Travelogue: Days 2 and 3

So............let's see...........on Friday we went to Seal Beach. It was a beach I had found on the WWW before we left. It's in a quaint little town and has some cute little shops and stuff. The beach was lovely, but it was super windy so it was hard to lay out on the sand because well, sand would blow in your face. And I didn't like that. Plus the wind made it a little cold, so I had my jacket on and didn't get a chance to tan. Oh wells. It was really fun walking on the shore, though, and there were a bunch of kite surfers doing their thing, which was really fun to watch. Andie had the really great idea of buying a big ball to play with on the beach, but anytime we let go of it or didn't have it tightly wedged between 3 beach bags it would go flying away and Andie had to sprint as fast as she could across the sand until she finally caught it and brought it back. It was good times. She also had fun doing some tumbling moves in the sand. We went to a few shops, but didn't buy anything. Then we got some smoothies from a 50 year old hippie/surfer guy who was obviously living in the moment pretty much always. He was funny, but you had to wonder how he long can keep his smoothie shop running. That makey outey couple in the background was pretty annoying, I must say.


Saturday we decided we needed to go to Hollywood or we were never going to find a sleb! Maggie was being poopy about getting us there and was demanding an address. So we kind of made something up that she finally bought and it actually worked pretty well. We ended up about 4 blocks from the Kodiak Theatre, so not too shabby. We decided to take a tour so we payed a bumload (with a Mother's Day discount, no less!) and got in the van with the top chopped off and the african tour guide with the thick accent ('that is WHOSE house? What?') and had our 2 hour tour of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Bel Air. It was actually really fun. We hadn't seen any stinking movie stars after an hour and a half. We knew we'd prob passed plenty of famous people in their expensive cars, but the black-tinted windows were not really conducive to star sightings. Do you think that's why they do that? I don't know. Anyway, finally on a narrow street in Beverly Hills we saw up ahead a cool classic convertible that looked different from most of the dark colored BMWs and AUDIs and Mercedes. Maddie and I both noticed it, but didn't say anything. Sure enough, the car passes us and it's driven by none other than the GOVERNATOR! So exciting! We looked up his car when we got home and it was this one! He looked just like this, except he was alone and didn't have sunglasses on:

That made our day. It ended up being the only sleb we saw the whole trip but at least we didn't go home empty handed.

Speaking of hands...I knew we would be flying home that day so I wore long sleeves and long pants so I wouldn't be cold on the plane. After hours of driving around in an open-top car, well, at least my HANDS got a pretty good tan.

Of the stars' homes, this was our favorite. Can you guess who first owned this house?:

That's right. Dr. Suess! Isn't it the cutest?

After the tour we had to book it to the airport. We had eaten the yogurt we had in our hotel fridge for breakfast and nothing else the whole day. We didn't want to be late so we didn't stop to eat on the way to the airport. We decided we'd get something there, once we were settled. Bad idea. They had one little 'shop' that had magazines, candy, and like, Advil or something. The most nutritious and filling things they had to eat were muffins. So we had muffins. And we were two hours early! And there were like 12 people in the whole airport! We really could have used Bob there to make food more of a priority. But whatever. We had a great time and we LOVED our girl trip!

Travelogue: Day 1

We had SO MUCH fun on our girl trip to sunny California! I'd like to tell you about it if you have a sec.

We left after school on Wednesday and flew into the Long Beach airport. Pro: it's small and you couldn't possibly get lost there since it's about as big one floor of my house. Con: zero chance of seeing any celebs, which was one of our stated objectives, maybe even our only stated objective.

We got our rental car, a cute little Mazda3 sedan, which I LOVED. Becky had insisted we take her GPS with us and why I haven't had one for the last [ever since they were invented] years, I may never know. But our little friend Maggie (that's what we named her) SAVED OUR LIVES! Well, fine, obviously she didn't SAVE our LIVES, but it felt like it. We never once had to worry about how to get somewhere. Mags is the BOMB! You do have to be very specific with the little Magster or she will act all 'I have no idea what you're talking about,' but if you can give her a legitimate address she WILL get you there. Pretty much effortlessly. Our fave was when she would say, "Remain on current road in...2 miles." Or even better, "Right turn in point 5 miles, followed by a remain on current road in...2 miles." Did that mean we could go wherever as long as we're back on the current road in 2 miles? We don't know, that's just Maggie. She's a jokester, but she'll always get you to your destination. I love the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction you feel when Maggie says, "You have arrived."

On Thursday we went to Disneyland. We had a great day even though our feet were killing by lunch time. We didn't put a lot of thought into the whole shoe thing. I know, a-duh. We were scoping for slebs the whole day and...nothin. But we did have a total blast riding rides and stuff. All in all it was a fabulous day.

I wish you could see all your ride pictures at the end of the day and then decide which one you want. I kept thinking the next one might be better and I'm not buying more than one of these things. Of course as it turned out the last one of the day was terrible and you couldn't even see Maddie's face at all, so we got none. Except for the one we took a picture of (Space Mountain):
And the self-shot we took just as we headed into the first tunnel:

Space Mountain tied for second place as our fave ride. The Tower of Terror (which must always be said in a spooky voice) was the other second place finisher. California Screamin' won top prize. I especially loved how smooth it was and how it had speakers in the safety bar right next to your ears and they played the perfect roller-coaster music while you roller-coasted. It made me want to take my iPod on roller-coasters from now on because it so enhances the experience.

Okay, I sort of made the girls come with me to this and, as I predicted, ended up apologizing for wasting 17 minutes of their Disneytime. But how could we NOT?:

One thing that was obvious was that Bob wasn't there. And it was obvious because not once the whole trip did we have good food. None of us cared, which is prob why, but still, we noticed. Here is what we grabbed for lunch at California Adventure. We looked and felt like a pack of wolves and I'm not sure I'll ever eat a turkey leg again:


We also had Limeade. They were out of Lemonade and when we asked if the Limeade was good the lady said the closest she could describe it was that it tasted like a margarita. I looked at Maddie and said, "It tastes like a margarita." She said, "Well, in that case..." And so we bought it and had a little laugh. We will always call Limeade a margarita now, but prob will never embibe one again. Nor will we ever be tempted to try a margarita. *sourface*

Obligatory Main Street picture:


Our hotel was close enough for us to walk to D-land, and from our balcony we watched the Disney fireworks on Friday, so that was cool:


Also, we didn't know Collin had a flower shop:
Well, there you have it. Day 1.