So, we awoke early to get out of dodge (after eating at Richard’s Pancake House…which is HIGHLY recommended by the way), we saw on the news that everyone’s favorite screw up, Lindsay Lohan, had been arrested (again). There was more giggling. However, the giggling stopped when we realized that when you are in L.A., celebrity gossip isn’t something just for blogs and Us Weekly, it’s their local news. There’s nothing more annoying than the 11 o’clock news that includes celebrity lawyers to talk about Lindsay. Local news out there is just one giant episode of Entertainment Tonight.

Rodeo Drive is full of Ferraris, Bentleys, and fake boobs. It’s truly ridiculous and I encourage everyone to experience it just once, but only once…because that’s plenty. Unless you are made of money (I mean literally, when you shake your leg, the benjamins just fall off), you won’t be able to buy anything. Not only that, but many stores require you to make reservations to shop there. Except Barney’s, anyone can go to Barney’s..even Posh, but that’s probably because she has an accent.

After Beverly Hills, we drove to Hollywood, and walked along Hollywood Blvd, which is a string of sex shops, costume (think cheerleaders and pasties) shops and bars. One giant red light district, it’s no wonder people get into trouble there. Traffic is a nightmare, it takes 30 minutes to get anywhere, and it gets cold after 5 p.m. The best part of Hollywood was the scenic drive through the hills on Mulholland drive. We stopped at the lookout and took some hazy pictures of smog city and enjoyed the sunset.

I never loved the zoo, never, but something about the San Diego zoo..I had to go. Even when my husband wanted to go to the beach instead I said no way. So off to the zoo we were! You are greeted in the zoo by weirdos who want to take your picture for you (you know, for $19.99 + tax), and when you dodge those people your nose is assaulted by the smell of flamingo feces. Times like that call for a tumor on the olfactory nerve!

However, once you get passed the flamingo stench, the zoo is pretty much like any other zoo, with the exception of the fact that it has pandas. There was a mean bird pecking at some guy’s camera, a hippo that knew how to work the crowd, an elephant searching for peanuts in a bucket, and llamas. Who doesn’t love a llama?! I managed to take about 258 pictures of zoo fun that day, mostly of flowers because I took the time to become the plant paparazzi.

What I didn’t anticipate at the San Diego zoo was the abundance of British children. This prompted a lot of giggling between the two of us about the long, drawn out syllables of whining British children. “Mumm-eeeeeeeeey, I’m gonna punch him in the tum-meeeeeeeeeey”. Or when small fish were nipping at the butt of the hippo the girl screaming, “Dad-deeeeeey, is it nooooooormaaaaaaal?”. What is that all about anyways? It takes them like 45 seconds to ask a question! Regardless, I love the accents. I really would’ve loved to see that little girl punch her brother in the tum-meeeeey even more though.

Here’s San Diego, brining the trailer park to you…notice the mommy flamingo barfing into her baby’s mouth…I mean, feeding her young.

There is more culture in this park than all of Cincinnati combined, I’m not kidding. Balboa Park is the nation’s largest urban park and could be described as a cultural mixture of various museums, botanical gardens and the San Diego Zoo. We chose to separate our trips to this cultural mecca into one day for gardens and museums and another day for the zoo. We began our enlightening journey in the Japanese Friendship Garden, and to put it mildly, they’d make more friends if there was a little more garden. However, it was only a $2 admission (yay! student discount). However, the Japanese tea shop & cafe’ next door made things a bit better in the form of Teriyaki chicken rice bowls. Ahh, sweet rice redemption! We were also able to enjoy a free organ concert until we decided it was too hot to sit in the sun.

We strolled over to the Museum of Photographic Arts, it was just as cool as it sounds (no sarcasm intended). We enjoyed some Ansel Adams nature photos, an Arthur Lavine exhibit featuring photos of all sorts of random/social scenes and Harry Callahan exhibit which featured mainly pictures of his naked wife Eleanor. Enough photos for me to become uncomfortable with all the nudity, it was a little out of hand, even Aaron said so. Overall, I think we were both impressed with the photography museum and it sparked a need for me to have photographs of my own. So when we ventured into the Spanish Art Village, I purchased a photo of Venice and a picture of the arches near the House of Hospitality in Balboa Park. When inspired, I am more than willing to support local, starving artists, even if they aren’t local to me.

I was also inspired to become a plant paparazzi. I’m not kidding, we entered the botanical gardens and I began taking picture after picture of flowers. This became a trend that continued throughout the remainder of our vacation. I leave you with foliage photo.

No kidding, Tijuana looks like a city that someone built and then forgot about it.

Our day began with a trolley ride to the border. Each trolley stop closer to the border, the surrounding area looked more and more run down. Not to mention, there was progressively less grass and more and more gravel yards. When we stepped off the trolley in San Ysidro it already felt like I was in another world. Most of the signs were in both English and Spanish, I was one of the few people not of Latin American decent, and I’m pretty sure I was already surrounded by Chiclet dealers.

