Back in October after the Gators beat LSU Brad and I bought our plane tickets to Los Angeles, just in case the Gators made it to the Rose Bowl this year. We knew there is always a chance that things don't go as planned (case in point, the loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship game!) but we had decided that it was about time we took a vacation anyway, so we booked our tickets. On January 5th we got on a plane headed for LA! I was so excited, I had never been to California before (unless you count changing planes north of LA when we went to Arizona a few years ago, which I don't!)
This was the first vacation we have taken, just the two of us, that wasn't scheduled around someone's wedding or a football game since our honeymoon six years ago. Brad booked us a night at a hotel on the Sunset Strip for our first night, so after we checked in we walked down to Hollywood Blvd to see all the tourist-y things in Hollywood.
Our first full day we had scheduled a tour at the Warner Brothers studio, which was awesome. It was a VIP tour, which meant there were only 12 people on the tour, and instead of just driving around and looking at things we were actually able to get off and walk around a lot of the areas. Probably the best part of the entire tour was the room that was set up as Central Perk, from Friends. It was so awesome to see that iconic room and of course, the couch!
After the studio tour, we had gotten tickets to see a taping of the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. We spent a few hours waiting in line but ended up in the first row of the audience which was really neat. Of course we weren't allowed to take any pictures but we had so much fun. Afterwards we went to dinner in Beverly Hills, then drove down to the Santa Monica Pier.
Our next adventure began bright and early on Thursday January 7th. We loaded into our rental car and headed up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco. We stopped several times along the coast to take pictures of the breathtaking scenery. The most amazing thing to me was seeing the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, and places where the mountains literally touched the sea. It was so awesome to see God's hand at work here. Brad and I always ask each other where we would rather be, in the mountains or on the coast, and this brought together those two worlds in a way I could hardly believe.
We stopped for lunch in San Luis Obispo to meet an internet friend of mine and her husband and children, and after that we headed to San Simeon to see the Hearst Castle, which was stunning. Beyond words, really.
The view from the base of the property at Hearst. The family's land stretches farther than the eye can even see, to the ocean on one side and into the mountains on the other.
After we left the tour at Hearst, we headed up to Big Sur, where we had rented a cabin for the night. We stopped one last time along the coast to see the elephant seals. We were very lucky, it was mating season and there was a beach that was entirely covered with seals as far as you could see. There were babies, males fighting in the surf, and bodies just laying in the sand. Of course, my camera battery decided to take this opportunity to die so I only got a few pictures of the seals, but I did manage to catch the sun set over the ocean.
Elephant seals.
After our night in Big Sur, we headed North again, stopping for breakfast in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and walked around the adorable little town.
After Carmel we stopped in Monterey and went to the aquarium, which was a lot of fun to see (especially without the kids running around, which meant we could take our time looking at the exhibits!) After that, we decided to try to drive north of San Francisco and go to a winery in Napa, but everything closed at 5:30, which is about when we would have arrived. So we looked around on the iPhones (you've got to love technology!) and found an area in Santa Cruz that had several wineries so we stopped there for a tasting and then right across was a brewery so we popped in there so Brad could do a tasting there, too. It was a really nice afternoon.
From Santa Cruz we finally drove into San Francisco. We got in about 5:30, and drove to Lombard Street (the steepest and windy-est street in the US) which was completely scary, especially in the dark! One of Brad's fraternity brothers lives in the city and was nice enough to let us stay with him for the two nights we were in town. Our first night we walked down to a restaurant by his apartment, then went to bed. Driving is exhausting!
While we were at dinner I mentioned to Matt and his fiancee that the one thing I had really wanted to work into our trip but hadn't been able to, was seeing the redwoods. Matt told me that the huge trees up near Oregon were actually sequoias, and the tall redwoods were just 20 minutes outside San Francisco, so on Saturday morning he took us out to see them. They were so beautiful, there aren't enough words describe how awesome it was standing in that forest. The trees were SO tall, it was really hard to actually photograph the perspective of how big they were, but I tried!
After the redwoods, we headed to Sausalito where Matt has a sailboat, and he took us out into San Francisco Bay on the boat. We had never been sailing before, so it was such an awesome experience for us! I absolutely loved sitting in the boat and watching the seals literally swim right by!
After we went sailing and had some lunch, Matt dropped Brad and I off at Ghiradelli Square and then we walked down all the famous piers in San Francisco.
Before we left home, I had been reading articles saying that all the sea lions have been disappearing from their usual hangout at Pier 39, so I was worried we wouldn't be able to see them but we were lucky that there was a large group of them sunning themselves on a dock.
We had scheduled a night tour of Alcatraz which was phenomenal! It was so spooky being inside the prison in the dark. At the end of the audio tour there were different small tours you could go on, including a demonstration of the doors. It was definitely creepy listening to the clanging of those huge steel doors and the echoes that reverberated around the room. It was so easy to imagine what the prisoners had been thinking at the start and end of every day.
