San Francisco

So I just realised that my posts about San Francisco have disappeared. So I'll just give a quick run down.

There was a major storm in San Francisco on Thursday night so our flight on Friday was delayed a few hours, it's always fun to find out about flight delays when you arrive at the airport i could have stayed at the Vegas outlet mall for a few more hours!

Anyway we got to the hotel about 11pm and went straight to bed we were exhausted.

Saturday
We woke up late on Saturday missed breakfast as it finished at 9am. We bought tickets for the hop on hop off bus and went down to fisherman's wharf.  This place is amazing. Heaps of shops and restaurants and arcades. There's a colony of sea lions that sun themselves right by the pier.
We had lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co which was really good, the restaurant is themed with all Forrest Gump memorabilia. 
After lunch we jumped back on the bus and went over the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a protest in town regarding the police misuse of power so this threw a spanner in the works for our tour around town.  But anyway we had a few minutes to take photos at Golden Gate park, it was freezing!  Finally got some chowder for dinner.
Sunday
Missed breakfast again.... we walked up lombard st to the crookedest street in the world, it was so steep I thought I would die but we got there and it was worth the hike, the view was amazing. (This was when Reilly and I started to come down with the flu). At the top of lombard st we hopped on a cable car and headed down to union square to go shopping and have lunch. We stocked up on cough syrup and panadol and did some Christmas shopping.  We had some delicious chinese food for dinner too.

Monday -Alcatraz
This was one of the things we were most looking forward to. Unfortunately Reilly and I were so sick and it was raining and miserable but thems the breaks... we got the ferry over to the island and began the tour. We were given headphones and a audio player and set off on our audio guided tour. It was eeiry and creepy but really interesting. It would have been a pretty miserable existance living in there...

Tuesday
I was feeling pretty sick and sorry for myself on Tuesday. Reilly had recovered but Hayden came down with it too and slept all day. Reilly and I got a bus down to chinatown for lunch and to do some shopping.  San Francisco has the biggest chinese community outside of Asai. There were markets everywhere selling all sorts of stinky herbs and spices and weird looking vegetables.
We got  really tasty pizza delivered for dinner which was nice cause i didn't want to leave the warm hotel room.
Our flight to Seattle was at stupid am on Wednesday so we decided to have an early night.

It's grand and canyony

We woke up at about 6 to head out to Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon and we're on the road by about 6:30. We had a few hiccups getting on the right highway but once we found the freeway it was a pretty (long) straight road. 

Hoover Dam is about 45 minutes to an hour away. We arrived there by about 7:30/8:00 which turned out to be a great time to get there.  No traffic and the paying booths weren't yet open so we got in for free. It was bigger and more spectacular than i thought it sounds be... To be honest i wasn't real interested in this at all, this visit was about Hugh geeking out at the dam. We found an observation deck and pulled over for some photos. Reilly made it quite clear he didn't care about the dam and  wanted to stay in the nice warm car. It was freezing and we only stayed for a few minutes but it was pretty impressive.

After this we were back in the car and on to the grand canyon.  We stopped at a place called Kingman on route 66 that had the most adorable, quintessential 1950s diner. We had breaky there and took lots of photos.  Oprah had been there when she and her friend Gayle did their trip around America. 

The landscape was pretty boring after a while.  Lots of big rocks and cactus. But I'm glad we drove..it was a kind of scenery we've never seen before and probably never will again.

Anyway we reached the canyon at about 2 which turned out to be a great time to arrive as the weather had been poor and the canyon was full of cloud. We went to the first look out point and it was amazing. It's really clichéd but I have no words to describe it.  It is something you need to see for yourself.  It's so ridiculously deep/high hugh's vertigo was in overdrive.

The kids were running around and climbing like crazy we were so stressed about them falling in!  The next few look outs were amazing too. We probably spent an hour or two at the canyon which was no where near enough time. In hindsight I'd have stayed a night or 2 out there. So many lookouts and hiking trails to explore.  But at least we've seen it and it's something that we'll never forget. We got back to our hotel by 9pm so just a 14 hour day! The boys were perfectly behaved!

