For those of you playing at home here goes... We are having an amazing time and are only arguing 1.3 times a day on average... quite good considering we only have each others company, one Ipod and a Mac!
THE DRIVE:
Last week we drove from San Francisco all the way down to San Diego with a stop in LA and Disneyland in between! The drive from San Francisco to LA was unreal! The scenery is unbelievable and some of the stop offs in between are great to see too. Watching people surf killed Simon because he wanted to run out and join them, technically you could say paddle out because it is water but for those of you who thought that, you can jam it! The drive took a lot longer than expected and we didn't reach LA until later in the evening... 9:30pm to be exact... we will not comment on whether this was Zoe's bad navigational skills or whether it was actually Zoe's bad navigational skills! Yeah we kind of left late too.... One of the fave spots along the way was Santa Cruz... cute little town! We also bought some sunflower seeds to chew and spit to help pass the time and it seriously does help... plus it was a very Yankee doodle thing to do!
DISNEYLAND:
Disneyland was a dream come true for Zoe, she has wanted to go there ever since she was a little munchkin! She was in her element! It is a really full on day and an early start is essential to beat the crowds! We didn't get an early start... does anyone see a common theme here. Disneyland is a well oiled machine. As soon as you arrive the car park is highly organised, car park attendants at every turn guiding you right into a car park so that people don't cram the place up going for pole position car parks. You then follow the crowd to the escalators and take the ride down to the Disneyland trams... at this point you have a birds eye view of everyone lining up for the trams that take you on a 3-4 minute journey... not even to the front gates. It is at this time you wish that you had got that crucial early start! Once you get off the tram its an easy walk to the front gates where you decide... Disneyland... California Adventure Park or both... we decided to just do Disneyland and do it well! Good choice too because it was super busy, up to 70 minute waits for rides... that will be repeated 70 minute waits.... are you serious! It turns out in all our wisdom we couldn't have picked a busier weekend.. Easter and Spring break combined! Go team Mitch and Zoe!
The place is huge and we had soooo much fun (please note the use of four o's to emphasise how much fun was had), lucky they have a fast track system that lets you register for a ride at a given time so that you can head off and come back at said time to join almost the front of the line. Here are some photo's of the day, the park is open until midnight and there is a cool fireworks display every night as well as a show themed to "Fantasia". We didn't get home until about midnight and we were completely stuffed! Highlight of the day... Space Mountain!
THE ROUTE TO SAN DIEGO:
The next morning we had to be up early to make sure that we packed our backpacks, got the hotel breakfast before 10, check out before 11 and then hit the road! The alarms went off at 7am and we woke up at 9:58! Well played guys... behind the 8 ball again! Idiots!
The good thing about the late start (we like to make positives out of these scenarios) was that San Diego is only about 150 miles from LA compared to the whopping 550-600 miles from San Fran to LA!!!
We hit the road and got some great stops along the way... Hunntington Beach, Laguna Beach and the Shell Service Station on the Interstate 5 highway! By the end of the trip through Orange County Simon was at critical mass due to Zoes constant references to The OC and Laguna Beach... Zoe they aren't real people... they are paid actors! We rolled into San Diego at around 2:30 in the afternoon! We stayed at the Hi-International Hostel which was fantastic, loads of activities and information for you to soak up... plus free pancakes in the morning! Right in the heart of the city in the Gas Lamp Quarter... such a great place! Highly recommend visiting San Diego! We would have loved to have spent some more time in San Diego itself because there is so much to check out!
On our main day there we had a choice to make... Day trip to Tijuanna (Mexico) or wonder about San Diego. Naturally we chose Mexico, when would we get the chance to get there again? So we headed down to cross the border... potentially difficult right? No... they let everyone cross the border into Mexico, the Mexican border security was reading a celebrity magazine at his desk while everyone strolls on by, unreal. We found Tijuanna a little depressing and fascinating at the same time. They go a long way to try and get you into their stores and restaurants and some parents send their children up to you to give them money for bracelets and or gum. The children follow you down the street tugging at your arm the whole time. Beer and burritos are dead cheap too! At one stage Zoe was trying on a hat in a store, Simon was waiting impatiently outside, he was offered cocaine for 2000 pesos! Lets just say we had a great night... kidding!
After a long day of walking we crossed the border back into the US without too much hassle and made our way back to San Diego for a bite to eat. It was at this point we realised that we had one sleep to contemplate the Greyhound bus ride that we were taking the next day. San Diego to New York, 3200 miles, 71 hours on the bus. We did the math, wrestled with our hearts and minds and decided not to do the same distance on the way home from New York to Vancouver via a bus. This meant that we missed out on catching up with our friends Anna and John in Banff on the way home, gutted! We will see them in a month when they move to Vancouver so we can look forward to that! Cranium will be on like donkey kong... except some questions may be Canadian trivia???
We will blog soon on the Greyhound ride... the title may read something like this... "I wore the same undies for 71 hours!".
Thanks for stopping by! Love to you all Mitch and Zoe xo
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