Life with the Shurtleff's: Trip to Cali with Chance!

Departing: Dallas
Destination: Los Angeles

Chance and I wanted a nice vacation away so we decided to go somewhere he has never been....Los Angeles, California! We were so excited to go to the beach! This is the view from the plane.

Beautiful mountains

Once we landed we got our rental car. It was a 2012 Hyundai Sonata and very nice, we were both pleasantly surprise.!
We stayed at the W hotel in Westwood. The hotel was incredible and we fell in love with the Westwood area. It is very close to UCLA, which is where Chance's cousin went to school so he was able to tell us cute little hot spots around the area to visit. The first thing we did was check-in to our hotel and get situated in our room.

This is our hotel:

We were hungry so went to breakfast at the Nine-Thirty Cafe in the hotel. The food was ok.....if you like an $18 omelet

Nine-Thirty Café

For the day we hung around the Westwood area and walked around. Westwood is big enough to spend multiple days in and still not see everything but small enough to walk around and not have to take a taxi anywhere. The stores go on and on....and every other one is a food place so we had a lot of different food places to try! For lunch we hung out at the hotel pool and lunch poolside. For dinner we went to a burger joint called The Stand...we were skeptical by the looks of the exterior but it was really charming inside. It was set up like an old diner with red and white checkered tablecloths. The burgers were AMAZING! I ordered the bacon, cheddar, avocado, ranch dressing burger, yumm!

After dinner we walked down to O'Hara's bar to have a few beers. The entire time we were there we agreed to not drink anything we had already drank, so it was all new beers and wines for us! For lunch we had Lagunitas-Spring Ale (good), at The Stand we had their own brewed Honey Blonde Ale (great!) and at O'Hara's we had IPA (good). After a good nights rest we were ready to venture out of Westwood, so I took Chance into Beverly Hills! I'm not sure who was more excited about Rodeo Drive, him or I ;) but he was still a good sport about it. I took this pic for Chance since it's his favorite store.

While driving around the Rodeo area I showed him the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel which is where Pretty Woman was filmed and he knows that is my all time favorite movie. He acted really excited for me :) We took Sunset Drive to Hollywood and here are a few of the pics I took while Chance drove.

So many stores were completely covered in vines, it was beautiful

For lunch we stopped at this cute pizzeria on Melrose Avenue called Mozza. It was very good and I suggest everyone try it out! They cook all pizzas in this wood burning oven. Here we tried Steelhead Extra Pale Ale (good).

We ordered the Hawaiian- Ham and Pineapple...YUM!

After lunch we drove over to Hollywood Blvd so I could show him the infamous Hollywood sign, Grauman's Chinese Theater and The Walk of Fame. This picture was taken from inside the Dolby Theater outdoor mall.

The HOLLYWOOD sign is behind us but too small to see in the picture :(

This picture was actually taken while driving towards Hollywood Blvd. I just love this church and have actually posted this picture in a previous trip I had taken to Cali.

Those were all pics on the way to Hollywood Blvd. This pic is back at Dolby Theater with the Hollywood sign in the distance.

After a long day in 90210 and Hollywood we retreated back to good 'ole Westwood, which we have now fallen in love with and decided if we were to ever move to this area (meaning= if we could ever afford to live in Cali) we would live in Westwood!

For dinner we wanted Sushi so we ate at Tomodachi Sushi. This is a Tiger Roll, Super Philadelphia Roll and something else, can't remember. While there we decided to try two different kinds of beers. One was from Japan, it was called Kirin Lite (good, taste like Miller Light) and the other from Korea, it was called Hite (good, taste the same). This was a really small hole in the wall (hope they aren't serving Chihuahua here) kind of place, but those are always the best! We would go back 100 times....even if they did serve Chihuahua, haha, JK!

Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early (4:30am) to drive down to Newport Beach for a fishing trip at 6am. This was the sunrise in Newport Beach. It was just beautiful!

The area where the fishing store was located was really cute. Here are a few pictures while standing outside the front door.

Here are a few random pictures of Chance and I on the boat as well as some scenery. It was pretty chilly that early in the morning and that far off the coast. We ended up fishing a few miles off of Catalina Island.

Dolphins

Million dollar houses even though they are small!

Mid afternoon, finally getting warmer!

Fisherman cutting up our bait....SQUID!

Everyone was pretty much catching the same fish- bottom feeder fish. I believe it was in the flounder family. There is a picture later of me holding one. Chance was the only person on the boat to catch something different. A fisherman called this a Calico Bass. Good Job!

Wonder what could be on this boat...TV's, shoes, clothes, DVD's, cars...who knows!

My bait

I saw these two little dead guys floating by the bait. I guess someone caught them.

My first catch!

The pelicans are crazy! They swarm your fishing rod trying to steal your squid bait. You have to hurry and cast it out there and let it sink before they can eat the squid and hook. Unfortunately, one guy didn't do it fast enough and the pelican ate the squid and hook and was stuck underwater and was drowning. He reeled him in and the fisherman had to pull the hook, squid and weight out of the pelican's mouth. It was really sad, and when the man was reeling the pelican in the pelican's mouth was full of water and getting stretched out. It is incredible how big their mouths are! The fisherman was able to save the day!

Live bait if we wanted it.

