Day 6 - Anaheim 🚙💨

“Night blooming Jasmine”

This blog is brought to you by Ellie.

Folks, I’m sorry to say that our time in Los Angeles has come to an end and we must go Southward. We’ve had the most excellent week here and have seen and achieved so much! My favourite is still the Hollywood sign hike and also, obviously, seeing Brendan Fraser holding a tiny dog. Apologies that we don’t have photo evidence of this, but we were trying to be respectful and were also pretty starstruck!

Today we move down to Anaheim to have a week filled with Disney magic!

We packed up all of our worldly belongings, including new souvenirs, and said goodbye to 1331 North Poinsettia Place. It really was a great find but the best thing about it is this guy:

We manoeuvred the car out of the tightest car park ever conceived and made one stop before the drive down to Anaheim.

Hollywood Forever is a famous cemetery that is famous for giving famous people a beautiful resting place. We’ve been here before to visit some of the greats, but there has been an important addition this year. If you have been keeping up with the blogs this week you may know who it is.

We sat by David for a little while in the glorious sunshine on the benches kindly added by his family, who encourage fans to sit with him, and I got a little teary thinking about how important David Lynch and his work has been in Barry’s life.

We had a wander around the nearby pond, looking for terrapins and finding Toto, then bled back towards the car, as we needed to get the car back to the rental place by 12. On the way back to the car, I picked up a wallet that had been dropped. There was an ID in it and a family sitting around a headstone not far away, but there were all sorts of interesting rituals happening over there and we didn’t wish to disturb. Barry ran it over to the security guard who hopefully will have gotten it back to its owner, so that was our good deed for the day.

Respects paid and wallet handed in, we were soon back on the road, racing on 5 lane motorways toward the “Happiest place on earth”! It didn’t take too long and, despite a bit of nail biting at many red lights, we made it to the Alamo car rental place with ten minutes to spare. The handover took no time at all and now it was time to drag two big suitcases, two small suitcases and a big bag of Trader Joe’s goodies…. Just next door!! Thank goodness..

The hotel Barry chose for this trip is the Alpine Inn, which is themed to look like a snow covered building but really on the inside is more of a motel. It sounds tacky, but it’s actually very clean and spacious! It is also only a ten minute walk from Disney property and you can see the back of the Cars ride, which is in Disney’s California Adventure park! I said the hotel should collaborate with Disney to turn it into a snowy mountain range. The man at the front desk was very welcoming and allowed us to drop our luggage as we were a bit too early for check in. We decided to grab a delicious lunch across the road at an American favourite: Blaze Pizza.

Blaze is a bit like Subway but better and with pizza. We enjoyed our lunch immensely, deciding that this was a great choice, but perhaps we also need something cold and refreshing? Barry suggesting walking 15 minutes down the road to an Anaheim institution - Joe’s Italian Ice. I couldn’t say no to this, although fifteen minutes later I felt like I was on fire and gasping for some shade… and an icy snack! We joined the queue and I used Barry as a shield against the sun until we reached the shelter of the restaurant canopy. We made our order: just a lemon ice for me and a wild cherry “Joe Latti” for Barry, which just means you get a swirl of vanilla soft serve on top, which we highly recommend.

We sat in the shade and ate our treats, which cooled us down completely (thanks Joe!), enough to make the walk back to the Alpine Inn, just in time to check in and get into a cool shower, unpack and rest. The room is clean and well equipped, we’ll be more than happy here for the next five nights.

Fully refreshed a few hours later, we stepped back out into the late afternoon sun to step back into Disneyland after four years of Barry saying “I miss Disneyland, when can we go back?”.

No tickets for theme parks today, we just wanted to soak in the atmosphere of Downtown Disney, the section between Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure (DCA). It was teeming with people enjoying a bank holiday weekend.

We did a bit of souvenir shopping, Barry got himself a t-shirt and a sweatshirt and I got a gift for someone at home. I also perused the bags as my current Disney bag has been with me since Barry brought it back from Florida in 2018 and it’s well loved (falling apart)!

We had a little wander and sit down at the Grand California Hotel, which has a grand lobby and looks like a giant log cabin, themed after northern Californian architecture. Somehow my private notebook has been added to the decor…

We exited back onto the main drag and walked further up, under “the big hat”, as I call it, and into the grounds of the Disneyland Hotel. A classic, and it does feel like one too. We weaved in and out of the different lobbies and shops - there’s a lot of history in the photos and art on the walls. I had to drag Barry out in the end. This would be Barry’s dream hotel to stay in… maybe his bosses are reading this and can give him a promotion before we come back!

Back in Downtown Disney, it was time for a bit of dinner. We went for an old faithful; Earl of Sandwich. It’s just a really good sandwich place that’s pretty good value. We shared a fountain drink and I impressed Barry by mixing lemonade and iced tea, making our own version of Chick-fil-A’s SunJoy, which I named an EllJoy™️!

We were very ready for an early night after the action-packed week we’ve had, ready for a 6am wake up tomorrow for our first Disney day! See you there.