Travelling home from Anaheim

The holiday is almost over and it is time to head home from our adventures.

After packing we loaded up the car and headed to Downtown Disney where we shared a great breakfast of beignets and a cheese and egg sandwich at Ralph Brennan's Express.

Back to the hotel we checked out of the Marriott Fairfield which is really a great place to stay when visiting Disneyland and headed out on our final journey.

First stop was Brookhurst Hobbies where despite a good long time browsing the racks I was not inclined to buy anything new although Victoria bought me a present to put away for Christmas.

Our next port of call was Michaels where we both loaded up on goodies, Victoria for herself and for me to put away for her. This final day was turning into quite the shopping trip as we next stopped at the Citadel Outlets where we picked up some great bargains in the Labor Day sales, Christmas is sorted for a lot of family.

After all this shopping I was ready for a late lunch so we dropped into the same Ruby's Diner that we visited last year and were not disappointed, the food is great and the staff lovely.

It's getting on and the holiday window is closing, we drive back to LAX filling up with 'gas' and dropping the car back with Hertz with another 1507 miles on the clock. We board the courtesy bus to the terminal and get checked in.

We are flying back on a new British Airways A380 and have booked seats on the upper deck. It really is a smooth flight, really comfortable and the entertainment package is excellent. So good in fact that I stay awake all night watching films rather than catching up on sleep, oh well, I can do that when we get to the hotel -or not as the case was!

After the smoothest landing we ever experienced we arrive at Heathrow and go to pick up the bags. Our first case comes out after a few minutes, then there is a garbled message about baggage delays, the second case takes about an hour. With this and the problems dropping off the bags on the way out we are not inclined to ever fly with British Airways or use Heathrow Terminal 5 ever again.

We pick up the car from those nice chaps at Purple Parking and head over to the Travelodge London Heathrow Central Tired we are just ready to crash out. The first key they give us does not work, neither does the second, at the third attempt we are in the room. It's time for something to eat so we decide on a pizza, about to leave the hotel the fire alarms go off so we troop out and have the headcount.

We take ages to drive the short distance to Pizza Hut where after being seated we are ignored for 20 minutes so pick up our coats and leave, back at the Travelodge we order two coffees and a pizza, the pizza is actually quite nice, however the cappuccinos have no shots in them so are just steamed milk!

Knackered, we turn in to catch up on some sleep, over the next six hours the fire alarm goes off four more times. Finally at 0400 we have had enough, we load up the car and drive home.

It's really been a fantastic holiday, however the last few hours when we got back to the UK rather took off some of the shine.