Last Night in San Diego

Well Carlsbad actually - about 30 mins North of San Diego. Where did I get to from the last blog?...thats right Wednesday night - just before Universal Studios. Before I get into that - just a note to say we have uploaded a whole heap more photos (probably 70-80 total) so if you want to see the latest ones, just scroll through manually or visit http://picasaweb.google.com.au/diabraa/SydneyAndAuckland2008072820080801 - I promise I will associate the pics with their locations when I get a few spare minutes :)

Thursday and we took the shuttle to Universal Studios. I would highly recommend staying at the Sheraton or Hilton if you are going to Universal Studios, as the free shuttle (which is a 5 min ride, if that!) would save you so much in time and money that you would have to spend staying anywhere further away. Anyway, every review and person we spoke to who had ever been to Universal says get the $139 front of line pass (per person) and you can get through it all without waiting in obscenely long lines. Well, given we have 2 days for the price of one (a special we found online at their website) I figured that we would just cruise around, ride what we could and save the passes for the second day (yet to be enjoyed). Well, we were incredibly blessed with the longest wait in any line being only @ 20 mins, so we got through every ride (a couple twice) and a show where I (Raoul) got the opportunity to be part of the show, albeit rather poorly and I ended up being killed, but was heaps of fun. Started at the Simpsons and just went around all the ones with the shortest wait (they have an electronic board that updates regularly telling you what wait times are at which line). Obviously something else was on somewhere else that day, as a lot of rides were only 5 - 10 mins wait. All in all - we all loved it completely. Shuttled back to the hotel, and finally fell asleep again in the early hours - damn these time zones!!!

Friday rocks up and we are heading to San Diego. First things first, headed in a taxi to pickup our rental car. Talk about induction by fire to driving in LA!!! After having a friendly discussion with the manager of Hertz about what is classified as a large car, he upgraded me to a Subaru Forester, which apparently is larger than what they classify as a large car. In the land where everything is on a massive scale (Walked around car yards tonight, and most of the utes I would need a ladder to get into the cockpit of!!) this absolutely astounded me, so tip for travellers hiring a car, do NOT go by their descriptions of the car, and unless you are happy with something with a boot that is lucky to hold more than 2 large suitcases, go the SUV option!! Enough said. The traffic here is actually not that bad, when you get onto the freeway. The hardest thing to get used to is what side of the road you should be getting onto as you turn corners. That and their turn right on red rule, which nearly got me a couple of times! On the freeway you basically do quick headcheck, indicate, turn at the same time, close your eyes and hope you hit nothing - well thats how the locals appear to do it (minus the closing eyes bit). If someone honks when you indicate and start turning, stay in your lane. After a few wrong turns and getting used to the way things are signed, and the way the GPS tells you where to go, we finally made it onto the I5 (I wont mention our goal was to get onto the I101), which ended up being exactly where we needed to be, as the I101 bypasses Carlsbad, which would have meant a trip to San Diego, then turn back to Carlsbad, unless there was a turnoff somewhere. Anyway, staying at the Holiday Inn and it has been really good, nice atmosphere, almost perfect weather, near the sea, warm, but not sweltering. RVers (motorhomes to us Aussies) heaven apparently, as there are literally thousands of them just shacked up on any little road that goes toward the water. On the way we accidentally drove into a huge discount clothing outlet area (the Citadel near Santa Ana for those who might want to visit - super cheap, and all good brands like osh kosh, billabong, CK, etc @ 50 - 80% discounted prices) whilst looking for some lunch and a toilet stop. We ran into a family from the UK with 2 boys there who we had just met 2 days prior on our tour of the stars homes - what are the chances!! When we finally made it to Carlsbad we went out for a meal, and once again, tried to get to sleep, but succeeded in the early hours of the next morning.

Saturday we drove down to Seaworld, which we managed to find without the aid of the GPS!!! It was quite good, but honestly, was a bit hard to navigate around, and only 2 rides, one of which the line was so long that we didnt even bother trying. We went to a couple of their shows and looked around a bit. We thought it would settle down of the evening (its open until 11pm with fireworks @ 9:50pm) but it just got livelier, and harder to see anything, so we decided to head back @ 8pm. It was good, but honestly, the one in Aussie is better, esp. for kids. We headed back, and D and the boys went for a late night swim, whilst I restrained Nyah from trying to join them in her PJ's. Luckily her jumping action is not quite accurate, and she doesnt like the bubbles of the hot tubs, so I kept her near there as much as possible.

That brings us to today - LEGOLAND!!! Wahoo - talk about a great day, perfect weather, not too many people there (comparatively) and fairly short waits for the rides. The boys both got to perform a small part in a play, and Elijah and I had the chance to play with some of the robotic lego stuff - tres cool! We got to experience pretty much everything there, except the skyride, which broke down whilst we were waiting in line for it - bummer. Pretty much everything else went well and once again, staying close by with free shuttle saved many $$ on fuel and parking. Well, its 11:45pm now, so in the interests of trying to get into sync with the time zone, I will sign off, and post again in a few days. Tomorrow we head northward to Disneyland, where we will be staying for 5 days. Feel free to comment or ask questions in this blog, as I am sure to have missed stuff out somewhere along the line :)