May 26th- 31st, 2016
This trip was planned because of the shortened Summer trip due to the Orange County School of Art’s first day of school starting back up a week earlier than anticipated. However, we recently found out that the first day of school was pushed back to when we had intended and so we get our week back to explore more places on our trip :).
May 26th
We packed the night before so that we could go straight from work and avoid the Los Angeles evening traffic. We drove the prius left straight from work around 2:30pm from Santa Ana to Malibu and up to Pismo Beach and then some more to San Simeon taking only the coast highway to get there. The weather was sunny and clear which made this drive quite nice. We stopped in Pismo to get some dinner, clam chowder and fish & chips, yum. We then went looking for a grocery store and ended up in San Luis Obispo in a downtown farmer’s market that had the entire street blocked off. There were vendors of all kind selling foods of all kinds. Since we had eaten dinner already in Pismo we were kind of bummed we weren’t hungry for more but we did get some delicious churros they were selling for cheap. There were a couple shows we saw, one in particular was a man on a very tall unicycle that was juggling a knife, fire, and regular baton. We went into one of the stores to find Alyssa a baseball cap for the A’s game and ended up watching the rest of the Worriers game on TV. It was a good game.
We then found a Trader Joe’s and got some groceries and headed on up to San Simeon where we stayed at a campground. It was pitch black when we got there and so we setup camp in the night time and went to bed. It wasn’t comfortable at all, even with a double high queen mattress, it was way too big for our tent. We were practically bulging out of the tent and it was quite a cold night. I woke up the next morning with a hurt arm from possibly hyper extending it since it was stuck in a sleeping bag all night in not so comfortable positions.
May 27th
We woke up and got ready to head to Hearst Castle. We had reservations to do the Upstairs tour and it was quite an awesome tour. Alyssa and I had both been to Hearst Castle before but we didn’t remember it all that much from many years ago so we decided to check it out again and it was quite an amazing museum/ranch/castle to see again. This time we had more appreciation for the things that we saw and heard during our tour. We wish we could go back in time and see what the Castle was like back in the 1940’s with all the celebrity guests there. It must have been quite an amazing experience to be invited by Mr. Hearst himself and fly you to his castle or ranch as he would call it.
After the tour we continued on our journey up the coastline and made a quick stop along the way to see the Elephant Seals lining the beach. There were hundreds of them just on one beach soaking in the rays and probably trying to find a mate. It was stinky but kinda interesting to see so many seals on one beach, there were tons of beaches that didn’t have any seals and we kind of wondered why that beach in particular. We still don’t know why.
After seeing the seals we continued our journey up the coastline to Monterey Bay. We didn’t stop there but we we went inland towards Oakland. We had a total of 6 hours to get from San Simeon to our seats at the Oakland Coliseum to watch the Oakland A’s play. We did have to make a stop at Cheeseboard Pizza (aka cardboard pizza). They are known for having a different types of pizzas for each day of the week. It is Alyssa’s favorite pizza. We had the Margarita Pizza and according to Alyssa it was okay, she prefers one of the other days’ pizza. Watching the A’s play was fun but they lost which makes every game we have gone to the home team has always lost. After the game we drove to the Magnusson’s where we stayed for the nights we were up there.
May 28th
We went and explored the city of San Francisco this day. They day warm hot and sunny with no clouds in the sky. It is super rare to have such a good day like that in San Francisco according to everyone who lives there. We first went to the look out point where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge and the entire bay. After that we got really hungry and had to find lunch. We went to Ike’s sandwiches which is another favorite of Alyssa. They were pretty good sandwiches but the only down side of the sandwiches was the amount of time it took to make them. We waited nearly an hour before we even got to eat our sandwiches. We tried to go to the park across the street from the Painted Sisters (the homes they show in Full House) but the park was gated off for repairs. We then found another park and sat on the grass and ate our sandwiches. After devouring Ikes sandwiches we drove to Lombard street with the windiest road in the world. When we got there they weren’t allowing cars to drive down it so we parked the car and walked stairs to the bottom and took some pictures. On the way back to the top they started to allow cars go down it with the police escourting the traffic. We quickly ran to our Prius and off we went down Lombard street. We then went to the Wharf just to say we went there but we didn’t have much time to be there and wanted to explore the Ghirardelli Square and have a root beer float. So we had a little root beer float and headed back to the car before our timer went out.
We then drove to the Giants stadium just to say I have been there and then we went across the bay bridge back to Oakland and Berkeley. In Berkeley we parked the car and walked to campus and on the main street, ate dinner at Angeline’s which was really good Southern food, Louisiana style. My request before the day was over was to eat dessert at Fentons Ice Cream Restaurant so we drove to Oakland and ate a large delicious chocolaty ice cream sundae with an extra brownie and ice cream scoop added. To my surprise we did finish it and I definitely felt it like my stomach was ready to explode. I think I will hold back on the extra scoop next time we go there. Since I wasn’t feeling well we decided to call it a day from there.
May 29th