Now we come to the flight. As always flying is a pain, with the fact that after leaving home at 6:30 AM we had to wait in Auckland from just after 9:00 PM for our International flight at 2:15 AM made the day drag a bit. Then it was on to Tahiti with an hour on the ground and change planes, through security again, and then off to Los Angeles arriving around 3:00am New Zealand time, or 9:00am the day before local time. Confused? So were we particularly as we were so tired.

Contrary to what we thought US Immigration and Customs was a breeze. First there was line up for Immigration and as there were several it was surprisingly quick, but having to wait it line had the advantage that when we had had our fingerprint and photo taken our baggage was off the carousel and all stacked together, it was a case of put it on a trolley and walk straight through Customs. Finding the shuttle service was no problem and we were at our hotel before lunch time.

Anaheim

The Howard Johnson hotel at Anaheim and the staff were really top line! We can’t find anything but praise for them all! The same would go for all the locals and most of the tourists we met while we were there. As one would expect the attractions were very good and lots of fun. We did 3¹/₂ days at Disneyland, 1 day Universal Studios (Good but a bit long and tiring 8 hours) and 1¹/₂days California Adventure. We could write a lengthy log just about ours stay here but this was a means to an end namely, our cruise, so it was on to England and Ireland.

Ireland

After a one night stopover in London it was up early to go on to Ireland, flying with TV’s “Easy Jet” so we knew it was a case of make it on time or miss out. Our plane took off an hour late (Seems it doesn’t matter so much if they are the ones that are late.) so we were feeling a bit sorry for our friend how was meeting us having to wait around, we, by this time, were getting used to it.

Ireland was a lovely place, we really enjoyed our stay there. The house we were staying in was hundreds of years old with walls about 2 feet thick. We spent some time travelling in the country side through narrow lanes with stone walls covered in ivy or similar climbing vines. One of the most intriguing places we went was “The Magic Road”. A down hill road of reasonable steepness, where if you stop, take the car out of gear, and leave the break off, the car will roll. Not forwards down hill, but backwards, up hill, picking up speed all the while. If we hadn’t seen it for ourselves we would not have believed it. The highlight of our time in Ireland would have been the tour through Waterford Crystal Factory, this was a really interesting conducted tour through the whole works covering everything from making the moulds, blowing the glass, right through to engraving and quality control and a demonstration by a master engraver. So after 3 very enjoyable days it was back to London by Easy Jet.