Across the Seas to Los Angeles
America is one of those places everyone knows. It's in a thousand movies and internet videos and TV shows. But now we'd be seeing it for ourselves as we took off on a family holiday to Los Angeles.
It's been a long time coming. Mum and Dad first talked about it even before we went to Fiji, nearly two years ago! But after an 11-hour flight halfway across the world we were in California, or as Dad decided to name it, “Carafornia”.
Our first stop was Anaheim for four nights to visit Disneyland. This was an amazing place with a magical vibe. Every day we got there before the park opened and rushed to the first ride to squeeze in as many rides as we could. We'd constantly be checking the app to see which line was shortest, then we'd dash across the park to get there.
All the rides were amazing but I had a couple of favourites: the Star Wars ride Rise of the Resistance and the big outdoor rollercoaster The Incredicoaster (which you can see in the right picture above). I'd never even been on a rollercoaster before we came to Disneyland but turns out I love them, so I dragged Mum on with me twice, though Dad and William were too chicken.
But the awesomeness didn't stop at rides - I even got to meet a bunch of Star Wars characters. I had a close encounter with Chewbacca (see the pic below), got told off by a pair of Stormtroopers, and even had a private meeting with Darth Vader himself!
Disneyland was so great we didn’t want to leave. On our third day there, after we'd arrived at 7:30 in the morning, we stayed until nearly midnight, only taking a couple of hours off to freshen up at the hotel and have some dinner. We watched the fireworks display and a cool Star Wars light show.
As we were walking towards the exit, we heard a voice over a loudspeaker saying "Last call for the Disneyland Express", and without even stopping to think about it, we rushed off for the last ride of the night on the Disneyland steam train. We just didn't want to leave.
My wallet was bulging with American money I'd been given by Grandma and Aunt Val, so Mum and Dad had to restrain me not to spend it all on the first day. In fact, it was the second day, when I spent most of my travel money in a Star Wars shop at Downtown Disney. William also spent a bunch of his money in the Disney store there - the shop owners must have been pleased to see us that day!
Anaheim would be a tough act to follow for sure. Our next stop was West Hollywood, or “Olliewood” as I called it, for six nights. The hotel had a great pool and a nice big room perfect for watching American game shows and ghost hunting programmes in the evenings.
The first two days in Olliewood were at Universal Studios, which like Disneyland also had some amazing rides, like Jurassic World. My favourite was the Harry Potter one, even if it hurled us around so much in our vehicle that I was worried about keeping my buffet breakfast in my stomach!
On one of the other rides, we'd just gotten off and were outside talking about how much we enjoyed it when Dad asked Mum where our backpack was. That's the backpack which held all our money, passports and important stuff like that. When she swore loudly and ran off back into the ride, we knew she’d walked out leaving it behind in our buggy. Luckily someone had handed it in and we got it back. Classic Cara - we didn't let her forget about that for the whole rest of the trip.
After Universal Studios, we had a full-day personalised tour with a guide who also happened to have the best name in the world: Ollie. He was a super nice guy who took us up to the Hollywood sign, across to Hollywood Boulevard to see the stars on the Walk of Fame, down to Venice Beach and the famous pier, and up to the Griffith Observatory to see the city at night and look through the big telescope at Jupiter and its moons.
That Ollie had also thoughtfully provided two big chiller bins of drinks and snacks for the day, which this Ollie and William helped ourselves to constantly throughout the day.
The next day we did a day trip by train up to a seaside place called Santa Barbara, which was nice and much quieter than LA, but not that much to see for three hours each way on the train. I think Mum and Dad just wanted a change of pace after the crazy busyness of the last week.
Time was starting to run out, but not before we spent a few hours at the Natural History Museum seeing the massive dinosaur skeletons and this huge hall filled with gems and massive gold nuggets which William just loved. He was so excited by seeing the gold I thought security people might need to check his pockets on the way out in case he tried to take home a souvenir.
It was an amazing holiday and we were so sad to be leaving. After two weeks we were really feeling like locals. But before we even left America, we’d already decided: wherever the next holiday takes us, whenever we do it, it has to be via Disneyland. There’s just nowhere else in the world like it.
And that was our holiday in America. Now that we're back home again, this might be my last blog for a while. After all, how can you top an adventure like that?
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