An ear ache in Diego

It took us a few hours to drive from Anaheim to San Diego so we arrived before we could check-in. 

We had two choices of places to stay. Either in a place called Gas Lamp which is the centre of San Diego or just outside at La Jolla where the beach was. We decided to stay at Gaslamp as it meant Cj could have a drink if we decided to go out. 

When we arrived we took a stroll from our America's best value inn hotel (we became quite brand loyal after this) into the centre. It was a sunday and there was some kind of charity fancy dress run on so the town was buzzing and the bars were full of people dressed in tutu's. 

We found an iHOP and had lunch in there. We liked San Diego. It was a clean city with a nice atmosphere. we attempted to walk around the city to Balboa park but at about half way we had been walking a while and realised America isn't a very walkable place. It came to about 2pm so we had to turn around and check in to our room.

We were impressed with our little hotel room for its cheap price. 

In the evening we went back out into the gas lamp district. We walked past a few clubs with people dresses in fancy dress outside. It was only about 7pm. There were quite a few nice restaurants here but us being on a budget we had to go with the very well known TGI Fridays. We were actually really surprised with how cheap the dinner was. 

The plan was to go out after but i had the most annoying ear ache and i could i could only hear out of one ear so i wasn't really in a partying mood. 

(we strolled past this famous place)

The next day we got up early to drive to our first tourist attraction. We did the Fort Rosecrans cemetery drive. It was a nice place with some great views of the city. Apparently whales can often be sighted in the sea surrounding us. Cj was adament he could see something (more a dolphin then a whale) floating around the shore line. So we drive down to get a closer look, it turned out to be a plank of wood:/ 

The drive to the light house at the top was along the coast. So pretty!

That is the city of San Diego.

After this we move on to out next stop. La Jolla cove. This place is very pretty and nice seaside town. We grabbed some lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea. We took a stroll along the cove and at one end there is a private beach jut for seals. There were so many of them. 

These are seals with their pups...soooo cute!!!

After La Jolla we drove up to see the view at Mount Soledad. This is a big hill that looks over La Jolla and there is a memorial up there. 

The view over La Jolla.

(A good thing to come out of the ear ache. We got to see a cool Cathedral) 

By this time it was pretty much the end of the day. My ear was hurting real bad on this day, i had taken so many pain killers so we decided to find a big pharmacy and see if they have something to give me. We arrived at the CVS pharmacy somewhere between La Jolla and San Diego. The pharmacist told me that if i have an ear ache it's probably an infection so he can only give me something with a prescription. He told us to go to an urgent care centre and see a doctor. 

This was something i wanted to avoid as i knew it would be hassle and expensive. In the end i decided to see a doctor as i had this ear ache for 2 weeks and it was getting worse, not to mention the gunk coming out of it (it was  gross).

The sat nav picked up a near by centre which was already loaded into the options. We had no wifi so we had no idea if the sat nav was correct. We drove about 20 miles to a town  that looked pretty posh. The sat nav led us down a road with huge houses. We didn't think there would be an urgent care centre at the end of the road, and there wasn't. Never trust a sat nav! 

We drove back to San Diego to find a centre. It was quite late by this time so we were pretty hungry but wanted to get this out the way before the centre closed at 10pm. I was seen by a doctor pretty quickly as it wasn't that busy at this time. I obviously dont have American insurance so i had to pay to see the doctor up front. I couldn't believe the cost when she told me, it was something around the $175 mark. 

I saw the doctor and he told me i had swimmers ear infection and my ear drops stuck in my ear:/ (which is why i couldn't hear)  i bought some ear drops in New Zealand as it felt blocked and thought they might work when i got the ear infection in Fiji. They obviously didn't work and left me with a huge bill. My prescription was for some special ear drops which we had to get at a bear by pharmacy. And the cost of these tiny ear drops was shocking. My ear ache cost me £300, aarrghhh!! Luckily i should get some of that back from my travel insurance. 

Once we had finished with the doctors we drove around to find a McDonalds (we didn't have to drive far as America has one on pretty much every corner). This was our dinner for today. We ate back at our hotel and packed up ready to leave San Diego the next morning. 

