The only time I enjoy my birthday seems to be when I am not at home.
Last year when I turned 25 I had this ridiculously unwarranted breakdown so I needed a good year this year.
Plus, Shana was turning 30 (omg you're so old!) and it was really just silly of her to spend it doing the same thing she does every day
with...and yes, I will add, the same old dumb people she hangs out with (excluding me of course).
So what better way to celebrate our birthdays than to go to the left coast. It seemed it would be magical.
and that it was.
Wednesday night we headed over to my parents so we could wake up at 3am and catch a ride with my dad to the airport at 3:30am.
We got all of about 4 hours of sleep between our inability to shut up and my parents cats being crazy.
Arriving at the airport at 4am after little sleep is just not all that fun. It was kind of cold too. Go figure.
Check in. Wait at security. Go through. Sit and wait till 5am when McDonald's opens and we can silence the growling stomachs.
(Here is where we get angry as the larger lady in the wheel chair has herself pushed up to the counter and a line forms behind her when all in all we were there first, even if we weren't in line per say.)
As we eat our food knowing that there is a long line of people waiting to board our 5:30am flight to Charlotte… we realize a little too late that our flight…instead of boarding at 5am was actually CANCELLED.
And so it began… Baltimore just wants to torture my soul.
I’m not even sure how long it took for us to finally get a new flight, but it was a lovely turn of events to see that we got a straight flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles… it just didn’t leave until 8:50am. Good thing we got up at 3 right?
Airplanes are ridiculous… in both the good use and bad use of ridiculous.
After arriving at LAX we fortunately found our luggage, found the bus to the rental place, got our rental with insurance that we didn’t need (but it’s okay!) and a GPS who spoke in some stupid British accent until I realized how to get rid of it (I hate you British English Emily!) and finally made our way to our hotel in Redondo Beach.
Shana decided we’d leave our mark. (this photo will be seen at a later time!)
It was somewhere between noon and one in LA time so we had to rock some Redondo Beach…would I kill for the Atlantic?
Our hotel was only a few blocks from the ocean.
"OMG! Let’s take a picture of ourselves with the Pacific behind us!"
The Pacific… It’s really nothing like the Atlantic.
"OMG! Let’s take another picture of ourselves with the Pacific behind us!"
So, of course I brought up the notion of "hey let’s get something to drink!" While I was all for…alcohol in general, we decided it’s never wrong to go with a little wine at like 2pm in the afternoon (it was 5pm our time… so technically it was Happy Hour!)
Shana, drinking in LA!
Me, drinking in LA!
I hate feet… even in the sand.
I kind of hate feet in the water too…Pacific or not.
Ohhhh…ahhhh….waves!
"Look at those friggin’ seagulls, they’re HUGE!"
"Seriously, They’re way bigger than east coast seagulls!"
"Okay, I’m going to stop taking photos of these huge friggin’ seagulls of the west!"
I think this is probably the best photo I took of the whole trip.
It was only around these rocks that it even smelled like the "Ocean" because apparently the Pacific doesn’t even smell like the Atlantic.
Redondo was nice. It was like going to Ocean City, except 20 thousand times cleaner and beautiful. People were fishing. People were nice. I think that’s what got me the most. People were nice.
So jet lag and lack of sleep was taking its toll on us. We stopped at this store we thought was just a little drug store to get some goodies for the hotel room. Turned out to be the tiniest version of a bulk store we had ever seen!
We picked up some hand fruit!
This comes into play at a later time in the story.
As we perused the aisles, I saw Muscle Milk! OMG It’s Muscle Milk!
Few people understand the reference to Muscle Milk and it’s probably better that way.
It does not even have a real reference to California.
So our day ends there. We went back to the hotel and found ourselves unable to stay awake any longer even though it was sadly only 6pm… "it’s 9pm our time and we’ve been up since 3 after only 4 hours of sleep. We’re going to have to stop remembering "our" time!"
Day 2 continues on…
