Sunday, October 02, 2016

California trip- Brian & Jess

So.....Brian's secretary booked a week in July off, so I was scheduled to work. I was going to get babysitters for the 4 days I would be working (he takes Friday's off in the summer), but my mom wanted the girls. Once Brian found out they'd be GONE for the whole week, he was like, ok, I'm booking it off and we're going on holiday! it was very tough to convince me ;)
We talked about lots of places in the States, and settled on San Diego, now, we just had to wait for Brian's passport to come in the mail (he forgot to renew it) and it came on a Friday, I think and we booked it and left the following Tuesday!
We flew into LA and stayed for all of Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday we shopped, got dinner at a restaurant featured on the tv show 'Diners, Drive ins and Dives' and went to a Baseball game (Anaheim Angels vs Tampa Bay Rays). It was southern creole food. pretty tasty but HUGE portions. We should have shared! The game was lots of fun!



Before we went to bed that night, we booked a Warner Brothers Studio Tour in Burbank for the following morning. It was AWESOME!


Fuller house is being filmed there

All the Harry Potter stuff!! So fun!!!


the sorting hat! Brian got hufflepuff, I got gryffindor




 this spot was used as Central park in Friends (phoebe and rachel running), and a scene with Rory in Gilmore Girls (her tree)
 We learned about sound, and filming techniques (such as making Gandalf from Lord of the Rings much bigger than everyone else), and how they filmed the last scene from Jurassic Park in their forest section thats only about 20 feet long, they just cut and went back to the start over and over, and backgrounds and sets and lots of other interesting things!

Then my favourite part...going to the FRIENDS set!





 


We saw the outside of Ellen's set and got to go sit on the set of The Big Bang Theory! No pictures were allowed in there.

After we left Warner Brothers, we drove to the Santa Monica Pier. We had lunch at Bubba Gump and walked along the pier and beach. 

 I had the most delicious meal in the world! Mahi Mahi over mashed potatoes with this amazing sauce on top. Holy moly, so good.

We had a mustang convertible for the week!

Then we drove to San Diego and found our hotel for the night. The next morning we went to Sea World! Not nearly as good as the one in Florida, a few good rides and a decent dolphin and whale show.

We also went to Old Town in San Diego.....boring!!! It was lame.

And we saw the San Diego Temple- GORGEOUS!!


Then went for dinner on the beach! At Sunset!! Usually wherever we are, we get to see sunrises over the ocean. This was fun to see a sunset.


Next day...walking along the beach...


And we did manage to squeeze in the San Diego zoo too!!! We were hesitant to go, we wanted to because its iconic and huge and famous. but on the other hand, we didn't want to spend a day at the zoo on our no-kids trip. But we did go, and they had a bus tour that was included with our pass! It was about 45 minutes and we saw 75% of the zoo!! So then we just walked to the few things we wanted to see up close- the PANDAS mostly, and the koalas. And we went to see the gorillas (brian's fav) and their cage was amazing!! It had waterfalls (plural!) in it! The polar bears were neat to see, even though I don't understand how their not in an ice space.


See the cute panda behind me. They were renovating the panda facility so they were in teeny squishy place, but it was only temporary. The zoo was pretty cool. And we had the yummiest icecream I think Brian and I have ever had!!

So, Friday was also Brian's birthday!! We went back to our hotel and got all ready for a night on the town! We went to a cool restaurant right on the beach. After, we walked along the boardwalk. We were the most overdressed people there, because most people were in swimsuits ;) We walked along while the sun set, but it was all behind clouds.

The next morning, we had decided, what the heck, lets go to DISNEYLAND!! It was our last day, and we felt we had seen everything on our list in San Diego, so we got up early and drove to Anaheim. We were there, only about 20 minutes after the gates opened. We hit all our favourite rides and shared a turkey leg for lunch. Then, around 1:30, we went to Downtown Disney to the movie theatre. We wanted to get out of the heat for a bit and relax and it was getting really busy. So we saw Jason Bourne. After the show, we went back to Disneyland for more rides!! I think we went on Indiana Jones 4 times, Space Mountain probably 3 at least, and Thunder Mountain, at least half a dozen or more! It was so fun!!

so this was funny, we got in the front row of space mountain and the line was having issues, so they sent our cart off. it was just the 2 of us on the whole roller coaster! so strange when it was a 2 hour line in the regular part, and the fast pass was nearly out for the day.
We went for dinner at Downtown Disney and that was when we decided, we should probably book a hotel for tonight!! So, Brian gets on his phone to start looking up hotels (at 7pm), and he's got 20% battery life. He is having a hard time finding anything available. He finally finds one, puts his phone down and starts eating. Then, he's like, whats the date today? I tell him, the 30th , duh, its the day after your birthday. He booked it for the 31st! So he calls expedia to explain the mishap and hopefully get a refund. They called the hotel and explained and even though they don't normally give refunds, they do in fact give him one. So he starts looking again. Now he's got like 13% battery life. He looks and looks and finds another. Great, its in fuller, which is about 20 minutes from here, its for tonight, great, its booked. Well once he gets the confirmation screen, he clicks on the address in maps and its in Fuller, NEBRASKA!!! It had said Fuller NE which he thought was north east, and there was a fuller in Cali, so close!! So now he gets on the phone at like 8% battery and tries to explain AGAIN that there was a mishap. Luckily it wasn't expedia, it was travelocity or something. So they call the hotel, and after a long time on hold, we find out they are not a 24 hour front desk, so they can't confirm the cancellation! He said, likely we will get refunded but not 100% sure. Now we are down to like 3% due to the long time on hold. I am now missing the parade as we are sitting outside Disneyland on a bench dealing with this and I'm trying SO hard not to laugh like crazy for Brian booking a hotel in Nebraska,  so Brian can talk! haha!! So, at this point, we're like forget it. Lets go have fun and find a hotel later since his phone is dead and hopefully we're not sleeping in our rental car!!!
The fireworks were cancelled (I was so bummed) and we went on more rides (Splash mountain once and Thunder Mountain a few more times. ) We left Disney around 10:30pm. We had spent 14 hours there! So now to the fun of finding a hotel. The first we stopped at was booked, the second had JUST had a cancellation and we grabbed it! Good price, even! We later found out, the whole strip we were on was completely booked, so had it not been for this sudden cancellation, who knows how long it would've been! We got totally lucky, and it was clean, comfortable and had free breakfast!

The next day, was home day, but we had until the afternoon before we left. We went for lunch then were too tired to do anything else, so we went to a movie. We were SO EXCITED to walk in and see leather recliners!!! People who know me, know I don't love movie theatres. Well this was super exciting!! I was so stinking comfortable and Brian got these little chocolate things that we've never had before that were delicious, so I was a happy girl. We saw Star Trek, which I thought was a great show.



As we were driving out of the parking lot, I spotted Famous Footwear, so we stopped and I scored a $20 cute pair of wedges!

Heading to the airport..... :(


It was a great trip, spending time together!






No comments: