>>> california: day one

Oh, San Diego. How I love thee.

Anna and I have been here for a day and a half now, and it's been a great time thus far. I feel like I'm going to need a vacation after this vacation because I'm so tired and sore! This was to be expected, though --- the last time we were here (a year ago), we were going to sleep by 10 every night because we'd be so exhausted. Uncle Joey usually doesn't let us have an idle moment.

Anyway, let's rewind to the beginning of this, my second trip this summer. :) I stayed out late Friday night/Saturday morning and hadn't really started packing for California. =P I got home around 2:30AM and finished up my laundry. Then I started cleaning my makeup brushes slowly while watching TV, and next thing I knew, it was 6:00AM and I barely had anything packed. I decided to lie down for a moment to rest my back, and then the next thing I knew, Ricky was waking me up at 7:00AM to give me money for his Super Crew shirt (more on that later). I got up, took a shower, got ready, and then finished packing about 15 minutes before Anna and James picked me up to go to the airport. It was the most inefficient packing job I've ever done and I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of clothing before the trip ends, but oh well. I can always buy clothes to wear, right? ;)

Anna and I got to the airport about 2 hours before our flight, but it took about a half an hour to check in. The airport is PACKED on a Saturday morning! Travel tip: don't fly out of an airport during the day on a Saturday. Just don't do it. I saw that the line for NorthWest Airlines was incredibly long, which is disheartening because in 8 days I will be in that line. DAMN.

So like I said, the airport was packed and there were long lines for everything, food included. By the time we found something to eat, we got to our gate and found that everyone had boarded already. Wow.

The Virgin America plane was a small one, but pretty cool. Whoever designed their planes knew how to appeal to the kids because it felt like I was flying in a ginormous iPod with purple lighting.


Both of our flights were pretty short, so I don't have very many complaints about them or the airline. There's a touchscreen on the back of every seat, so it was very cool and high-tech but kind of annoying when the person behind you presses each button really hard. I sat next to a really sweet older Mormon couple from Vegas who chatted me up for most of the first flight (Anna and I were separated). Then for the second flight, Anna and I sat next to each other and listened to the "Tita No Like Mix #2" (thanks Pao) on my laptop and chilled.

After Uncle Joey picked us up from the airport, we dropped our stuff off at the house before setting to our first task: hitting up the Armory Survival Gear store, where they sell Jabbawockeez and SuperCrew shirts, among other things. Ricky and I had been perusing their site about a month ago when we discovered that they have two stores in San Diego, so rather than ordering shirts online, I told Ricky I'd pick something up for him when I got here. UNFORTUNATELY, they were having a massive Back-To-School sale this weekend, so by the time we got to the Pacific Beach location at 5:30PM, there was only one SuperCrew shirt left and it was size 2XL. Sorry, Ricky. I did manage to cop a Jabbawockeez shirt for Pao and Anna got one for James, so the trip to PB wasn't a total loss.

Anna and I hadn't eaten all day, so the next stop was Carl's Jr, of course. Last summer, when we were here in SD, we must've eaten Carl's Jr burgers almost every day. So we got our burger and crisscut fries fix before continuing on our merry way. :)

Of course, we had to hit up a beach at some point on our first day! The natural choice would've been to go to Pacific Beach since we were already in the neighborhood, but there was absolutely no parking in the area so we went a little bit south of there to Mission Beach and watched the red sunset.

After a quick rest at the house, Anna and I met up with Toni, Jeffrey, and Denise at the Ivy Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter, where Toni and Jeffrey are staying. Talk about swanky! The hotel had a rooftop lounge with a color-changing pool and beds and waitresses in white swimsuits and sarongs, another lounge downstairs, and a club downstairs. The line outside to get into each of these kickit spots was long, but Jeffrey was able to get us all-access wrist stamps, so there was no waiting for us. Eilleen and Alvin met up with us as Toni, Jeffrey, and Denise were finishing up their dinner, and we all headed up to check out what is probably the most accommodating hotel room I've ever seen.

What do I mean by that? Well, in addition to free champagne at check-in, this particular hotel also provides its guests with unlimited access to its lounges and club, a fully-stocked bar in each room, and, uhhh, other special accommodations. Ask me about it the next time you see me if you're really that curious.

After visiting the room, we headed straight up to the rooftop lounge for drinks and then down to Club Envy for more drinks and dancing. We had such a good time that we were all exhausted by 12:3oAM and went our separate ways. Check the Facebook album ("California Adventures, Day One") for the photographic evidence of our fun.

Not bad for our first 8 hours of vacation, right? I've still got to tell you all about our snorkeling adventure, but right now I have to go to sleep because in about 5 hours I've got to wake up to go to --- *drumrolllll, please!* --- DISNEYLAND! I can hardly wait!