California: A whirlwind week!

I'll post more on each day individually with stories, etc. but I wanted to give a little preview of our trip out west! We went the week of the 4th and were southern California, mostly San Diego and LA areas. We took over 600 pictures and 10 videos, visited 3 zoos, 2 theme parks, met up with 6 relatives (in 3 cities), and ate wayyy too much :)

A run down of the week:

Saturday: Leave Cola 10ish, fly out of ATL around 4pm EST,stop in Denver for a bite to eat and pictures of the unfortunate wildfires from the air (right) and (after marveling at the all the desert landscape between) arrive in San Diego around 6pm Pacific Time. Got our very RED Ford Focus rental care and make our way to Valley Center (~ 1 hr) where Aaron's Aunt Anne & Uncle Pete live atop their very own mountain.

Sunday: Wake up to clouds in the valley below the family's mountain...so beautiful! Head to church, and then to Oceanside beach to see the Pacific Ocean (a first for me)! We met up with Aaron's dad who was able to find a military hop to the West Coast and ate fish & chips on the boardwalk at a place that Aaron's cousin Joshua used to work. Uncle Pete, Aaron, & I went exploring out on the jettis and saw over a dozen starfish clinging to the sides in between crashing waves! We made it back from the beach just in time to see the sun set over the mountains...hands down, the most breathtaking sunset I've ever seen!

Monday: Aaron, his dad, and I tackle the San Diego Wild Safari Park (think African savanna) and saw all kinds of cool animals some of which we were familiar with and many of which we were not! My favorite part of that day was getting to take a tour (on a tram) of the open green hills with the animals scattered about--I felt like I was in Africa--it was so cool.

Tuesday: Needing some time to ourselves, Aaron & I drove up to Los Angeles (well, Hollywood) to see all the uber-touristy stuff there. Our (super-cheap-deal) hotel was on Sunset Blvd. so we walked a block or 2 to In-and-Out burger for lunch (a California must, I hear), and then another block or two up to Hollywood Blvd. We looked at the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a bit, trying to be "selective" with our pictures of stars (there are so many I wanted to photograph--including Billy Graham--who knew?), and then went over to Grauman's Chinese Theater, where the stars (beginning as early as the 1930s) have left their feet and hand prints in the sidewalk. By the way, Judy Garland had really tiny feet!
Wanting to hit all the major tourist attractions in 1 night, we hopped a tour of Beverly Hills and stars homes. It went pretty fast, and it has been hard to remember who they said lived where, haha, but we did get lots of pictures of pretty and famous homes. The best part, of course, was getting a shot of the Hollywood sign. After the tour, we had dinner at a cool Sushi bar and marched our weary feet back to the Budget Inn for some shut-eye.

Wednesday: A friend in Santa Barbara recommended a Hollywood breakfast restaurant for us, so in hopes of seeing a few stars, we set out to The Griddle Cafe, just 13 blocks from our hotel on Sunset. There were probably 10 parties waiting to be seated when we got there, but we decided to stick it out, and we even got an outdoor seat! I got graham-cracker pancakes & French-pressed coffee--so cool (right) and Aaron had something like Nutella pancakes. We weren't able to finish them (and no desire to be diabetic by the end of the meal) so we took a doggie bag (which we then accidentally left in the car overnight). After leaving Hollywood, we did a quick drive through downtown LA which was completely deserted because it was the 4th. Aaron got to see the Staples Center where the LA Lakers play and we both pointed out the US Bank Tower, the tallest building in LA and the building that was blown up in Independence Day.

We then headed about an hour and a half south to Hemet, CA where Aaron's grandparents live in an awesome retirement community (having a little run-in with CHiPs-CA Hwy Patrol-along the way..he let us off with a warning!). We again met up with Aaron's dad also, and all of us enjoyed each other's company for the night, playing banagrams and talking about family history.  I found this gem of Aaron's great-grandparents (his dad's dad's parents)...now, I'm sure that Grammie was a lovely woman, but she looks like Aaron wearing a wig and a dress in this photo below! What a resemblance!

Thursday: Thursday was quite the day. We left  Hemet and drove for ~3 hours south back to San Diego to see their world-famous Zoo! After more realy cool animals and an epic polar bear fight, we headed out to La Jolla Cove to eat dinner at a restaurant that Aaron read about once with a great view. This seemed like a pretty high-end place and we arrived just in time to get a good seat at the edge of the balcony. The view of the cove was beyond stunning (below, left).
 On the right is a pic of the right side of the cove...I had to make both of these small, but click and check them out because this view was fantastic. I highly recommend going there.

After the drive, the Zoo, and the Cove, we hit Seaworld to catch a glimpse of Shamu doin' his thing and maybe a dolphin or two. We saw this dolphin "shaking hands" with a few of the trainers and patrons :) After the Artic animals, we called it a day and went back to Valley Center to rest up.

Friday: 5:30am-leave for Disneyland in Anaheim (~1.5 hrs away); 8-11:30ish, do Disneyland rides and stuff with Aunt Anne and Uncle Pete...Space Mountain was pretty scary but so fun!

Noon-3 sleep outside at the pool until check-in at the hotel

3-5:30ish: nap in the hotel room; we were tired!!

6:30-7:00?-Disney parade complete with every princess there ever was and some that I didn't recognize!

8:00-8:30?-Spectacular lights show on water with almost every Disney character you could imagine!

Then bed.


Saturday: California Adventure Park!!!! This is a separate park in Disneyland that Aaron's cousin Cheri was able to get us tickets and fast passes for since she is a Disney employee. It was a very fun but exhausting day. Aaron and I actually took a 2 hour nap/rest break at a lunch table while Anne, Pete, and Cheri shopped. Cars Land is BRAND spankin' new and is modeled after Radiator Springs the town from the movie Cars. It was a ton of fun and you should definitely go if you get the chance.


In the evening we hit a phenomenal show of Aladdin (a 1 hr version of the movie--my favorite Disney movie) and then the "Mad Hatter's Tea Party" a rock type show loosely based on the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. The grand finale to our trip was a show called "A World of Color", another lights show on water at Paradise Pier, a boardwalk-type area of CA Adventure. Words can't describe how beautiful it was...or how glad we were to be able to go home. It was a packed-full-of-fun trip, but we were completely wiped after going hard for 3 days in a row.

Sunday: Saturday night we drove back to Valley Center and were able to sleep in Sunday morning til 10ish. We did a quickie drive through downtown San Diego on our way to the airport and then hopped on a plane around 3pm California time. Because of a light connecting flight and bad weather, we didn't get into Atlanta til after 1, got our bags and got to our car around 2 and got home around 5 because we stopped for dinner and then got turned around on the interstates. Needless to say, we slept most of Monday and are adjusting back to life on the east coast. :)