Well, we're in Las Vegas now, and we actually have something that counts for a view out of our hotel room window ... we can see the fountain display outside the Bellagio hotel ... but there were two nights of Disneyland and a bit of doing lots of not very much, since Decay seems to have picked up a bit of a cold ...

We didn't end up going to downtown LA on the Thursday - our botheredness was not, and it was about time for a day where we didn't actually have to get up super early to get our day's worth of activities in, or to catch a tour bus ... Instead, we bummed around, woke up late, did domestic things like utilising the laundrette to do a week's worth of washing, caught up on reading the books we brought along with us, and then fell asleep super early ... before the falling asleep bit, we went to Downtown Disney's Lego store, only to find out that the one thing we were looking to buy had just sold out ... a trip to Legoland California was in store for the next day ...

Despite this super early falling asleepness, we didn't wake up super early on the Friday morning ... Decay was coming down with a cold, and the extra rest probably did him a lot of good ... We picked up the hire car in the morning - when we went to pick up the keys, we found out that we'd been upgraded to the next car size ... Decay's still incredulous that we've travelled all this way to be driving a maroon Toyota Camry. We took it for a spin: first stop Legoland California ... we only went in on the shopping pass ticket, which gives you 45 minutes to wander the park and its stores, after which if you don't return, your credit card will be charged the full price of the tickets. The main store wasn't going to be open until 5 minutes after we were due to have left the park, which was a bit of a bother, but we spent the first bit of our time wandering the park - it's a great place to bring kids along, but there wasn't enough to keep us occupied enough to warrant a couple of full price tickets. We asked if we could be taken into the main store before it was due to be opened, and we made a beeline to the mindstorms area ... which was ... empty ... nooooooo! The new mindstorms kit has been walking out the door, so we missed out again... ahh well, at least it gave Decay a chance to drive on what feels very much like the wrong side of the road, in the wrong side of the car?

Then, we had some fun finding other shopping centres/malls, using only the really not detailed enough maps provided in the tourist information guides we'd picked up along the way ... that was minutes of fun for all the family ... in one of the shopping places, we found a Borders, and since we'd discovered that the car contained an eat-me CD player, and the radio stations seem to leave something to be desired, we bought 4 CDs: Massive Attack - Protection; The Sugar Cubes - A Collection (best of); Stone Temple Pilots - Thank You (another best of); Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash (double CD set). A small collection to confuse the demographics people at Borders, hey? (: Oh yeah, we had a couple of glazed crullers from Krispy Creme donuts... I think I like the Dunkin Donuts version

Night time was a visit to Disneyland, to ride on the Matterhorn in the dark, and to attempt to catch a parade, some fireworks, and get some dinner. We managed to have some dinner outside the park (at Mimi's again), miss the main parade (we misread the times), and catch the fireworks show inside the park. We've actually been catching the nightly fireworks while we've been walking to/from wherever we've been grabbing a bite to eat, but inside the park, it's synchronised to a music track, and it takes place framing the Fantasyland entrance castle... The music? Meh, it was ok when there wasn't any singing, but the fireworks were very kewl (;

Saturday was another lazy start to the day - we jumped online to find the location of another Hot Topic (it's become a mini-obsession to find another of these stores), and then drove to the Irvine Spectrum Center, which is a Knox O-Zone the size of a Chadstone or two (to the point where they have a free shuttle bus service between sections of the place, and we saw people driving to their next shopping destination) ... we wandered about, had some lunch at Johnny Rocket's... Oreo Cookies and Cream malt shakes are really really yummy... (: We visited Disneyland California at night, and rode the rollercoaster another few times... we tried to get a picture of us utilising our limited AUSLAN vocabulary (thanks to G!), but one of them wasn't clear enough to justify a purchase, and the other one *didn't turn out*, which is Disney-speak for one of the following options:

1. The people processing the images from the camera have deemed the image to be offensive or otherwise inappropriate for public display such as people flipping the bird, or flashing their chests/other body parts (although anything else would be a real challenge to get into shot given the way you're restrained in the seat).
2. The picture didn't turn out

