Welcome to Hollywood, What's your Dream??

Thus far we've had a wonderful time visiting our west coast friends. Andrew J Nissen, soon to be Daddy-Nissen, was even kind enough to teach me how to play Wii tennis (which I quickly excelled at, obviously) Haha, I had a bit more trouble with Wii bowling--but Andy and Andrea were seasoned vets and they kicked my butt, but I made sure to partake in the "Turkey" celebrations (for those of you who are new to the world of Wii like me, that's three strikes in a row) with shots of Johnnie Walkers finest...

We had a wonderful night sleep, yummy bagels and absolutely enormous ice coffees and hit the road once the Nissens had to deal with their 9-5 committments. Wellllll, I've always said that I had zero desire to go to LA, but since we were here and about to drive from Laguna to Santa Barbara, we figured we should check out what all the fuss is about...BAD move on our part. I've heard about LA traffic, but we planned well and didn't try to enter the city until 10, and tried to leave by 2, and with 5 lane highways, you would think it would have been relatively smooth sailing---but this place is seriously a parking lot. EVERYWHERE in a 20 mile radius of the city was infuriating to me, but we powered thru and made our way to Beverly Hills, checked out Rodeo drive, drove thru the city for a while...very slowly...and made our way to Santa Monica to check out the pier. All in all, I was pretty psyched to get back in the car and head north---don't want to insult anyone who lives there or loves it, but LA was not for me.....dirty, smoggy, too crowded, people wear inappropriately short and tight clothing, and really not very impressive...so, on we go!! Another slow crawl out of LA and on to Santa Barbara...

The drive along the coast was beautiful, and SB even more so---there are gorgeous mountains here that end in these big cliffs right over the beach. Makes for gorgeous views just about everywhere you go--including from our hotel window!! This place is definitly my speed...we cruised around for a bit yesterday and decided to spend the night, so we tried to find the cheapest place--obviously. One thing about SB, no free WiFi ANYWHERE, so we let our fingers do the walking and found a payphone with a phonebook--who knew those even still existed?!?! But we found a great little place in the middle of town and we set off for yet another dose of Mexican food....I love the mexican food of Souther California, but I'm not going to lie, I'm looking forward to the trip north and getting away from my overwhelming need to try the fish tacos everywhere I go. After dinner Ang and I decided to do our own little pub crawl and try as many places as we could to really get a feel for the place....fun little town, something for everyone! We finally settled at an English pub and immediately made friends with a couple of guys from Boston--who, strangely enough, were both named Bryce...which was made even stranger when I made friends with a Christian bachelor party (?!?!? bizarre), but the guy I was talking with was named Bryce!!! I've never met anyone with that name, and last night I was chatting with 3...anyway, Andrea and I collected 2 more business cards, I was offered a tour at a microbrewery in town today if we would like to go, and best of all, the third Bryce actually owns a medical marijuana company....Vitamin M, hahha....and I had like a billion questions--it was just like Weeds!!! For the second time in 3 days, random boys invited us to their apartments to smoke weed, and for the second time we turned them down....maybe it's an east coast thing, but going to strange men's apts to do drugs just doesn't seem like a smart idea, but perhaps we're just too uptight...

Today we're off to San Luis Obispo, and our official first day of camping. We're both super excited to check out the sights, take in the fresh air (especially after spending a total of 1.5 hrs out of the car in LA yesterday) and perhaps detox a little...I'm sad to leave Santa Barbara though, fun little town...

Can't wait to see how the camping excursion goes...stories to come...
~Susie