East AND West is Best (Aug 2013): Day 12 Domesticity and Newport Beach (possibly…….)

[tonymc]

Trip Index here.

Sunday 4th August 2013

Sunday, a day of rest – for teenagers. After yesterdays full-on day in Disneyland, a quieter day was planned for today. While Joanne did some laundry and I went to the local Walmart a block away, Alex continued honing her teenage skills by lying in bed, facebooking, and watching the Disney channel.

Our original plan was to book a half day tour of LA and Hollywood, but after trying a couple of companies with no success in contacting them either by phone or e-mail, we felt it was destiny telling us to take it easy (and save ourselves some money! ).

After lunch in the room courtesy of Walmart, we made tracks over to Newport Beach, with Alex (and possibly Joanne) hoping to catch a glimpse of some prime Californian muscle. It only took us 25 minutes to reach the area, but we then spent another 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot. We eventually found one a good distance out of town – not sure if it was classed as Balboa or West Newport Beach, on the way north. I had parked in the opposite direction to most other vehicles, and was a little concerned about having committed a felony by doing this, but having found a space, we weren’t in the mood to lose it over such a trivial matter!

Parked up, we made the short walk across Route 1 to the beach – what a view, a sweeping expanse of sand with piers at either end. We had a walk up to some rocks, and were busy trying not to fall off when a local appeared and started chatting to us – unfortunately not the hunk that Alex (and Joanne) had wished for; a distinct lack of pixie dust here. He then proceeded to find a starfish for us to hold/admire, before wishing us a pleasant vacation and disappearing again!

Views of the beach and that starfish!

We spent around 45 minutes on the beach, but as we had forgotten to pack the essentials (towels in particular), decided to head on back to Anaheim with a view to getting an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at the Gardenwalk.

And talking of eating... saw this which was appropriate for us!

An uneventful journey back along the CA55 and I-5 saw us back in 30 minutes, with a quick visit to our local Walmart for dinner for tomorrow night. I then spent a frustrating half-hour trying to load our pre-paid AT&T phone card with additional funds but without success. By this time, stomachs were rumbling (and not just mine) so we set off on the 15 minute walk to the Cheesecake Factory.

When we arrived at Gardenwalk, it appeared that a good number of the units were closed/unoccupied, and ended up walking the full length of the center before finding the Factory.

At first glance, things weren’t looking good with plenty of people milling around outside waiting. However, we were told only a 20 minute wait, and after 22 minutes our buzzer went off and we were in.

No starters again, with Joanne and Alex having the combo of steak Diane with Chicken in Madeira Sauce and Shrimp respectively, whilst I had possibly the largest chicken burrito known, and we half-finished a carrot cake cheesecake slice and a fudge cake, the remnants being boxed up for tomorrow.

With that, it was 21:00 and we had a slow stroll back to the room, arriving just in time to view the fireworks from our balcony yet again – you can’t have too much of a good thing.

Then a waiting game until midnight – I had been checking the Avios website for direct flights back to London from LAX rather than our two-leg return flight with an overnight stop at JFK. This morning, 6 WT+ seats had been released, but unfortunately being a Sunday, the Avios office closed at 16:00 – which is just the time we woke up at over here in CA (08:00! ). The seats were still available, so at midnight on the dot I was on to Avios, and 15 mins later we had our JFK-LHR flights converted to LAX-LHR. With that, it was a case of cancelling our LAX-JFK flights (booked with Avios but through BA) and having the miles recredited. And finally, we were able to get to sleep……

[Twentyyears]

Nice relaxing day, need those once in a while!
Well done you re the flights, never thought of doing that! I expect you do have to phone then to get that done.

[tonymc]

Definitely worth a few days away from the parks. Glad we did as we were extremely impressed by the scenery and the coastal locations.

With regard to flights, I had been checking daily for the direct flights, and for some time there had been flights available on the Wednesday and Sunday, but nothing inbetween. Then suddenly 6 WT+ flights appeared, and after our double upgrade to Club World outbound, economy will just not do for Joanne and Alex from now on!

[Aims]

That was a nice, laid back kind of day and the pics of the beach are beautiful. It's great to have a change of pace and slow things down a bit.

[Glee Fan]

What a nice day, the beach photos are lovely.

Shame no beach hunks for the girls though

Well done on changing your return flights, sounds like a much better option.

[tonymc]

Originally Posted by Aims

That was a nice, laid back kind of day and the pics of the beach are beautiful. It's great to have a change of pace and slow things down a bit.

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Definitely a lovely spot, although in hindsight we should have gone much earlier to park in the town and have a look around. There were some fabulous houses there as well looking right out onto the Pacific.

Originally Posted by Glee Fan

Shame no beach hunks for the girls though

Well done on changing your return flights, sounds like a much better option.

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I was there - what more do they want! The flight change caused a bit of anxiety playing the waiting game for the Avios offices to open, but fortunately they were still available and once again, the Avios team were very good at sorting things out for us. best of all, the flight taxes were the same as economy, although we did have to pay the £25pp admin fee to change the flights, which in the grand scheme wasn't a lot.

[WileyCoyote]

Nice chilled out day, beach looks lovely. Well done on those flights. Dinner sounds yum, we never made it over to Garden Walk , did we miss much ?

[tonymc]

TBH there didn't appear to be a lot at Garden Walk other than the restaurants and a few shops. Quite a lot of closed and empty untits - looks like a development that promised much but hasn't quite made it.

[abiknox]

A nice relaxing day! I have always wanted to go to Newport beach after being obsessed with the TV show 'The OC' when i was in my teens! I may have to make the journey!

Cheescake factory is always a winner! Ive had that burrito before, it is humongous!

[orlandosgr8]

Well done on the Avios, we have loads due to my Husband travelling a lot, but never seen to be able to use them

The beach looks amazing too