Disneyland, then off to Scotland

We are almost half way through out travels and have now left North America and have arrived in Scotland.

The last days in California included a 14 hour visit to Disneyland and its new sister theme park called  "Disney California Adventure."  It was a long day and both parks were VERY crowded.  It was our bad timing to attend on a long holiday weekend, together with the park celebrating its' 60th anniversary. I was told by one worker that the day before there were about 75,000 people in the two parks combined and the day we were there was similar!  It meant long waits in lines - some up to an hour and a half - with a 4 - 6 minute ride at the end!  Wedecided to skip some of those and focus on things with shorter queues.


Our flight to Edinburgh was not a good experience.  We flew Air NZ (great airline!) from Los Angeles to Heathrow in London.  At check in our carry on bags were too heavy and we had to redisribute some heavy things into our suitcases.  My suitcase was just on the limit (23 kgs) and Mrs McLeay's was well under, but they told us to put everything into my bag which went well over the limit - but no charge.  Go figure?

At Heathrow we had two hours to get onto our next flight.  We had an hour long wait in line at immigration and then found our suitcases were already sent on.  We had to race to get to terminal 5 - up and done stairs and lifts and a 7 minute train ride - and got there too late.  So we had to ask for a new flight later in the afternoon.  We then had to go through another security check where my carry on luggage was completely emptied out and gone through by an official and Mrs McLeay had a full search done on her.  We were very tired and not too happy.

In Edinburgh we found our bags had come on the same plane as us and they never went through any inspection.

We picked up our rental car - a nearly new Ford Focus (European and very nice indeed) and drove to our hotel.  I am getting used to the stick shift again but had to get someone to show me how to find reverse (a bit embarrasing).  We also had to get all the dashboard information and GPS switched into English from German - I was not going to find any place I wanted following German instructions.

We went into Edinburgh late this morning - after a 12 hour sleep last night (no sleep all Monday night while on the plane).  It was a wet and cold day and not very pleasant.  However, we did walk the "golden mile" which is a very famous part of Edingurgh.  Tomorrow we will go back and visit Edinburgh Castle.

On Friday we head north and visit my first Scottish School in a little town called Edzell, on the way to Aberdeen.

Here are a few photos from the last few days:

Here I am in Disneyland's "Main Street" right at the beginning of the day - before the crowds built up.

This photo of Mickey's huge ferris heel, was just before the big light show in the California theme park.  It was a fantastic show of movies telling the story of Disneyland, all shone onto massive water fountains.

"The Golden Mile" is a famous street in Edinburgh but the pleasure was a lttle dampened by the weather.