Los Angeles

One day we went to Disneyland for 10 hours, here we are in front of the Splash Mountain ride, this was the ride we had to line up the longest for, probably 40 minutes on our second time around. We all had a good time here, the boys were too scared to stand up and do the Jedi training show, it was quite well done. Alison made us go on the "it's a small world" ride. We went on most of the big rides twice and were pretty nakked by the time we got back to the hotel.

Whoops, forgot to turn this one over, on day two we went to California Adventure park - land whatever. We raced in and saw this ride (behind us) the Tower of terror, as it was the tallest in the park so we thought we better go on it first. Al said she wasn't going to go on it and I was also a bit apprehensive, we both had sweaty hands, I think kids were oblivious to what was going on. We both ended going on it and it was pretty scary, when we came off Caleb he didn't want to go on that again but he was the one making us you on it for a second time before we left. The California scream roller coaster was was pretty cool, it shot you up the first hill rather than pulling you up so from go to whoa it was full on.

Here's us outside Disneyland, leaving to catch our shuttle into town, in the background you can see people lining to get into Disneyland for the last two hours of the day.

On our third day we went to Universal Studios, on the way there we met two couples from Tauranga who had stopped in LA to go to a Genesis concert. Universal Studios was not really what I expected, I was expecting crusty old sets from old movies etc. but man what a great place. There was a great water ride along the Jurassic park lines that was very impressive, and the Mummy ride was mind blowing. They also had shows, such as backdraft (where they lit the set on fire while we were in it) and a 3D terminator show that was pretty good, there was even the blue brothers for the oldies. Here's some photos on the tour around Universal Studios.

Here's some special effects they used in Too Fast Too Furious

Here's a flash flood that came towards the bus and is diverted at the last minute.

Jaws, man how long has this been around, 25 years? It was pretty cool, big explosions and big plastic fish jumping out of the water, I did actually jump when jaws came out of the water.

Here we are posing for the family photo after a hard day at Universal Studios.

Here's the view down the first at the Westchester Golf Club, ended up having quite a good round here. Played with a ex-pat pommie sausage maker (Martin) and a retired cigar smoking construction engineer (Grant), it was pretty good playing with the locals.

Here's us in the pool at the second hotel we stayed at, Caleb and Al had a day by the pool and Hamish and I went and played golf on our "free" day.

Here's the Simpson star we saw on the walk of fame, we ended up getting a few investments while we were there, tee-shirts and the like.

Here we are standing somewhere in Hollywood, if you look closely you can see the Hollywood sign in the background over Al's right (depending on how look at it) shoulder. This is the thing to do apparently, there was heaps of people taking photo at this spot.

Summary of LA what a cool place, good weather and heaps to do.

The only downer was the travel agent we used booked us into Six Flags Magic Mountain, the biggest roller coaster park in LA and didn't realise it was closed on the day we were meant to go there. We found this out when we got to LA and the response from the travel by fax was, sorry about that, organise something yourselves for that day. This was not the only problem we had with the travel agent on this leg of the tour, we had some dates in mind at the start of planning for this trip and we went ahead and booked everything , then Al found out that the LA portion of our tour coincided with the US school holidays (you would have thought the travel agent would know that), so we had to change the tour dates. The next thing was we were booked in for Six Flags but we were staying out at Disneyland, a week before we were flying out the travel agent informed us that the tour provider would not pick us up at Disneyland and take us to Six Flags as it was too far so we had to change our hotels half way through the stay in LA (still didn't work out it was going to be closed).

Ok, I've had my bitch, that's got that out of the way. Now all I need to do is go and see them about some reimbursements ...........x#*%@&!!!

We had a good flight home, the kids slept nearly all the way and now we're back at work or school and our trip is becoming a distance memory way too fast. I would to thank everyone who made this trip a lifetime event for myself, Al and the boys and we look forward to seeing any of our distance friends and relatives in Gods Own.

