Overview Hawaii Sydney Auckland
We got up and went down the street to a little restaurant for breakfast. Checked out of our hotel room and headed up into the mountains to see what could be seen.
We then drove back down to the pier and walked along that for a while. Chearl bought some beanie babies there and I bought some postcards. We piddled around for a while longer and then headed south to see what we could find. We sort of decided to try to spend another night north of L.A. so Ventura seemed like a good be at the time.
We tried to find a room at the Holiday Inn and they had no space at all, so we went down to the DoubleTree where they could put us up but they did not have a room ready yet.
We drove through town and Chearl went to a little antique shop just to see what was available. Then we walked to this neat old building where we had lunch. They were out of everything! It was a Friday at lunchtime and they had nothing. The service was not too good, but the food that WAS available was quite good.
We drove back to the hotel and checked in and then headed down to the Channel Islands National Park where I finally bought one of the passport books. We watched the pelicans fishing.
We drove down the highway for dinner and ate at an Olive Garden. Somewhere along the trip I lost my comb and we then spent the rest of the evening on a quest to find a drug store. California doesn't seem to have any such place. We looked and looked and never were able to find one.
We were back at the hotel sort of snoozing about 11 p.m. when all of a sudden we heard a queer buzzing coming from the hallway. Turns out the fire alarm had been set off, so we got dressed, grabbed our valuables and headed out. After a few minutes, it was apparent that this was a false alarm and we returned to the room. However, early in the morning again, the fire alarm was set off again. What a night!
We got up and started down the highway to Hollywood. We made a wrong turn north of the city and had to stop for directions again.
We finally found Hollywood Blvd., parked the car and went to buy the tickets. We had made reservations yesterday and shouldn't have any problems.
We were going to be on a small van for the trip. I started off sitting in the middle and became quite claustrophobic. I finally got off the van and asked if we could get our money back. A cooler head prevailed and I admitted to another of the customers that I was uncomfortable in the middle and would he be willing to trade seats. Sitting on the outside helped and the tour was interesting.
We returned to the start, walked down the street a ways, got the car and headed to find some gas before returning to the airport.
The flight back to Cincinnati was only 3 1/2 hours today. Not bad.
In retrospect, the parts of this planet that we saw were worth the trip. In other ways, spending almost 40 hours on an airplane in an 8 day period certainly took it's toll.