Sunday we checked out, and then went to the 7-11 nearby to pick up a map (so we might be able to figure out how to get to Las Vegas), some crunchy things for the car trip, a supply of coke for Decay, a non-fizzy drink for me, some life savers (they're bigger than the ones we get in Australia) and a cup of coffee for me because we missed out on the 'complimentary continental breakfast' again, since we woke up a bit late... The drive to Las Vegas was fairly uneventful - we knew which big roads we were looking for, and the signage was fairly informative. Except for the lack of speed limit signs. Not that it seemed to matter to the people on the roads - the speed limit signs seem to be a guideline, not a standard practice. Most people were zooming past us, 80mph or more in a 65mph (104kph) zone ... eeeek! The other thing we noticed was the lack of rest areas - not the ones where you pull off the freeway and come to a clump of shops and a petrol station or two, but just the ones where it's a small carpark and a toilet block ... I think we saw two between Anaheim and Las Vegas. There were probably at least 3 places that said there would be petrol/food/etc if you got off that particular freeway exit, but still ... I seem to remember a lot more rest stops on the drive from Melbourne to Sydney... The rest stop we did stop at was well-maintained - there was a dude out there picking up rubbish and sweeping stuff, and the bathroom was acceptably clean (pretty good compared to melbourne-sydney rest stop toilet blocks...)

One thing about going to Las Vegas is that there is no mistaking that you've arrived in Las Vegas, even if it is in the middle of the afternoon (well before sunset), because the place just springs up on the horizon as a massive clump of buildings in a desert of nothing, and it just gets bigger and bigger the closer you get (well, duh). We parked, checked in (Decay: I wonder what ride's at the end of this line - as said while queuing up to check into our hotel room), and checked out the infamous Las Vegas Strip ... we came back inside after a bit, because Las Vegas forgot to turn on the nice warmer than LA weather for us... the goldfish in the ponds outside are absolutely massive ... Room Service was the option for dinner tonight (ironing a shirt for Decay with a dodgy iron and dodgier, super-unstable ironing board took 40 minutes - that's slow even by my standards), because by the time we'd organised ourselves sufficiently to go outside and find a place to eat, all the places would've closed for the night ...

Monday, we did some walking about in the shopping centres known as the Fashion Show Outlet. Decay got a very nice pair of very comfy shoes, we went to another Hot Topic (the staff weren't as helpful as at the other two stores we'd visited), another Sanrio store, and generally freaked out at the size of this place... After another afternoon of falling asleep at about 4pm, we woke up and got ourselves ready in time to find some dinner... it's been ages since we've actually had proper Chinese food, so our aim was to sort out (from the descriptions in the hotel guides we picked up) which restaurants might be open, and serving edible-sounding food... The first one we picked was closed, the second one we freaked out when we saw the menu outside the entrance (lemon chicken? Moo Goo Gai ? eeeek!), so we decided to go for one of the fusion places. Pink Ginger turned out to be a pretty good pick ... there weren't many people in there, and I think we would've been the only guests there at the time who actually used the chopsticks that were provided on the table, but the food we had was good. For starters, we shared some gyoza, and some peking duck sliders which consisted of the char siu bao bun (without the insides of course) rolled out into an oval, steamed, then folded around some peking duck pieces, a spring onion sprig, and a coriander leaf, with plum sauce to serve. Mains, we shared a Mongolian beef, with some steamed rice. Decay and I probably take for granted the access we have to decent Chinese food in Melbourne, but tonight's dinner was good... Of course, we did pay for this meal (a lot more than what you'd pay for dinner if you were just going to go buffet surfing, but the idea of buffets haven't been particularly appealing), but we think it was worth it to get a good meal...

What's tomorrow? Hoover Dam, and Red Rocks... with some shopping sandwiched between the two. It'll have to be an early night though, because Decay has about 9 hours to drive from Las Vegas to San Francisco on Wednesday ...