This will be the last entry for the trip, not sure if I'll keep it up as a diary type thing, I'll talk to Al about that.

Thanks everyone and seeing you soon, the Cradz.

Last days in the UK

Here's a photo of one of the holes on the Oxfordshire course I played on. My cousin Jason organised the round for me, it cost 50 pounds, usually 100 pounds, pretty steep. This picture is of the 8th green looking back towards the tee that is in the distance to the left of the tree on the island. My play of this hole was not conventional, I hit my ball on to the island (you'll notice that there is no path to the island) and no I didn't swim out to play my next shot. I took a drop, hit my third shot to within 2 foot of the pin and sunk my par putt. For those of you that don't know the first thing about golf, although it's shit golf it's a good score given the circumstances.
Here's a photo of some friends we went to see, David, Lynda, Louis and Hollie. David came out to New Zealand with my cousin back in the 90's and came to our wedding.

This is Wendy and Roger, mum's youngest sister. It's Wendy and Roger's son that organised my golf at the Oxfordshire and let me borrow his Callaway clubs that didn't really work for me. We went to Wendy and Rogers for a roast meal which was exceptional, she cooks like mum used to before she went to the pub, hopefully when mum come home she will start home cooking again.
This photo was taken on our last night in Thame, the dreaded night the All Blacks lost. I did have an opportunity to go to the game and we were only about two hours drive away but the tickets were 240 euros each, glad I didn't go really. Going round the table left to right Caleb, me, mum, Ginia (cousin), Angie (cousin's wife), Terrence (cousin), dad, Chris (cousin) and Al.
Here's a photo of us with Chris, mum and dad stayed with Chris while they were in Thame.Chris also kindly let us use his computer to update the blog.
This is Joyce and Jackie, (mum's oldest sister and her husband), Ginia, Terrence and Chris are Joyce and Jackie's kids.
This is Jimmy and Muriel with the boys. This was our last night in the UK, we stay at Oxford with Jimmy so we could catch the bus to Heathrow. We went to a Chinese restaurant just down the road from Jimmy's place.
And here we are ready to get on the plane for the first leg of our trip home, next stop LA.

Legoland!

Legoland, what a great place. A bit expensive, but an annual pass is cheaper that two visits, so if you lived here you would definitely go for that option. (Tom and Merry got in for the senior price here too!) Hamish thinks he would like to work at Harrods Toy Kingdom, and live next door to Legoland.
We were here from 10am (when it opened) until 5pm (when it closed). There weren't too many people here, mostly just a few school groups. I don't think we'd like it during holidays, or weekends, you can just imagine that the queues would be huge.
There was a large area of model scenes from around UK and Europe. 40 million lego blocks worth.

This was our first ride, nice and easy gentle ride.

This was the Viking water ride. Needless to say we got very wet on this one. Lucky it was a sunny day. Here are the boys squirting water at other people on the ride.

This is boat school. I don't know how I get roped into these things.

This is driving school. Luckily required no parent participation.

This was the speed surfer ride. Every now and then a 'mine' would go off and wet anyone that was near it.
This was the log flume, needless to say we got wet again.

There were also a couple of roller coasters, that the kids loved. Hamish particulary enjoyed the fact that his Mum screamed on both of them.

Another day in London

Had another day out in London. It drizzled with rain most of the day, but we still enjoyed it. The kids favourite place was the toy department in Harrods, it was called Toy Kingdom which gives some indication of what it was like. They employ people to use the toys and play with customers, what a cool job that would be.
At Green Park you could rent deck chairs, £1.50 for 2 hrs, £2.00 for 4 hours, £30.00 for season tickets.

Changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

Trafalgar Square.

Outside Tower of London. Very gruesome place.

Don't get to see this too often. The Tower Bridge was raised to let two tall masted boats go through. We saw them waiting when we walked over the bridge (in the rain) and thought that they would have a long wait because it was rush hour traffic. I guess the boats have the right of way.