The wonderful Downtown LA and Disneyland

We landed in Los Angeles and got the shuttle bus to the Alamo rental place. We had already booked our economy car so all we had to do was pick it up. 

We thought Alamo would assign us to a car but instead the guy just said turn left and pick a car. We chose a 5 door white Hyundai. I got the sat nav prepped with our hotel address. This didn't work. Apparently there are many Main streets in LA so we ended up driving to a posh neibourhood  that was currently holding a high school market. We figured this was not the main street we were looking for so we took a stroll to the local library to ask somebody for a better address to put in our sat nav. 

Cj, was actually pretty good at the American driving. He didn't like the huge 7 lane highways into La as we quickly realised that lanes come off all the time so if you are not in the correct lane you're driving off the highway. Our sat nav was pretty quick at re-calculating so in the end we got to our hotel. 

We were slightly worried about LA's well known ghetto side and didn't want to end up driving down them, little did we know that our hotel was pretty much in a ghetto. Our first impression of LA wasn't very good. We arrived early evening so we felt slightly vulnerable walking around downtown trying to find somewhere to eat. We couldn't see any restaurants around our block so we decided to pick-up a large pizza to takeaway back to the safety of our hotel room. The pizza was american size huge. 

(Our hotel is the building that say's Cecil)

The next day we decided to leave pur hotel room. I wanted to see the Disney opera house so we went for a little walk. Downtown didnt seem as dodgy in the day but there were some odd characters roaming around with trolleys. The opera building was situated in LA's financial district so a few blocks away LA looks a lot better. We grabbed lunch in a cool food market. It was crazy, very busy and to order food you have to yell your order to the waitresses across people sitting and eating at the bar. We split up briefly as Cj wanted a burger and i wanted a chinese. Being very english i started to queue until a mexican man told me i have to just push my way to the front and yell my order. This frazzled me so he kindly did it for me, plus he could speak spanish so he got the waitresses attention quicker. He was on his lunch break and told me we have come to California at a good time as the weather was supposed to be good. The weekend before was horrid rain. 

After our down town exploring we got into the car and drove to Citidel outlets. My cheap trainers from Malaysia had finally given up as i have already had to sew them back together once before. We came here to get me some cheap nike trainers. It was also good to see the more stereotypical posh side of America after our downtown experience. 

My new trainers!

To get out of our hotel block we had to drive down a road called skidt row. This was a road we wanted to avoid driving down. Cj was panicking we'd end up having to stop at a red light. The path was full of make shift tents made out of blankets, ground sheets and umbrellas. There was a lot of homeless people hanging around in groups. The buildings were very run down and abandoned. We were shocked as we've never seen anything like this before. Luckily the lights stayed green and we were off that road pretty quickly. 

We picked up our car from the valet parking an was on the road by 8am the next morning. We were quite glad to leave downtown and be on our way to disneyland.

Disney land is located in a place called Anaheim, which is about 40mins from LA. We had an amazing time at the original disney. We were worried that going here on a saturday was a bad choice. It wasn't too busy though and it was a hot, sunny day. Our favourite ride was big thunder mountain and the Indiana Jones ride. It was a long day as we didn't leave until 10pm. We checked in to a motel up the road for 1 night. 

I won on the Buzz ride, whoop!!

Frozen in the parade

Blue lagoon family

We were only planning to stay at Blue lagoon resort for 2 nights before heading to Beachcomber island to end our Fiji holiday. After a few hours here, Cj was adament that he didn't want to go to Beachcomber. He has been before and describes it as a not very party island with rubbish food. Its supposed to be the party island but the partying depends on who's on the island.

If we were to stay at blue lagoon, it meant losing our money and spending more to stay the extra 2 nights. Cj, decided the next morning that he really didn't want to go to beachcomber so he booked us in for 2 more nights. 

In the end we were so glad we stayed. Blue lagoon was our favourite place and we met loads of really cool people.