While on the boat I was feeling fine for the first half (7am-noon) but around 1pm I started feeling sick. For those of you that know me, know I get sick even in the passenger seat of a car. So needless to say....I get VERY sick! I didn't fish for the last few hours. Instead, I ate boat food (a hamburger, that actually was pretty good and a bag of chips), talked with a couple who were from the area (he is a Sigma Chi like Chance so they had a lot to talk about) and took a nap while getting some sun (as much sun as you can get while fully clothed...I guess my face got some sun!)

Chance and I were exhausted and had to make the 1.5 hour drive back to LA so we ordered pizza and hung out in our room and called it a night!

Wednesday we strolled around Westwood just checking out some more stores. I didn't take many pictures this day. Here are two pictures that I snagged from Facebook from when I checked us into Westwood, California and an Italian restaurant.

While there we wanted to have all kinds of food. We had already eaten American (Hamburgers on Sunday), Japanese (Sushi on Monday), Pizza (at Mozza and Papa Johns, how original right?!), so now we were on to Italian food. We googled a ton of places and saw that this restaurant (Angelino's Cafe- #1 Italian food in LA) was getting the best reviews by everyone. We were warned about the limited seating but didn't think it was that bad! When we got there we realized what they were talking about. With 3 tables inside and 4 outside it was definitely limited, but we had to try it! Luckily for us we waited till really late to eat (probably because I was going through a million reviews) so we were able to snag a table first thing. We ate inside, it gets really chilly at night in LA. Inside was cute, you can see the chef cooking your food which was cool. This is a picture of our food. Unfortunately it's the only picture I have for the night. We enjoyed this place and would recommend it for sure!

Thursday morning we drove out to Santa Monica Pier, so I could show him how cool this place is. If you are a follower of my blog than you have already seen these photos when I last visited here in October of 2009 I believe. This time around I have better pics, and the weather was much better. The only down fall to this entire week was that the weather was not on our side. It was very rainy Wednesday and the other sunny days were still very chilly (long sleeves during the day time) so we didn't get to go to the beach at all. We considered getting in the heated pool at our hotel but it was still too cold and we are chickens.

Yes, those are people in the water. And yes, they are CRAZY! It was way too cold to get in the water. Especially since it's the Atlantic, it's already freezing to begin with!

I wish you could see in this photo but the people are too small. Most of them are wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts while on the beach.

I wanted to be cute so Chance and I ate ice cream while in Pacific Park and just starring at the ocean!

No, I am not obsessed with myself. I asked Chance to take my photo and this is how many he took, haha.

We had parked at Santa Monice Place, which is a really cool outdoor shopping mall with great food places located inside and around it.

We left Santa Monica Pier and drove down to Marina Del Rey to check out the boats...I mean...YACHTS that people have down there. Some were insane! We picked out our "future" yacht :)

For those who have never been to LA...this is what rush hour looks like. These highways are 6 lanes each way and still are completely bumper to bumper! We were only about 15 miles from our hotel and the estimated time travel was almost an hour. So we used our GPS and took back roads, and made it to the hotel in about 25 minutes! Thank you Google Maps!

We had seen this place in Westwood called Mr. Noodle and had wanted to try it for a few days so we ate there for dinner. It was incredible!

Chance has a fraternity brother that he use to go to school with at UNT. He loves to do comedy and use to perform at the Improv in Addison, and he is so funny that he moved to LA to try it out there. He works at the Laugh Factory, so he was able to get us two tickets to the show that night! There were a bunch of random acts, and they were really good. At one point I got up to use the restroom and from in the bathroom I hear this, "And our special act for the night is the one and only....DANE COOK!" I thought it was a joke but high tailed it out of there to check it out and I couldn't believe who was on stage....DANE COOK! When I got back to our seats which were RIGHT UP TO THE STAGE Chance was like "Oh My Gosh can you believe it?!" When Dane Cook ran up the row to the stage he brushed my elbow, so I told Chance I was never going to wash my elbow ;) He was hilarious! The Laugh Factory is really small, that night only about 40 or 50 people max were there so it was really neat.

Friday afternoon we headed back down to Santa Monica Place to go to the Promenade. We ate at the #1 Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica called Border Grill. It was so tasty! Chance is drinking Mexican Tea, and those that know me know that I like my sugar with a little bit of tea...it must be a southern thing. This tea has a sweet fruity taste to it, so no sugar needed! I couldn't believe it.

After lunch we headed down to Venice beach so we could walk near the ocean and check out some shops. Behind us in this picture it says VENICE that hangs from string across the road. It looks really cool, but we couldn't get a great photo of it.

2nd attempt....still not that great :(

Venice beach is full of weirdos, hippies, musicians, and even more. Which makes it a really neat place to go to people watch! I love it down here.

Muscle beach where everyone works out!

These "Doctors" are everywhere!

We spent all day here and it was time to go back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We headed down to Century City mall and ate at Gulfstream. It was so good! It is owned by the same company who owns or use to own Houston's Steakhouse.

Margarita for Chance and Pomegranate Martini for me.

Shrimp and to-die-for biscuits for an appetizer!

Chance ordered the Salmon and I ordered the Crab Cakes.

After dinner we walked over to AMC and watched The Five Year Engagement, it was really cute!
This picture was taken before we actually went to dinner, we are standing outside of our beautiful hotel.

Saturday we flew back to Dallas and weren't ready for the vacation to end and were feeling pretty lucky so we decided to just keep driving up 35 and try our luck at Winstar! Here are a few pics: