More California

Day 5 of our trip, we spent in Malibu.

Need I say more?

I've never understood how laying around on a beach all day doing nothing is relaxing. Normally when I lounge around, I feel like I'm wasting time and it gives me anxiety thinking about the things I could be doing instead.

But after spending a day laying on the beach... I get it now. I mean, I don't think I could do it everyday, but it was definitely a good end to a holiday. I've dreamt about Malibu since I was little, and my friend Lana got the Malibu Barbie Beach House for Christmas, and I just got Malibu Barbie. I was excited when I got the doll but when I took it over to Lana's and she showed me her beach house... things didn't go over well. And that's how I learned about Malibu.

Anyways, Malibu was also on my bucket list. And it was worth it! The water was a tad chilly, being that it was the beginning of May, and it's the ocean and all. Warren stuck his big toe in, and that's as far as he got. I guess the W in his name stands for wuss.

After our wonderful day at the beach... we drove back to Tom and Stacy's. It took us 3.5 hours. We got caught in LA rush hour traffic. It was awful. That afterwards we packed up our things and got our airline tickets taken care of. We did some last minute shopping. And then we went out to dinner with Tom and Stacy. We had a ton of fun.
Fun fact... the road they live off of that goes through Rancho Cucamungo and goes all the way to the coast... is route 66! Another bucket list item! Thank you, Cars (the pixar movie). As weird as I probably looked, I made us all get out and take pictures along route 66.

 And to end this post, I will show you a picture of the biggest snails I have ever seen. I might have accidentally killed one. My bad. Oh California, I miss you. Please let me come back again. How does tomorrow sound?
We had a wonderful time and we both left a piece of our hearts down there. Until next time, California!

California!

Today I was reminiscing about our wonderful trip to California... I miss it already. I'm not so secretly trying to convince W to let us move there. I loved it there so much- So, because I miss it so much, thought maybe I would blog about it. **Just in case you are wondering, we didn't do the typical California things such as disneyland/california adventure or universal studios.

We flew down on a Sunday evening. I don't enjoy flying, not one bit. Let that be said. But it was pretty- looking out the window and all.

 Have you ever been to LAX? Is it sad that LAX was on my bucket list? I read People.com almost everyday, so LAX was on my list of places to go. And when we landed, my heavens. I couldn't take it all in. It's the biggest airport I've ever seen. It was so overwhelmingly awesome. Ok. I'm raving about an airport... but seriously, it was amazing.
We found the shuttle bus to our car rental place. Being a backseat driver, watching that guy drive like a MANIC in LAX traffic, I thought for sure, we weren't going to die... my blood pressure is rising just thinking about it. But we got to the car rental place, and jumped in the car that clearly a pot head used last. It was so bad, people. A whole hour and a half and 5 different freeways later, we made it to our hotel. Our hotel was in Pasadena. Home of the Big Bang Theory. 
Day 1. A Monday.
After encountering the interesting town folk of our hotel during breakfast, we headed out for the day.
On our way down the freeway about 10 minutes into our journey, this happened. Holiday in the sun... I almost cried.

But we decided to just turn this day into a shopping day. So we went to Northridge Mall, which is north of the Hollywood Hills. After driving around like typical tourists without a GPS, we soon realized that we needed a GPS. So we had to hunt for one of those. Note to self, you need a GPS in LA.

Day 2. The Getty, Dodgers Game, Beverly Hills, Patty's Pub.
The second day, it wasn't raining. Hazzah! We went to The Getty. Which is an art museum in the Hollywood Hills that over looks the entire LA valley and the Pacific. It was gorgeous! I wont post all the pictures of the all the art we saw... but today is Rembrandt's birthday, FYI. Thank you, Google.

 Driving through the Hollywood Hills

 The Getty

 The view

Part of the Getty grounds

The best picture of the Beverly Hill sign I could get

 Drove by Rodeo Drive!

 Driving through Beverly Hills

 The Beverly Hotel

 Downtown Beverly Hills

 Ate at In-N-Out Burger in Beverly Hills

 Next up, The Hollywood Walk Of Fame and Chinese Theater! (It was gross, btw)

 Yes, I am related to a famous actor...

 We got lost looking for the shopping on Rodeo Drive... silly GPS would not take us to the right place. I was angry. But we randomly found an LDS Temple. 

 Back on the freeway, we followed a Maserati. No big deal.

 Here we are at the place where they film the outside of Patty's Pub from It's Always Sunny In Philedelphia. It's one of our favorite shows of all time, and we were super happy to drive through the ghetto to find this place. It was pretty sweet! They change those green wooden doors when they are filming though. 

Next up, DODGER STADIUM!

Have I ever told you how much I love baseball? And hot dogs? We HAD to get Dodger Dogs. Disregard the fact that they were like 8 bucks a piece.

 So, it got really cold once the sun went down at the game. So we left around the 8th inning. Is that bad? It was already 10pm and we were downtown LA, a whole hour away from Pasadena. So we left a little early. But we had to snap a picture of the LA skyline from the stadium.

Day 3. Six Flags.

Sadly, we didn't get many pictures because we didn't take the camera, and we also didn't take our phones out much since we didn't want them to either A. fall out of our pockets while hanging upside down, or B. get smashed in our pockets while bumping around on the coasters.

That night, we drove around old town Pasadena. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory... just like the Big Bang Theory. We pretended that our waitress' name was Penny. Even though it clearly was not. We had a lot of fun walking around that chic little area. But again, we didn't get any pictures. It was mostly just a bunch of shops and stores, like an outdoor mall area. A place where hipsters live. I kind of want to move there. A little.

Day 4. Little Mexico Swap Meet & Medieval Times
So, because I did majority of the event planning for our trip, I asked W what he would like to do. He heard about this giant swap meet in Torrance, so he plugged it into the GPS and off we went. It took nearly 2 hours to get there... so many freeways. When we got there, I was not really impressed but because W had agreed to even allow us to take a vacation, I had to suffer in silence as my skin burned and I broke in a new pair of flip flops. It was so ghetto, guys. I did come away with a new iphone case. But it was like living in Mexico. It wasn't so much a swap meet, as it was people having garage sales. They were literally selling their old stuff. I don't think I'll go there again, but maybe if we did more research before hand and read more reviews of places, I'd be up for it. We also found a cool mall in that area, so we walked around there for a couple hours to cool down and relax, and kill some time before Medieval Times.

 W was like a kid in a candy store. We had a ton of fun! Definitely will do that again! 

That night, we stayed with our good friends Tom and Stacy, who live in Rancho Cucamunga. For those of you who care, Rancho is where the show Workaholics takes place (but the house they live in in the show, is actually not in Rancho- fun fact). If I were to move to California, I'd move to Rancho Cucamunga. It was so pretty! I am from the suburbs of Boise (Boise is just one giant suburb, lets be honest)... so the 'burbs of Cali were almost like home. I really miss it a lot. You can take the girl out of the 'burbs, but you can't take the 'burbs out of the girl!

Day 5 needs it's own post. So I will end this here... Looking back, as it's now July and we took this trip in May, I feel so happy that we got to finally go on our own vacation. We had so much fun, and I felt so awesome planning a whole trip by myself and spending the amount of $$ I wanted. I wish we could have stayed longer. And I really wish I lived there. Maybe I will just have to plan another trip!!

To be continued...