California Love

Greetings from the West Coast! We spent the last three days in Californ-i-a and definitely had some fun. Our first stop was to sunny Los Angeles where it was 102 degrees as we entered the city!!! Then we parked and made our way to a primo spot to see the Hollywood sign.

                 Hollywood Babe❤️

We walked down the street a little bit and saw a guy with an awesome dog who stood on his back legs (the dog, not the guy) and loved attention. Then we were followed around a little by a golden dude. Los Angeles is truly a unique place.

Santa Monica Pier was next. Amanda told us that if we like Wildwood, we will love it here, we definitely liked it! There was a lot to see and a great Mexican restaurant where we had dinner. On the way out we saw lobsters in a tank and Debbie tried to buy them all to free them...

They even had Zoltar there! Definitely a highlight for us. For the record, Pat adorably told Zoltar he wished to be big! (I am sure you all get the reference so we won't explain).

On our walk back to the car, we stopped at McDonalds where we happened to run into our good friend BATMAN...YES, Batman.

Dude eats fries just like us! Except he has to take off his superhero gloves first.

Pat found a great deal at a hotel in Slovang. Knowing nothing about the town, we booked it and ended up having one of the most pleasant experiences of the state! Slovang calls itself the "Danish Capital of America" and is utterly adorable.  From the windmills and the clogs, to the beer steins and horse drawn trolley, Slovang is worth visiting! 

Did we mention they have ahhhhhmazing pizza? Stop by Tower Pizza next time you are near Slovang, definitely in our top 10 favorite pizzas (and we know our pizza!)

From here we made our way to Route 1 (aka Pacific Coast Highway), the place all of those car commercials are shot. We stopped at the beach to put our feet in the Pacific and make some puppy friends! A tiny little dog ran over to us and started licking our faces, that's when we learned from her friendly family that her name is Xena Warrior Princess, we loved it! 

As we made our way up Route 1, we came across a beach FULL of Elephant Seals! 

They made cute little sounds and wiggled up the beach to snuggle each other, it was cute. There was a little bird on a rock who looked like he wanted in on those snuggles but knew he would be squished if he tried.

Oh Route 1. What a love/somewhat dislike relationship we have with you. It was AMAZING to see the sunset here and drive along the cliff, truly nothing like it. 

However, the Casales do not recommend taking this drive in the dark if you are unfamiliar with the area. You are inches away from a cliff and people zoom around like you wouldn't believe! Headlights are blinding and streetlights are not a thing out there. Everyone should drive this route but keep in mind it is about a two hour drive and very sketchy once it gets dark. That said, we would definitely do it again!

We had dinner in Big Sur at this little log cabin looking place where all of the staff looked like lumberjacks. Food was pretty cool, Pat had a cheeseburger burrito which had all of the cheeseburger stuff inside PLUS fries in the burrito, it was pretty awesome. Debbie went with the veggie burger, not as adventurous but never a bad choice. 

We landed in San Francisco. Gotta say, not entirely the treat those rice-a-roni guys would have us believe. Our hotel was otherworldly. It was called Hotel Zetta and it was hip and had all of the snacks we love and such a comfortable bed. The art was great. They had a case hanging from the ceiling with broken pieces in it and a chandelier made of reading glasses. We were welcomed by a dog made of metal pieces holding a "welcome home" sign and walked past a wall full of celebrity mugshots. We didn't want to leave. Outside was another story. Around 3am we went to the parking garage to get our things and walked by no less than 25 homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk. It is very upsetting that in a land of such opportunity this is such a huge problem. 

We made our way back up to our room and decided to turn on the tv for the first time during our trip. After seeing that all that was on was George Lopez, we decided we should probably just get some sleep (no offense George).

In the morning we headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge! It was a bit chillier than LA, but so so pretty!

All was going great until we pulled out of the parking lot and got rear ended.... luckily we were okay and the other *cough* douchebag *cough* driver was okay and the car really just had scratches on the bumper so we were quickly on with our honeymoon! We had some pizza in Sausalito, stocked up on snacks and Starbucks and we were Pataluma bound to see THE house from Scream. 

We are pretty sure the rear ending and traffic in the city clouded our judgment of San Francisco. We absolutely still had the time of our lives, don't get us wrong!!!

We arrived at the house just before sunset. It is in a beautiful town full of giant trees and cows and tons of land and scenery. The house itself is on a huge piece of land with "private property" signs on their gate. We traveled a long way so even if we had to ask permission, we were getting that picture!!!! We pulled up the driveway to find a family of deer and it was perfect. Debbie wants to buy it. 

Our original plan had us going to San Diego but we decided to save San Diego for another trip and are currently making our way to Phoenix!!!!

Love,

The Casales

xoxo