A vegas show

Wednesday night we went to a vegas show (i love saying that a vegas show☺).  It was the tournament of kings at the Excalibur casino.  It was like Australian outback spectacular in that it was a dinner show with horses etc except it was a medieval theme. The arena was divided up into 8 different teams  and each team had a name ie team Ireland Team Norway etc and there was a king competing in the tournament from each team so it was really interactive and you had to cheer for your team and the boys loved it.  The meal was ok, a tomato soup, a whole cornish hen and veges and an apple danish for dessert.  There was no cutlery supplied so that you ate like they did in medieval times, the boys thought this was brilliant!  The show was great,  certainly not to the standard of the outback spectacular but very entertaining.

The vegas strip is beginning to feel like the streets of Vietnam with the amount of hawkers and pan handlers. There's homeless people everywhere and people dressed up in costumes like transformers and minions who charge a few bucks for a photo. Their costumes are pretty awful and looking quite dated but it adds to the vibe.  What really drives me crazy is the scalpers and tour guide people that are trying to sell you tour tickets! Speaking of tickets....we were offered so many free show tickets when we walked through the casinos. We'd already bought our show tickets so we didn't find out any more about this but that's a tip for anyone coming to vegas....walk through the casino looking like a tourist and you'll get free tickets and maybe even a girlfriend for the night.

We've decided to drive to the canyon tomorrow both because the bus is almost  $1000 and we want the freedom of driving so we can stop wherever we want. It's probably going to be a 12 hour round trip so I best be heading to bed.
Night.

Day 4/5/6

I've gotten a bit slack with these blogs! Wifi isn't as accessible as I expected.
Anyway we drove to san diego today to go to Legoland. It's about an hour. Hugh is great at driving on the wrong side of the road...well mostly, every now and then I have to yell at him "drifting" positioning yourself in the lane is really difficult!
Legoland wasn't great,  about half the rides were closed for maintenance it's also aimed at younger kids than mine.  But the theming is done well.
Yesterday we drove to vegas from Anaheim it's about 4/5 hours.  After a few hiccups finding the freeway and actually staying on the freeway it was a pretty easy drive (says me from the passengerseat ). There's not much to see and i probably wouldn't do the drive again but I an glad we decided to drive one way. The landscape is like nothing we have ever seen before.  Barron desert full of cactus and mountains jutting up in the background. We found our hotel in vegas surprisingly easy. After checking in we went out to wander the strip. Wow! It's unbelievable. Lights and billboards and people everywhere!  The hotels and casinos are massive.  We walked through New York new York I'm pretty sure it has as many shops and restaurants as the Queen st Mall! As you will see I succumbed to vegas mentality and bought a frozen cocktail in a stupid novelty cup. It cost $18 full of cocktail and the same price for no alcohol..cat afford not to really.

We've just eaten breakfast at Dennys "all you can eat pancakes"!  Today were going to wander around and book a show for tonight and a grand canyon tour for tomorrow. I'm on a missionto get to the Venetian to have a gondala ride!

That's it for now.

Day 3

Disclaimer: written in the car not a literary master piece

Sofor the second day in a row we've woken up at 11am, we must have been super tired! We had lunch at the cheesecake factory ( i can tick that off my to do list) the food was great and so cheap but the serves are huge. I don't think any of us even ate half of our meal. We'll have to start sharing meals now i think!

We got to California adventure park about 1pm. This place was brilliant.  No where near as many people as Disneyland!  Hugh and Reilly walked straight onto  the Hollywood tower of terror ride,  Hayden didn't want to do it and i didn't want to do it on a full belly!

After this we spent some time in Bugland where Hayden said the rides were more his speed. We managed to convince him (force/peer pressure whatever ) to go on the California Screamer roller coaster.  It is the biggest, most amazing roller coaster I have ever seen! I have to admit i was shitting myself but I knew if i chickened out I would never hear the end of it from Hugh and Reilly  (FYI Reilly is a dare devil! Loves scary rides). It was fantastic! Best rollercoaster ever! Not recommended for those with vertigo, poor Hugh!  We went on the giant ferris wheel next where we had the option of a swinging or non swinging gondala of course Reilly wanted a swinging gondala this turned out to be a terrible idea. It was terrifying, the gondala was on a track so when you went up it kinda slid down the track then stopped and swung really fast!
Hugh and the boys went on the river ride and got saturated it was about 7pm by this stage and freezing cold so we took this as a good excuse to buy Disneyland shirts. ( just heard gotye on the radio that's exciting! ). The boys and I ended up going back and doing the tower of terror ride  just before we left. It was really dark and scary but the view from the top was worth the defacating of pants!

  Christmas time at Disneyland is so beautiful,  they really go all out! I'm so glad we visited at this time!  I bought a mickey mouse Christmas ornament for the tree so every year when we put the tree up we'll remember this trip!
On the way home we stopped at Starbucks for hot chocolates and watched the Disneyland fireworks while altogether

We're on the Santa Ana  freeway now heading to San Diego #sandiLamo this whole driving on the right side of the road is terrifying and just plain weird! The scenery is weird desert on one side of the road and the ocean on the other side, it's beautiful! 

That's it for now.  Will post anther entry tonight after Legoland.

Day 1 and 2.

So the surprise went well.  The boys were more confused then excited.  But once we got until the airport it all sunk in for them. 
The flight to Fuji was great, Fiji airways were brilliant.  The food was really good too. We arrived in Fiji with 6 hours to spare until our next flight so we decided to get in a cab and head out and about. We went to a resort down the road and had a couple of beers and some food while the boys had a swim. 

We got back to the airport  at about 8pm for our 9pm flight and waited to board. We found out right at boarding time that our flight was delayed and then 15 minutes later we heard the flight was cancelled  ( pilot had the sniffles apparently ) and had to spend the night in fiji. They only had enough hotel vouchers for about half the flight and luckily they gave them to the families first.  Other than an absolute debacle with the shuttle buses we got back to the hotel ok and had some food. We didn't get to bed until about 1:30am. We had to be up at 4:30 am to head back to the airport, we were so tired....but we got there and lined to check in for over an hour!

The flight departed at 7:30 am which had us arriving in LA at 9pm Friday night instead of 11am Friday which wasn't too bad.  The flight was great and went quite quick. I watched a few movies then we were here.

We had this great idea to pick up our hire car and drive to Anaheim which is about 45 minutes away,  in hindsight this was a badidea considering how tired we were.  We were going really well navigating until the freeway was closed and we got detoured off the highway through the suburbs.  This is where it all turned to shit. This driving on the other side of the road is bollocks. So confusing and just weird. Luckily for me Hugh did the driving. It's terrifying but he is handling it really well!  We seemed to go round  in circles for a while... Stopped for directions at a servo with quite unhelpful staff, we think we stopped right in the middle of a ghetto as the servo wouldn't let us walk into the store, he just had a little window to pay through. Anyway we finally found our way back to the detour and were on the right track.  We for info our hotel in Anaheim at about 1:45am and finally went to sleep. We did stop at maccas and ordered chips not fries, the guy working there thought this was confusing and hilarious and was still laughing by the time we got to the window!

We slept like logs until 10:30 this morning when we were awoken by housekeeping, I don't know what time we would have woken up if housekeeping hadn't come to the door.

We spent the day at Disneyland along with 345686474 other people  it truly is the happiest place on earth  ( although there was a few cranky people who obviously didn't get that memo). We went on as many rides as we could,  most had hour waits. We had lunch at a Mexican place and dinner at a new Orleans cafe. The food was delicious Hope your listening Dreamworld, you could learn a thing or 2 from Disneyland.

The fireworks and light show at the end of the night is truly one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen! And being December they showered everyone in fake snow.
I'm so happy to have ticked Disneyland off my bucketlist, it's something I've been dreaming about since i was a little kid and never ever thought I'd actually get there. Dammit just remembered i forgot to buy my Minnie mouse ears!!!

The boys have been absolute troopers!  So many long waits and lines at the airport and at Disneyland and they have just dealt with it so well!

Well it's nearly midnight now so best be getting to bed. We're off to California adventure park tomorrow! After a trip yo Walmart hopefully!
Toodles

Getting ready

2 more sleeps and we're off. Boys still oblivious.  We have a few acts of devious deception up our sleeves.  Hayden is supposed to be going to the bowling alley for a break up party tomorrow but alas the bus broke down, well that's the story were telling him anyway complete with text from the school to back us up.

So we'll tell them tonight that were heading down to Brisbane on Thursday to see Gran who is recovering from recent back surgery and that we'll do something fun of their choice on Saturday.

On Thursday night we are telling them that my brother/their uncle jack is heading to Airlie beach for the weekend and needs a lift to the airport early Friday.  Then once we get there we will ask them if they could go anywhere in the world where would they want to go?? To which they'll reply America  (hopefully ). Then we will hand them their boarding pass and Disneyland tickets.
Fingers crossed it all goes to plan!