Just after we walked through the clunky, metal turnstiles we were greeted by a fleet of aggressive taxi drivers. All 37 of them asked us if they could give us a ride, and we politely declined about 4 times. After that we just stopped talking and put our heads down to avoid eye contact. Then we began walking passed the 973 booths selling the same products. An array of wrestling masks and capes (featuring the very scary Dora the Explorer and Hello Kitty), ceramic Disney Princesses and Dora’s, Dora beach balls (Dora is the official mascot of Mexico, by the way), cheap jewelry and purses. I’m not kidding, everyone is selling the same things. There are women with little babies who stand there for 12+ hours a day selling the same stuff as the person next to her.

There’s also no lack of Chiclets being peddled on the streets. I’m not sure how much it costs to buy a pack of Chiclets, but it can’t be that expensive because wads of chewed up gum are all over the streets. Singapore would just die. You have to constantly watch your step or you’ll be the person saying, “crap! I hate gum!!”.

My husband chose to wear a t-shirt he bought in Alaska a couple of years ago, so all day long people yelled at us, “HEY ALASKA! The final frontier!” or “HEY! ALASKAN HONEYMOONERS!!”. I couldn’t help but laugh, it’s utterly ridiculous. Besides, no one wears a t-shirt boasting their own state/town, we only wish to boast about the places we’ve been, duh. At one point someone actually yelled, “Hey! Alaskan honeymooners over here!” and I started laughing and he yells, “ok, I guess honeymoon is over!” The honeymoon ended when some guy offered me “silver bling” that looked as if it had been stolen off of a 50 Cent impersonator earlier in the day.

There were a few booths that sold what I think was yams, my husband believe it was some sort of meat. I believe that I am right because, A) I’m never wrong and B) yams and meat don’t exactly look alike, and he doesn’t know what a yam is so he can’t argue with me about it. Anyways, these meaty yams were covered with bees. It was so creepy, when I first saw it I actually stopped and turned into a 4 year old because I didn’t want to walk passed the bees. I am really afraid of being stung in the eye, just by the way.

After about 3 hours, we decided to leave Tijuana and return to our hotel and plan something else for the remainder of the day. At 1:26 we got in line to return to the United States. This line was about 2 miles from the border around AND under a bridge. Then there were people heckling you saying things like, “good luck finding the end!” or “I’m sure the end is back there somewhere!”. Thanks jerks, you’ve been very helpful. They stop peddling Chiclets to the people waiting in line and peddle more favorable goods such as Popsicles and bottled water. I guess they figured a pack of gum that loses flavor in 15 seconds isn’t a wise choice considering they barely have enough time to get out of my spitting distance before the gum loses flavor. At about 3:00, we were finally getting closer to the border and were close enough for Aaron to walk to a store and buy us some much needed beverages. At about 3:30 we could see the building where the border was, and we could also see border patrol getting very serious about people who cut in line. By the way, I don’t recommend it, they don’t take that offense lightly. It was about 4:15 before we were finally back in the country and we could only sit on the trolley and laugh about how we spent more time in line then we actually spent walking around.

Oh and by the way, if you’re ever in Latin America and you get the chance, I recommend trying Manzana Rojo. It’s an interesting red apple flavored soda (pop, coke, whatever you call it) made by Coca-Cola.

That title is only funny for the people who have ever watched Dora the Explorer, I have little nieces, stop hating.

I like to believe that I have a good sense of direction. I can mentally visualize major landmarks and then I can keep track of where I am in relation to those things, thus allowing me to know north, south, east & west. My husband on the other hand, lost ball in high weeds. I’m really surprised he can find our house some days. I’ll also be living on the porch after he reads this paragraph.

Despite my fantastical directional skillz, I am a horrible navigator. It’s not because I will get you lost (trust me, even if you don’t know where you’re at, I do), but because I don’t follow directions well. If you hand me directions and I’m familiar with the area, I’ll change something. If you hand me a map as well, I start figuring out better ways to go. I believe it’s because I’m Generation X, I can’t follow directions because it’s like the man (or map) is just keeping me down.

So, there we were, had just picked up our rental car and we were preparing to make the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego. My husband commented about the interstate taking us down the coast, but I begged to differ, of course, because I noticed that while on the Google map it appeared the I-5 ran down the coast, what we really wanted to be driving along was Pacific Coast Highway. So there I am with a crude map via Google and a gen-X bright idea…it was time to rage against the machine (map). It started with me picking a random highway exit, which was followed by me deciding to turn right, because I knew that the ocean was to the right. But at that point was I lost, and after a brief trip north we turned around and were headed in the right direction. I think going the wrong way is just part of being a stray pea…