Our last full day.....

Hi Everyone. Well sadly it has been our last full day of the holiday today as we fly home tomorrow. If you want our flight details then they are at the end of this post.

We had a great day today at Universal Studios - another clear blue sky day with a temperature of 90f. As we had visited Universal Studios in Orlando we already knew what to expect so the boys picked out their priority rides first (which was Revenge of the Mummy - a roller coaster in pitch black that takes you forwards and then backwards...!).

William really liked the Terminator 2 show and you can see from the picture above that he was even in the film!

We all have our own highlights of what has been a wonderful holiday. For me (Chris) it was probably Yosemite Park. I was just taken by the wonderful scenery and just the scale of the valley and the rocks. Also I really enjoyed the rafting down the Colorado River at Grand Canyon - something I will never forget.

Its Jack now and my favourite part of the trip was LA. All of the glamour and recognisable places were great to see. Also, the bus tour was very good and we got to see alot of the city.

I (Caroline) loved all of it but especially the balloon ride in Napa (something I've always wanted to do), Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Los Angeles. I also enjoyed Las Vegas much more than I thought I would. The hotel "New York, New York" was fab and L.V. was a bit whacky. Loved the fountains at the Bellagio hotel.

Sam and William's favourite place was Las Vegas but they also loved the balloon ride and the Grand Canyon airplane/boat/safari.

Also we have eaten in some great places - I think the sea food has been the overall favourite...shrimp, lobster, crab, salmon, clams....mmmmm.

Tomorrow we are heading to Venice Beach in the morning and then off to the airport in the afternoon. Our flight details are:

Depart: 28th August 17:35

Arrive: Heathrow 29th August 12:05

Flight number: VS008 (Virgin)

I hope you have enjoyed our blog - it's been nice to receive the comments and share our experiences with you. I wonder where our travels will take us next.....Australia perhaps....?

This is the Morgan family signing out from the US......

Exploring LA

Hello all - Jack blogging for the first time today. We had a good day today exploring LA, we went everywhere including Beverly Hills and Hollywood. When we first got into LA we walked along Hollywood Boulevard which is where all of the famous actors and singers have their names in the stars on the floor. As you can see from the photo we found Michael Jackson's star.

After exploring Hollywood Boulevard for a little while we hopped onto a double decker bus tour which took us around BeverlyHills which is where many famous people live including The Beckhams and Madonna. It took us through a very exclusive shopping street which included brands including Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana and Versace. We were taken around Beverly hills for about 2 hours and then we hopped off and got onto another tour bus which took us to Santa Monica beach. We visted the pier which Forrest Gump runs to and then turns around to run back across America in Forrest Gump. We got off at Santa Monica beach and walked around for a while and walked along the pier and visited the original Muscle Beach. We then continued our tour of LA on the bus and saw many film studios including Paramount and Fox. None of us realised how many film studios there were which belonged to smaller companies.

We eventually finished our bus tour in the early evening and when we got off near the Chinese Theatre there was a man throwing money off a roof down to somebody dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow. Shortly after this Sam ran in and caught some of the money and then everybody tried to get some of the falling money and the man kept on dropping it off the hotel roof.

In LA there were many people dressed up as characters from films including Superman, Batman and Captain America.

Eventually it stopped raining money so we got in the car and drove up to an observatory where we could view the Hollywood sign. From up there we got a great view over all of LA. You can see a photo of this on our Flickr page here.

Tomorrow is our last full day in America before we return home and we are spending the day at Universal Studios.

Hope everyone's well and we all look forward to seeing you again soon.

Jack

xxx

Beckhams out.......Morgan's in (L.A)!!!!!

Well we have arrived in LA after an easy but busy drive along the coast from San Diego this morning. David and Victoria were waiting in LA for us which was nice - Sam gave David a couple of tips about his football and Caroline gave Victoria a couple of tips on where to shop..... ;-)

Talking of shopping, that is what we did for most of this afternoon. Jack was looking for an Abercrombe and Fitch shop so we scoured LA for one and ended up in a lovely outside shopping centre in Beverly Hills (called Grove Drive Farmers Market). Most of us (except Sam) went on a bit of a spending spree - suffice to say that Gap and Abercrombe sales revenue figures are safe for this year.....! Jack and Chris bought new tops and Caroline bought.....well take a look below:-

Tomorrow we plan to do a 'hop on hop off' bus tour of LA taking in the main sites and on Thursday we are visiting Universal Studios followed by dinner with the Beckhams....

