I <3 Downtown LA

Alright, today we went to Downtown Los Angeles to explore the city's often ignored/disliked central district. Anyway, I've always been a sucker a good urban area (just thinking about Manhattan makes me go weak at the knees), and so LA has me hooked.
So, I'm not really gonna write too much, but rather, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Our first stop in downtown LA was Olvero street. Just across the road from LA's famous Union station, Olvero street is a mexican street market which houses LA's oldest standing structure, a rancher's second home built in the spanish adobe style almost 200 years ago. We also went to 'Mr Churro', where they sell their namesake, a traditional Mexican straight doughnut.

In Chinatown, we found an amazing chinese grocer/department store with a brilliant view across the city.

Once we had done Chinatown, we went the the Walt Disney Philharmonic hall, a stunning, incredibly photogenic builiding designed by world famous architect Frank Gehry.

The search for lunch and a more of LA's hidden beauty brought us to the amazing Grand Central market, where you can get a whole range of delicious food from around the world for ridiculously cheap price, including lemonade as big as your head for just $US2.50.

Once done, we walked across to Little Tokyo with full bladders (those drink must be a litre each), then made our way back through the mean streets of LA (lots of homeless people) to our car, at which time we did a short drive around some parts of the city we missed, then headed home via an open-air shopping mall called Block at Orange.

Tommorow, we leave town at 6AM, making our way up the coast towards San Francisco over the next 3 days. I might not get a chance to update until then, so until I next seeya, have fun and stay in contact!

Thanksgiving in full

Thanksgiving, one of the biggest days on the US calendar, and we spent it on the beaches of the OC and at a theme park.
We had a little later start than the day before, and we headed down to Newport Beach and Balboa, the inspiration for the popular piece of soap-fluff show The OC. And while I can't say I'm a huge fan, it's a beautiful area, full of rich people and interesting places.

Newport Beach is the real top end of town in Orange County (because LA is so large, much of what we think of as 'LA' is in fact part of Orange County, which lies to the South-East of Los Angeles county. Wealthy people with expensive cars, houses, boats and private jetties abound, and it's fun to just go down there and check the place out.

After we were finished salivating over the nice cars and fancy houses, we took the (decidedly rickety looking) ferry from the dock (I'm a rebel) across the river to the small community of Balboa Island. I decided to get all arty with the camera, as well as finding a bunch of cool looking spots on the island itself.

Once we were done down at the beach, we headed back North to the Knott's Berry Farm Theme Park. These guys have a special pass which meant that we could get cheap tickets after 4PM. Unfortunately, being Thanksgiving, the park closed at 8PM, so we had 4 hours to see as much stuff as possible. It's lucky then, that Knott's, which has a licensing agreement with the Snoopy franchise, wasn't nearly as busy as Disneyland, so we got to go on 7 or 8 rides before closing time. Additionally, the Knott's rides are much more intense than the Disneyland ones, so they're more suited to the thrill-seekers amongst us, I think I went upside-down more often in that 4 hour period than I had in the last year (Cassie - including going to the show, you woulda -loved- these rides.).
Once we were done at Knott's we had a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner at a local Denny's... I had fried chicken. Oh, and I remembered how much Dr Pepper rocks. That is all.

Disneyland in full

Alright, after over 13 hours at Disneyland yesterday and a reasonable amount of sleep last night, I'm in a much better state to write about Disneyland.
When we decided that we were off to Disneyland, we looked up a bunch of guides and resources on the internet, and they all said about the same thing. "PLAN YOUR VISIT". So we looked up the rides and attractions beforehand, checked parade times, figured out ticketing etc etc and by the time we reached the park just after the gates opened at 8AM Wednesday morning, I felt that we were pretty prepared. Well, the best laid plans and all that, we ended up doing things in all sorts of orders at all sorts of times. But, when we left at quarter to 10 that night, it turns out we did and saw pretty much everything we wanted to (with one exception, but I'll go into that later).
So, park overview time. basically, Disneyland is split up into 8 sections, as you can see on this (slightly out of date) map, though these sometimes blend and bleed into each-other.
Main Street, USA is the centre of the park. While there are no rides in Main Street, it acts as a hub for all of the other Lands, as well as housing most of the shops in the park (of which there are a great many).
Passing through Main Street USA, we found some lockers to put our backpack in (we had packed some lunch on account of the ridiculously expensive food prices at the park, which are only exacerbated by the Australian-US dollar exchange rate. $2.50 (US) for a Dill Pickle? No Thankyou.). At this point, at around 8:15 in the morning, the park was quite quiet, so we decided to do on a couple of the rides which we knew would be busy later on in the day. Our first stop occured in Adventureland, an island-themed land and, as you can see, Hayley and Pippa's natural habitat. The Indiana Jones ride took us in a jeep through volcanoes and the jungle before we were chased down a narrow passae by a giant rolling boulder. Next, we went to one of the park's oldest attractions, the jungle cruise. In Adventureland, this involves a cruise through a jungle full of animatronic creatures, as well as the various wisecracks and corny jokes of the tour guide (I think I found a job for Alex). Next, we took a look at Frontierland, a Wild-west themed section with a shooting gallery (I'm not very good), an old tyme saloon, a train-ride rollercoaster called thunder mountain and more gift shops. After getting thoroughly wet at Splash mountain, we proceeded on to New Orleans Square, where we went on the Pirates of the Carribean animatronic boat ride (complete with evil-ghost-skeleton-pirates), as well as the Haunted house, which has been appropriated by a 'Nightmare before Christmas' themed dark ride ('dark ride is the term used to describe the rides where you get in a little carriage and proceed through a series of animatronic scenes in the dark). Next, we went to Tom Sawyer island, and explored the forts and caves there, as well as having a lovely picnic lunch. When we returned to the fantasy castle, we saw a bunch of people gathered around. Looking closer, we found that we had stumbled upon some kind of teen beauty contest, with girls wearing sashes and tiaras posing for photos. Fantasyland was our next stop, and the world famous teacups ride.
After dizzying ourselves on the teacups, we took on the Matterhorn Bobsled ride, which travels through one of the parks landmarks features, a 1/64th scale model of the Matterhorn mountain in the Swiss Alps. We hung around the park for a little longer, taking on the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blast ride (not too special) and the Space Mountain rollercoaster (amazing). Once that was all over, we watched the final fireworks, a 20 minute long spectacular which ends with a beautiful snowfall.
Overall, Disneyland was amazing. It was -busy- during the afternoon and evening (when we got there at 8, there was almost no-one around), but most of the rides we wanted to go on had a special ticket system, so we didn't spend much time waiting around in lines. We didn't end up seeing the "A Small World" dark ride, one of the iconic Disneyland attractions, just because of the huge lines, but everything else was just great.
Note that entries from now on might be shorter than these last 2, as I am very limited in my computer time with the whole family needing to check email, update blogs etc etc.

