the Robinsons" a new Disney movie being shown in the theater across the road from Man's Chinese Theater. We looks at the hand prints of famous people, and the stars of fame on the sidewalk. We even paid a guy $1 for having a photograph with us!
We met up with a Uni friend of Tara's for dinner, who took us to a nice Chinese restaurant. We then headed back home to Anaheim. (Thank goodness for GPS is all I can say - we would have been lost without it in LA!)
Monday we headed South to San Diego. We had no plans on what to see, other than to go see the sights. We enjoyed the trip down - which ended up being around 1 1/2 hours. We looked at the massive Navy ships in the harbor. We also saw what appeared to be a rescue mission of a dolphin in the water, and headed across to a lovely old hotel and the beach where the kids played for a while.
Tuesday was our "early day" at Disneyland. We had the ability to get in one hour early with our passes. We had made a lot of plans from what we had seen on Saturday as to where we would head first, which were a little ruined when we found out that only certain parts of the park were opened early, and not the whole park.
We ended up staying late on Tuesday until around 9.25pm, when we wanted to see the fireworks - but they were again canceled due to high winds. That was disappointing, as Wednesday was our day to head back to Portland, and we were going to miss them.
Wednesday we packed up early, and headed back to the California Park. This was our last day, and Jessie wanted very much to ride the roller coaster called "California Screamin'" We ran madly around the park getting our "Fastpasses" for each of the rides we wanted to go on, and got our tickets for "California Screamin' " which would mean it was the last ride we went on before heading home.
It ended up being great. Jessie and I were the only ones on the ride from the family. Cynfor was not very keen to ride it - I have to say, looking at it, it looked pretty scary - and Tara was not interested in going either. We had four tickets to ride though, so Jessie and I figured if we enjoyed it once, we would go again. Well - we did. We were stuck up in the front of the ride, and enjoyed the best view on our first ride. We went up and down and around and when we returned, Tara and Cynfor were waiting for us - eagerly awaiting our feedback.
Both Jessie and I loved it. It was amazingly smooth, fast, and a lot of fun. Very exhilarating!
We then headed out of the park, back to our hotel, to our shuttle to return back to Portland. Now that we are home, it all feels like a memory - but we know we have the photographs to remind us of how much fun we had! (Just click on the link below to see all the pictures we brought back!)
Presents started to assemble under the tree. Hmm, which one is mine... 
We were lucky enough to have been invited to a good friend of mines place for dinner on Thanksgiving Thursday. For those of you who are not aware of the tradition around Thanksgiving, is based around the giving thanks for the previous years harvest - hence the amount of food eaten. (More information about thanksgiving can be found here
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