Some more pictures on our Flickr page here as usual.

San Diego...

Hi Everyone. Well, we arrived in San Diego at 3.15pm on Sunday after a long drive down from the Grand Canyon (5.5 hours). We are very close to the Mexican border and had to pass through a number of border check points on route - luckily we didn't get pulled over...

Caroline and Sam spent the rest of the afternoon at the San Diego Hospital ER unit. Sam had been feeling really low on energy the past couple of days and had been experiencing lower back pain. We were concerned that he might have a kidney infection so wanted to get him checked out properly. Although they had to spend 4 hours at the hospital they did give him the full works - x ray, urine test, kidney ultra sound scan - in fact $1,000 worth! However they found nothing wrong with him....which at least gave us peace of mind (thank God for insurance...). Today Sam has been absolutely fine so perhaps it was just a virus.

So today we have spent the whole time at Seaworld enjoying the various sights and shows. My favourite was the Shamu show - there were two shows...one in the day and then one in the evening. This was followed by a great fireworks display to finish off the evening. The boys really enjoyed it and actually surprised us by taking time to explore the acquariums etc as well as the obvious rides such as 'Journey to Atlantis'.

We also nipped out of Seaworld this evening for an hour or two for a meal at our favourite restaurant called Red Lobster. Jack and I shared a lobster, crab and shrimp dish which was gorgeous. The 4 boys polished this off with apple pie, ice cream and (for William) a large cookie!

Tomorrow we are driving up to L.A. along the coast which will be our final destination :-(

P.S. If you want to check out Jack in a pink hat click here

Viewing the blog map.....

UPDATE - THE BLOG MAP SEEMS TO BE WORKING AGAIN NOW.... :-)

In case you are having problems viewing the rest of the blog map at the top of the page, here are some simple instructions.

- You can move around the map by placing your mouse on the map (you should get a hand symbol appearing as the mouse cursor), clicking and dragging. The map will move with the drag of the mouse.

- ...or you can use the + and - keys on the top left to zoom in and out.

Hopefully that will enable you to see the rest of our holiday destinations.

We are just leaving for Lake Havasu now where we are staying 1 night before heading on to San Diego......

Lake Havasu.....London Bridge isn't falling down...yet

Howdy Partners......Chief Blogger here...aka Caroline! Just a short blog today coz we haven't done a lot!

We left Grand Canyon this morning at 9.30a.m and arrived at Lake Havasu City at 1.15 p.m. Can you believe it but it RAINED the whole trip down, quite heavily in parts. And guess what...! When we reached Lake Havasu, the lady in reception said she couldn't remember the last time it rained!!! I can hear you laughing from Spain, Sue!!But it soon cleared up and was 90 degrees for the rest of the afternoon and quite humid.

We have a very nice "condo" that looks nothing from the outside but inside we not only have a big bedroom with two queen sized beds, but a little lounge area and kitchen. The pool is really warm here (in contrast to G.C) so the boys jumped straight in.

Lake Havasu is supposedly the second most popular place in Arizona after G.C - that doesn't say a lot for the rest of Arizona! It is famous for the fact that they have their own London Bridge here (see foto). They bought it from us in the great year of 1968 for an immense sum of money and rebuilt it brick by brick over here. However, they soon realised they'd made the mistake of thinking they had bought Tower Bridge.

Jack checked out Trip Advisor for us to decide where to eat and we had a fantastic meal at an Italian restaurant five minutes down the road called "Angelinas Kitchen".

Long journey tomorrow - 5 hours - to San Diego so see you there!

Our last day at the Grand Canyon

After yesterday's action packed day, today was a more leisurely one. Part of the package from our Grand Canyon tour were some tickets to the IMAX theatre, so we headed off to see this first of all. The screen was huge - about 120ft and the photography was great....Caroline was starting to feel dizzy (apparently this had nothing to do with the sampling of Californian wine last night..).

Then it was off into the South Rim park to take a look at the various views across the Canyon. We decided to take the shuttle bus as this was much easier (and free). The views were as stunning as we hoped they would be and there was very little complaint from the ankle biters.....which has to be a good sign.

This evening Caroline and Chris abandoned the kids, sadly only on a temporary basis ;-) to watch the sunset over the Canyon. Who says I am not a romantic.......answers on a post card.....

Below is a sample picture from this evening but as usual there is more on our Flickr page here