To pick up where I left off from Part I of our trip to Southern California, we drove down to San Diego from Irvine in the morning to go to Sea World San Diego! It was my first time at any sort of marine mammal park/oceanarium (I’ve never been to Sea World or Marine World before), so I felt like a little kid marveling at all these cool sea creatures that you don’t get to see at your regular aquarium. After Sea World, we drove over to gorgeous La Jolla Cove… it was so stunningly beautiful, I didn’t want to leave.
Once again, I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking….
That night, we drove to Mariko’s parents’ house in Torrance after a delicious Mexican seafood dinner. The next morning, Dan and company came to pick me up and we made the seven-hour long drive back up to the Bay Area. (It wasn’t too bad — I slept about 80% of the ride, and spent much of the remaining 20% munching on various snacks.)
The trip down to SoCal had been pretty last minute — I had only booked my flight down less than two weeks beforehand — but it was really fun to spend some time with old friends. I was glad that I got to see Shun-chan before he moved back to Japan (although we’re hoping he’ll be back Stateside soon), and I missed having some good girl talk time with Mari. A huge thank you to Mariko for her hospitality and for driving us everywhere! Hopefully it won’t be too long before we get to see each other again. 🙂
Dan and I were both in Southern California this weekend, although we arrived separately and were in different parts of SoCal and didn’t see each other for much of the time. Dan and his film buddies were in Pasadena to shoot a short, and they drove down on Friday night, whereas I flew down on Friday morning and stayed in Irvine and Torrance to spend time with my friends from college — our plans just happened to fall on the same weekend, so we ended up both being down there but ironically separated until it came time for us to drive back up to the Bay Area.
Dan may blog about his shoot a little later, but this post will be all about my adventures this past weekend. 😛
My good friend Mariko lives in Irvine, and I hadn’t seen her since last June, so I was really happy to have a chance to go spend some time with her this time. Our friend Shun from Virginia Tech is moving back to Japan, and he was stopping by SoCal for the weekend before flying to the other side of the world, so it was a good chance to see him as well, before he left the U.S.
We spent most of Friday in the Los Angeles area and Saturday in San Diego. Here are some photos from Day One in Manhattan Beach and Irvine….
Looking at the photos, it looks like all we did was eat, scamper around the beach, and go eat some more… and more… and more…. which I suppose is essentially the gist of what happened. There’s just so much good food in the area, I end up wanting to eat everything I see. It was really nice to spend time with college friends and reminisce on our days back at Tech — sometimes I wish I could just go back and experience it all over again. (I believe I suffer from a bit of Peter Pan Complex.) But it’s comforting to see that your close friends from those days have never really changed that much, and that you can always pick up right where you left off with them. It really makes me grateful for the friendships I made and have been able to carry with me.
Stay tuned for Part II, in which we encounter giant sea creatures and scale treacherous rock cliffs. (Sounds so epic!)