As soon as we got to the island i noticed that they had a village tour in the afternoon. I was desperate to do a village tour on one of this islands and this was the only day they were doing it whilst we were there. So i signed Cj and myself up. We had to get on a boat to the village island. We arrived to a boat full of Fiji kids on their way back home for the weekend. There was a large school on this island so many kids board during the week and go home for the weekend. We walked through a forest path into a huge field which was the schools rugby pitch. The pitch was surrounded by class rooms. We were aloud to have a peek into the classrooms and some of the students sang to us. They were very good. Our tour guide took us to the village were the fijians live. It felt like a really nice community village. The village had 3 churches, a mini mart shop and a village hall. In the hall the locals put on a little market for us. I bought a turtle necklace and a wooden ornament. 

Saturday night was party night. So after dinner a large group of us rounded up around a table to play ring of fire. It was fun, there was probably too many of us to really play the game properly. One of the guys in our dorm room named Mike was actually below Cj's bunk bed on mantaray island. He was english but had been living in new zealand for the past 2 years. He was a character. He joined us for dinner most nights. On party night he was pretty funny. I can only describe him as Alan from the hangover. He did get quite drunk and did some funny things. We also met the lovely Sonia on this night. She is an LA girl and gave us loads of tips about our american adventure. We met Jeff too, who is Blue lagoons dive instructor. A local Fijian and one of the friendliest people we have met. Cj got noticed as a Bradley Cooper look alike so we joke that we have The hangover crew with Alan too.

It was Jeff who was hosting the islands party night. The first game was limbo. If i remember rightly, Cj stacked it on the 2nd to last round which was pretty good going as he was the last man standing. A few other girls and myself made it to the final round and we decided to call ourselves the winners and share the winning bottle of champagne. 

That was round one, game 2 was a funny game. Jeff told us to get into groups of 5. Boys being boys decided to make a group together (Cj included) as they thought their manliness would  win them a bottle of champagne. This was until the game rules were announced. Now we were laughing at the guys as we had to get rather close to our team mates and try and pop a balloon between the legs of the person in front, by thrusting our hips forward (basically a rude move). So now we knew this detail, imagine the guy's reaction when they realised their manliness would be demolished. To be fair to them, they came 3rd and actually really went for it. It was hilarious. I was in a group of girls and we came second. 

The third and final game of the night was a dizzy one. We had to again get into groups. This time the guy's split up. We had to take it in turns to run to the pole at the end and run around the pole 5 times with our head down. I should mention that there was several free shots as well as champagne throughout these games so this spinning sent most people on the floor. Cj and myself were in the winning team so we got some champagne. I actually did ok with the free alcohol on games night. 

Once the games was over we all played another game of ring of  fire followed by a very entertaining game of Zimmi zimmi. This was Brent, a canadians speciality so he led the game whilst we all tried to get the hang of the rhythm and remember our number to call out. 

The drinking games started to fizzle out as people started to get up and dance. An American couple put on a show on the dance floor with some funny moves. 

The night didnt end there as Jeff performed some fire dancing as we all sat in the beach. some people also went skinny dipping (including Cj). Although it was the girls who were the brave one's and did it properly. The boys kept their boxers on. One of the girls told us that the plankton in the sea glows in the dark at night. A few of the girls and myself waited to see if this was true before we went into the sea. Unfortunately there was no plankton so we stayed dry whilst everyone else came out wet. The night ended when some of the guys jumped in the pool and security got involved.

The next morning we said goodbye to quite a few of the guys as they moved onto their next islands. We chilled out in the day and in the evening we watched Walter Mitty as it was movie night. 

Our last day was spent soaking up the sun rays and swimming in the sea. We had dinner with another couple from Manchester who are also travelling the world. We met them on out first night on this island. 

We were really sad to leave Blue Lagoon. We had so much fun and met some really cool people that we are still in touch with now. 

We head back to Nadi. It was a long trip back as it was 4 hours on the Yasawa flyer. 

We only stayed in Nadi for 2 nights before our flight to LA. we didnt do anything on these days. We just caught up on admin as it had been 2 weeks. 

We almost left Cj's phone charging in the hotel as we arrived at the airport and remembered he forgot his phone. Luckily there was a very nice man from smuggles cove (staff) who rang the manager to bring Cj's phone in a taxi. We were very lucky we got his phone back, especially as we use the apps on his phone to sort all accommodation and money. 

(the local village choir sang to up before our dinner)

Amazing sun set on our last night at Blue Lagoon.