Phoenix Most of the day today was spent travelling, our longest travel day on the trip. The few stops we had revolved around food and also a stop at a discount outlet shopping centre. We arrived at our night stop, Scottsdale, just before dark and took a wander of the town before finding some food. Unfortunately, this was when I got sick and I spent the night very ill. The bigger disappointment was when I tried to get up to go on my hot air balloo...

I headed off with some of the other girls to Sea World. I have to say that the Sea World there is much better than I remember the Gold Coast one being. We saw all the animal shows - the dolphins and the whales. Our first stop though was to see the feeding of the animals, which meant that I got to pat the Dolphins. They were so friendly and kept coming back for more pats and their skin is so different to how you expect. It's smooth and cold and yet leathery. ...

San Diego and a visit to Tijuana, Mexico Departed on the contiki tour in the Wednesday morning and drove down to San Diego, a short 3 hour trip. This meant that we arrived there mid morning in San Diego and took a cruise around the harbour. The view of the city from the water was lovely and I was able to see the naval and air force base as well. Then it was time to get back onto the bus and head to Mexico for a few hours. We passed over the Coronado Brid...

After Universal Studios the day before, you'd have thought Kat and I would have had enough of theme parks but we fronted up for a full day at Disneyland. With the option of visiting both Disneyland and California Adventure Park, we chose both, hitting CAP first as it was smaller. We took in a show about animation which was interesting before heading for the rides. The watery rapids ride left us soaking and then we went on my favourite ride of the day, Soaring ...

Kat and I had booked ourselves on a 12 hour tour that Monday, departing at 8am so we were up early and heading off to breakfast. We ate at the restaurant attached the hotel and both ordered omelettes. They were huge and we found that we didn't need to eat anything else until mid afternoon - what a great cheap meal! We boarded the tour bus for the trip back into downtown LA, about an hour away. As we drove through, on our way to Hollywood, the driver point...