Windsor Castle

We had a look around Windsor Castle. Tom and Merry got to enter as 'seniors', which was a bit cheaper than adult price, Merry was astonished they didn't question it.
They don't allow photos to be taken inside, but it was really crammed full of artifacts. Amazing to think that they actually use it as a residence and for royal functions. It's really more like a museum.
We had audio tour to listen to as we walked around. There was a kids version which they really enjoyed, and made it more interesting for them.

Bekonstoc Model Village

This model village was somewhere Richard remembers from visits to England when he was small. It was really neat, you had to walk around it a couple of times to see all the detail to it. The photos don't really show it, but the weather was quite miserable. Though the rain held off until we were under shelter having a cuppa.

Family Garden Party

Aunty Jill and Uncle Len put on a fantastic party for us, to get some of the relatives all in the same place at the same time. They put up marques in their garden, and Aunty Jill prepared enough food to feed an army! It was great to all be together, and with some to have one last catch up.

Here are most of the Crockford sisters: Jacqueline, Jennifer, Jill, Merrilyn, Wendy, Janet

Spain

Ok, here's the posting for Spain, I will endeavour to get commentary for the previous posting completed at some stage. The first photo here is of Hamish after he had lost his boarding pass out the window at the departure gate. On Ryanair you don't get allocated seats and it's a mad rush to get on first, if you haven't got priority booking, so you can seat where you want to. When Hamish lost his boarding pass the lady at the gate let us go on first so we got six seats together. We got to Spain about 10pm and were picked up by uncle Jimmy. Jimmy was not used to driving from the airport at night and we ended up going the wrong way for about 50km before Jimmy realised that we were going the wrong way. We got to where we were going, Jimmy's mate Eric's at about 12.30am.

Here we all are on our first day in Spain, bathing in the Banya, a place where warm mineral water comes out of the ground, very nice and relaxing. You can see and lake in the background that is used for water for the cities of Granada and Almeria and also hydro power generation.

After the banya we went to a pommy restaurant for Sunday roast, a massive meal followed by may cerveras (thavesas, beers) and vino tintos (red wines). Seemed to be big part of our trip to Spain, mucho cerveras. Apparently if you speak loud enough, slow enough and put o at the end of each word the Spanish can understand you, not. I found it quite good to try and use the phase book and I think people were more appreciative and helpful if they could see you trying.

Jimmy has a villa on the outskirts of the village of Freila and here some photos from around the village, peppers drying on the side of a house.

Two old boys processing almonds

Here we are swimming in the lake, the temperature in Spain while we were there was about 28 degrees mid day. In the morning it would start at about 19 degrees. The Spanish apparently get up early do their work, go home ( the bar) at about two for a sleep siesta (drink), then go back to work at about 5. We didn't get round to having a siesta as we got up late and ate and drank all day, with minimal activities such as swimming, golf, swimming, market, etc.

Here's one of the holes on the Valle del Este golf course I played on.

Here's Caleb on the coast at Vera while Hamish and I were playing golf.

Here we are after lunch by the dam end of the lake one day, the oldies were sleeping.

Here's a view back up the valley to Jimmy's place, olive trees in the valleys and almond trees on the ridges.

Jimmy's place in the evening prior to us going down to the village for more cervesas and vino tintos, yeah baby, it's a hard life.

View through the almond trees to Jimmy's villa with Freila in the background.

Us with Jimmy before we left for Granada and the plane back to England.

Here we are at the top of Granada looking towards the Alhambra (I think that's how you spell it)

I do know how to turn these photo's around but forgot to turn this one around, sorry Al. When we got to Granada and boarded our plane we were informed that there had been a bird strike on landing and the plane needed some work prior to takeoff. This meant that we had to stay over night in Granada, Ryanair said that they would reimburse our cost so I hope they do, it ended up costing us about $700 extra for the six of us.

All in all Spain was a very cool place, nice and hot, good beer, and good food and cheap in comparison to some places we've been. I think we will be back to see Jimmy in Freila again some time.