I Don’t Think This is For Me.

The strategic gap in the curtains I had left the night before had worked well and I was awake several hours earlier than I usually was, despite the fact I had been up to midnight watching a new series on Discovery (Brewmasters, check it out if you’re into beer). Still I rolled back over and went back to sleep as Rebecca had been struggling to get to sleep all night, wrestling with what seemed to be an infection of some kind. Three hours later I got us both out of bed and ready for the day ahead, one that would take us over a hundred miles south of where we were.

After the fun I had had at both Disneyland and Universal Studios I was keen to hit up yet another amusement park. This time around it would be Legoland which was about an hour and a half drive from the hotel, hence the reason for wanting to get out early. Still we managed to get out shortly after 10am so we arrived with plenty of daylight to spare. The park itself was no where near the scale of Disneyland or Universal studios but it still had a parking lot to rival the others. We found ourselves a spot and headed on in and that’s where I started to notice that things weren’t as they were at the other parks. Mostly it was average age of the other punters, most of them were below 10.

Legoland it seems is mostly aimed at the younger generation with the rides, attractions and live shows all geared towards them. There are of course some things for us oldies to enjoy like Miniland (where there’s Lego replicas of cities) but for the most part unless you’re a youngster or accompanying one you won’t be missing anything by not visiting this place. We wandered around the whole park in about 2 hours not really finding anything that really tickled our fancy and the swag to be had here could be found at any place you could get Lego anyway. Disappointed we decided that since we’d already made the majority of the trip to San Diego we’d go the last 30 miles and knock off another attraction, Seaworld.

We got there with a few hours before it closed and there were still a few shows on before it was going to close. We started wandering around, checking out the various animal enclosures. The various aquariums they had were pretty interesting with a wide variety of sea creatures that I hadn’t seen all in one place before. After an hour or so of seeing some of the sights we went to the dolphin live show which also had 2 whales and a host of birds. It was a pretty well done show and whilst I’ve seen all these animals before I can’t remember seeing any of them perform. Almost immediately afterwards it was time for the final show of the day with the famous Shamu the killer whale. Again the feats they’d managed to train these creatures to do on command was quite amazing and the show went for almost half an hour. Afterwards we did a quick run around of some of the other exhibits we missed, including the penguin enclosure that had a smell I won’t soon forget.

After being ejected from the park we decided that since we were 2 hours away from home we might as well find some grub here before hitting the road. I found a local place in one of the coast side hotels that had good reviews so we hit it up. The had an amazing beer selection so I ordered myself up a Belgian Triple, a slightly wheaty beer that had a really good taste to it. I also found out that “cheese steak” was code for a subway style sandwich rather than a steak with cheese on it. The food was however quite good and we left there fat and happy, ready to tackle the road home.

We have 2 full days ahead of us before we take the 14 hour plane ride home and at least one of them will be partly spent back at Disneyland for one last time, cleaning up the last few attractions we missed. It’s been an amazing month over here in the USA and with the end so close I’m starting to get all nostalgic for the good times I’ve had over here. Still as they say all good things must come to an end and soon it will be time for me to reintegrate back into society, however much I may dread that.