Disneyland in brief

Ok, no pictures for now, just dropping y'all a line to say that Disneyland was great fun, and I'll post a full report tomorrow.

Hey all. Well here I am, on the other side of the world and on the other side of about 33 hours without sleep, but we all made it here safe and sound, and without major incident. And with many, many photos. Just a quick warning, these photos have come straight from the digital camera and as such, they're pretty big. So be prepared for a bit of waiting if you're planning on looking at them all.
After a great night at the Valedictory, I went home and got about 3 hours sleep. Waking up the next morning and feeling just a little worse for wear, I joined the rest of the family for the trip out to the airport. After getting one last glimpse at the Melbourne skyline, we proceeded to the airport where, in line with tightened security measures, we were warned about unattelded baggage. Having passed through the check-in process, we proceeded to our lovely plane, a QANTAS 747 flying flight number QF 093. Once on board, we took off on time for the approximately 13 hour trip. Luckily, the flight was not full, and so there was room to stretch out a bit and even lie down, but as anyone who has tried to sleep on a plane will tell you, it's no mean feat to drop off when you're floating 10,000 metres in the air above the Pacific Ocean. So it was a long, relatively uneventful flight punctuated only by a brief spot of turbulence and what seems to me the woefully inappropriate screening of thriller movie 'Red Eye' (anyone who's seen the film will know exactly what I'm talking about). Either way, we approached LA with the rising of the sun, touching down at 7:20 AM local time. Luckily, none of us were carrying any explosives, weaponry, fruit or outwardly apparent disdain for American political leaders, and as such, passed through immigration and customs without event. We were in LA. We took the shuttle bus past the archetypal palm trees and to the car hire office, then grabbed our minivan and headed for Venice Beach. Venice beach, Los Angeles draws its name from the numerous canals that once graced its landscape, now replaced by roads and traffic lights, leaving only a remnant few bodies of water to remind us of the beach's namesake. Nowadays, Venice beach is home to skaters, surfers, body builders (sorry, no pics of them), cops, people selling drug paraphenalia and vendors with a less than satisfactory knowledge of Australian culture and/or basic literacy.
Once we were finished in Venice Beach, we took the scenic route back to our hotel in Anaheim. Travelling through the canyons of Beverly Hills and via the famous Mulholland Drive, we were afforded spectacular views of the San Fernando valley. We also managed to look back on the now smog bound downtown LA district, which had earlier been remarkably clear. Finally, we made it back to our hotel, situated just 2 blocks away from Disneyland and, after a short delay and a lovely meal at the local IHOP, settled into our rooms.
So, it certainly was an eventful day. I learnt a few things about LA and, I think, the US as a whole. Everything is bigger and wierder here, from the local Target to the Mormon temple to the beautiful mountain ranges surrounding the city. But it's also absolutely fascinating, the whole place has this strange life and vitality that exists at the same time as an utterly bizzare fakeness. And the sun goes down before 5:30... it's all very odd, but very, very cool. Bring on Disneyland!

T minus 11 hours

Well, 10 hours, 45 minutes, really. Just got back from the valedictory, and now I'm gonna get a couple of hours worth of sleep. Man, you guys need to post comments and stuff on here. Keep me from getting homesick. Anyway, I've given up my quest to not sleep. Mostly because I now have about 5 books to read on the plane, no time from sleeping in the air. Just hope the jetlag doesn't hit me too bad.... Anyway, I'm all packed and ready to leave on a jet plane. If Everything goes to plan, I'll Leave at 12 midday tommorow(today), arriving in LA at 7AM Tuesday local time (2AM Wednesday). We're planning on spending our first day at Venice Beach/Santa Monica (Check out how close it is to the airport), then driving down to our hotel in Anaheim (looks like a long way, but it's all on the freeways, so it shouldn't take too long, Google tells us 45 odd minutes, though if the traffic's bad, it'll be longer). Anyway, I won't have a chance to post here again at least until we get to the hotel, so Wednesday afternoon at the earliest. oh, and it looks like we'll be going to Disneyland on our second day there, Wednesday the 23rd of November.
So, bye for now, seeyall on the other side.