Day 7

So we began our day at the Howard Johnson motel in Monterey, obviously, because we had stayed there the previous night! We packed up a bit and headed down to the lobby for the continental breakfast. This breakfast was a little bit different from the previous ones, as there were no tables to sit and eat at, so we brought the food back to the room. Also, we were the only ones there at the time, not sure if that's because there weren't many people staying there, or if we were just late. Anyway, I made myself a big Belgian waffle which was pretty good. I'm not sure if I ever actually made one myself before, as I had some difficulty operating the pan-like thing that you make it in. But whatever, it was pretty good. About a half hour or so later, we had the car packed and we checked out, and drove towards Pebble Beach.

My dad had recommended that we take this "17 mile drive" through Pebble Beach, and since based on past travel experience he seems to be an expert trip planner, that's exactly what we did. It cost $9.50 to get in to the place, and we paid the fee and went in, of course not before almost getting hit by a huge bus. So we drove along the 17 mile drive and saw some pretty cool sights. There were quite a few houses in the place, I'm sure they cost a fortune, even though a lot of them didn't even seem as nice as a lot of the houses in our town haha. So we drove around a lot, it certainly didn't seem like 17 miles, maybe they measured the coastline or something to get that number. It wasn't the nicest day, pretty cloudy actually, and the ocean was pretty active, but its still a beautiful place, the golf courses were especially beautiful. There were a bunch of places where you could stop and take pictures, we stopped at a few. In fact, at one of the last stops, I saw a woman who had the exact same boot as I do! Pretty funny to see that there, really random. Towards the end, we drove through a lot of neighborhood-ish areas, some of which actually had barbed wire at the top of their fences. Look, I know you don't want people coming in your yard, I wouldn't either but barbed wire? That's a bit excessive IMHO.

Near the end there was a little shopping area, and we did get a souvenir, they were all wicked expensive, so we only got one. They had mugs for $18, and plastic glasses for $24 I believe. I guess the Pebble Beach name is enough to warrant a hefty price. They also had real estate postings, ranging from about $1.5 to about $10 million. There were quite a few houses in the place too, so I'm not sure who lives there, but obviously only a very select few can afford it. We then proceeded to continue down the coast along Route 1, this part was largely through the mountains right at the coast. When we left Monterey, we were about 338 miles from LA, so I knew we had a long day ahead of us. We were in these mountains for at least 50 miles, and it took forever to get through. After a while, I got a little annoyed it was taking so long, and then what do you know, we were out of the mountains! This is not to say the views weren't incredible, but if you ever take a trip down the Pacific Coast, make sure you leave plenty of time for it. I loved it, but I just thought it wouldn't have taken a long as it did.

So eventually we got to San Luis Obispo, where I took over the driving from Krysta. Once we got there, Route 1 merged with the 101 Freeway, so we were able to drive a bit faster. We got to Santa Barbara about 2 hours later, and got our first taste of SoCal traffic on the trip. Fortunately it only delayed us by about 10 minutes and we were on our way. Krysta mentioned how the show "Psych" takes place in Santa Barbara, and how it looked like the outside shots (it's filmed in Vancouver, but presumably the exterior shots are done in Santa Barbara). So we drove another 90 minutes or so down the Ventura Freeway, which was along the ocean again, which was awesome to see.

those of you from the South Shore should get a kick out of this one

Eventually we came to Thousand Oaks and hit a ton of traffic. Oh well, I was prepared. Back home I have a very low tolerance for traffic and get pretty angry whenever I'm in it, but I knew it was inevitable that we'd hit a lot of it here, so I stayed calm. Eventually we reached Van Nuys, and I decided to make an impromptu visit to Austin, my good friend of 10 years. No, I didn't tell him I was coming, so it came as quite a surprise after his roommate Dave let me in, and I pretended to be Terry Francona looking for work outside his bedroom door. We hung around their place for a little bit, and then continued on our drive. At about 7:45 we reached the apartment complex near Burbank that my brother William has been staying at for about the past month or so. We picked him up, talked about how long its been since we saw him and such, and then proceeded to go to the hotel we booked in Glendale.

The ride from Burbank to Glendale was really quick and easy, which was great. We checked in, brought our stuff to the room, and then headed out to eat dinner. If you've been reading carefully, you'll notice I made no mention of eating lunch. Yep, no lunch. We drove into Studio City, and parked in an In-N-Out Burger and walked across Ventura Blvd. to a Los Angeles favorite of mine, Miceli's. We went in and had dinnerm William and I split a large pizza. While we waited for the food, I went over and talked to the bartender Bob, who I had gotten to know a bit from previous visits to the restaurants. I hadn't been there in over a year, but he actually remembered me haha. The last time I went there, I had taken a tour of Warner Bros. Studios earlier in the day, and I had a bag of souvenirs. When we left, I forgot the bag at the restaurant, and as we were walking down Ventura, Bob called Austin to tell him I had left that bag. It actually meant a lot to me that he did that, and I have a lot of respect for the guy, in spite of the fact that he's from NY and is a Yankee fan haha. But yeah, he remembered me and the whole bag leaving incident which I thought was pretty cool.

So after eating and saying goodbye to Bob, we drove around Burbank a bit, saw where William is working this fall, and just did some general exploring. Eventually we drove him back to his apartment complex, and we headed back to Glendale. I sat for awhile updating this blog, and then blew up my air mattress and went to bed.....