The Adventure Begins: From Auckland to England
How can you beat an adventure like that? A year ago that was the question I asked after our amazing two week holiday in Los Angeles. And yet, within three weeks of returning home, Mum and Dad were already cooking up plans for something even bigger.
Before you could say “jetlag” they had already planned out a journey that would last six weeks, visiting five countries across three continents, and requiring us to learn two new languages. Or a few words of each at least.
Less than a year after the last trip, we were jetting off again, although this new world tour started a lot like the last one. Yes, we deliberately made our plans this way just to see one special mouse…
Part 1: Los Angeles
Disneyland is such an amazing place that we just fell in love with it last time. But this holiday would be Double Disney - not only would we be starting with the original park in Anaheim, we’d also visit Disneyland Paris as well! But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We spent three days doing dozens of rides in the beautiful California sunshine. Some were rides we’d missed last time, like the Matterhorn bobsleds, which were closed previously, and which we all thought was one of our favourites. Another was Hyperspace Mountain, which Dad didn’t let us go on last time (even though he went on as a kid years ago!) but which was awesome (and even Dad enjoyed).
Part of the Star Tours ride is when the photo of a member of the audience is shown on the screen to everyone as a traitor to the Republic, which kickstarts the whole ride - and on one of the times we did it the screen showed a photo of me! I was the traitor they had to chase down! Big surprise and super cool!
Another fun extra thing about Disneyland is the surprise meet and greets in the different lands - you never quite know who you might bump into. Like the day in Galaxy’s Edge when the Mandalorian and his friend Grogu were lucky enough to meet and greet me!
We stayed late every night to pack in as many rides and evening shows as we could. Even second time around, Disneyland was just as magical as ever. And after waiting a whole year, William and I finally got to eat a churro.
On our last evening we did something un-Disney and visited Medieval Times, this cool themed restaurant with a show involving knights on horseback doing things like sword fights and jousting. And when the food arrived, everyone had to eat it with our hands. That was no problem though, I could dine like that every day!
The next stop on our world tour promised to be a little colder though.
Part 2: England (first leg)
By the time we landed in England we’d already spent a total of 21 hours on planes, leaving New Zealand and travelling about as far from there as it’s possible to go - all the way to the opposite side of the world.
Our first taste of England was taking the Tube from the airport to our hotel in central London. It seemed crazy at the start with all these different trains, stations and lines, but actually it turned out to be fun and I got to be really good with using the maps. Although lugging all our suitcases on and off trains, and up and down stairways in the stations, is something I definitely won’t miss.
We had three days in London and those days started early - none of us seemed to be able to adjust to the new time zone and so we kept waking up super early. Mum and Dad were often awake at 3am, hoping me and William would stir so they could get up!
So off we went, heading out just after 6am with only birds and a few random people for company. We walked through Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace and down to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
Across the river we visited London Dungeon, one of my favourite attractions - dark, creepy and lots of jump scares as we were thrown into scenes from some of the goriest parts of the city’s history. Plagues, witches and vile punishments - loved it!
The Tower of London was my first taste of a castle. I was expecting just this single narrow tower but it was actually a big place with lots of towers, rooms and battlements to explore. I bought a cool skull ornament from there as a memento.
Next it was time to hit the road as we got our rental car for a south of England road trip. It was super modern with lots of features that took Dad a while to work out (while he was driving!). The number plate was KT something, so we named her “Katie”.
First stop on the road trip was Stonehenge, which was pretty cool and amazing how long it’s been standing there. It just suddenly appeared in the middle of a field, miles from anywhere.
Then it was onto the town of Glastonbury, which was nice and had the cool ruined Glastonbury Abbey, but which also had lots of witchy shops and weirdos hanging around. People who looked like they were spat out of a time warp from the 1960s. It wasn’t my kind of place. We also walked up the steep hill of Glastonbury Tor to the ruined tower at the top.
After that we visited a tiny old fishing village called Clovelly which had the steepest street, all made of cobbled stones, that I’d ever seen. We had lunch at a lookout looking across the water, but it was spitting with rain so we didn’t stay too long - especially since the next place was a special one and a big part of the reason we’d driven all this way. The Hartlands reached Hartland!
Hartland the town is a pretty small place, so you’d think when some actual Hartlands arrived maybe they’d let us stay for free. Sadly not. But we did stay in this nice pub where me and William finally had our own room, and maybe, if some global pandemic hits the world again in the future, just maybe one day we could inherit the whole town! Now that would be awesome.
Next we drove through the area of Dartmoor, where we visited a ruined church on a hill and an area of stone circles and lines. We also stayed in probably our worst accommodation of the entire trip: a pub in the middle of nowhere, with no wifi in the room and a shower that seemed like some naughty kid was secretly controlling the water temperature and pressure so that it would jump up and down whenever he pleased.
The B&B we stayed in at Fareham was so luxury after that - a big comfy bed, proper shower and breakfast in the morning. While there we visited Portchester Castle and met up with an old friend of Mum’s who had the odd name of Fliss. It was she who introduced us to the typical British thing of a cup of tea and scone with clotted cream, which were delicious.
And just as we were starting to feel a bit British, it was time to head back to London, hand in Katie and get ready for country number three: France. That’s in blog part 2…
No comments:
Post a Comment