California June 12 - 19, 2009

After what seemed like months of planning and things not going quite as expected, we were off. I had planned to fly on airmiles but after finding out they would route us through CALGARY, Alberta when we left from Vancouver, that idea was quickly done away with. Imagine it taking 6 hours or more to get to a place that is only 2 hours and 45 minutes from home. It just didn't make sense. Then we had planned to stay in a time share. We were pretty much assured it would become available before we left. Well, we waited and waited and about 2 weeks before we were scheduled to leave, we got very nervous and booked into a hotel. The Sheraton Park hotel which I stayed at last year. We still held out hope the time share would come available but as it turns out, it was a good thing we had a secondary plan and a hotel booked! The hotel is very nice! I booked a rental car from National as I am familiar with them and had discount coupons through the Entertainment Book. That went very well and we were given a very nice car with Florida licence plates on it. Alas...one night we figured out why none of the parking spots close to the building but under trees were occupied...we parked there one night and came out the next morning and the car from there on out was known as "Florida Pooh"....the birds apparently sleep in those trees over night and didn't really care our rental car was below!! On the way down, we flew on Alaska's Disneyland plane. The outside is decorated with Disney characters and the inside has the pictures of Tinkerbell and Disneyland on the overhead bin covers. There is also a photo of Florida Pooh below.

Vancouver Airport

graphics on the plane overhead bins of Disneyland and Tinkerbell

This is the center island where the buses to Anaheim pick up at LAX airport (the green overhead...the words won't quite move to where the picture is located for some reason)

The car with the Florida Poo plate is what fondly became named Florida Pooh for our stay.

Looks like wine but is really sparkling grape juice...nummy. We shopped at Von's on Chapman Street for some snacks and sandwich fixings which we used towards the end of our stay for a couple of picnics by the pool...which were a lot of fun! We had looked forward to this but alas the weather would not co-operate for us. Of course it got nice about the time we were ready to leave...Murphy's Law you know! And as an interesting sidenote, our Safeway Club cards from Canada are linked into Von's system....quite spooky when the receipt says thank you and your actual name at the bottom when you check out. The information and electronic era truly is fascinating....

the hotel pool...note it is empty because it was cold!
american Girl Emily

The words somehow don't correspond to the photos when the article posts so you will have to figure out the pictures and descriptions as best you can. Seems as though there must be an easier way but I haven't quite got it figured out yet. At one time I was able to move pictures and supply descriptions easily but something changed and now it is difficult. In this section there is an American Girl Emily mini doll who seems to travel with me a lot. I bought her full sized sister at the store when we were there (love her) but that will come in another post. Emily is standing under the coffee maker in the hotel room which also doubled quite nicely as a place for my Minnie Ears to hang out. Loretta and I bought the Minnie Ears on our first trip to Disneyland together in 2006 and it was a mad scramble for me before I left to find the safe place I had them hidden in! That and the little travel neck fans we had bought on the last trip...turns out that was redundant and a little personal heater would have worked better this trip as it was downright chilly most days and certainly during the evenings but staying in a hotel with maid service and not cooking made it all worth well. More on the local food in another post also...to say we didn't starve is putting it mildly!! LOL

Despite the cooler weather or perhaps because of it, the flowers were in full bloom everywhere we went. Stunning garden and trees in bloom.

These planter gardens are at the back end of the pool area which the hotel uses as a reception area for weddings and conventions. the flora and fauna in that section is stunning. They have tables and chairs set up all over and it is quite pleasant to sit and just vegetate in the atmosphere after long days at the park or gadding about the local area. It was so nice having a car and Loretta's hubby as a driver. We had a lot of fun gallivanting off in the Florida Pooh car.

That is it for now, this is day one. We spent some time at Downtown Disney in the evening and saw the fireworks from between the two parks but the photos are not that great. I will include some in a future post though.