LA Story 2002

We three and our friend Mary Ann flew to Southern California for a couple of weeks at the end of January to escape the Alberta winter blahs. To only partial avail. 

We arrived in Tinsletown to find the usually-balmy environs suffering one of the worst winters in its sordid history, and we suffered along with the denizens of Beverly Hills in the near-freezing temperatures. Even Santa Monica pier, famous for its bouncing beach babes, offered no respite for our cold-withered morale. To Rob's great disappointment, the teeny-weeny bikinis had been doffed in favor of many layers of heavyweight togs to buffer the chilling off-shore Arctic winds. 

But the unreasonable weather did supply some advantages in that strange land: no line-ups for the rides at Disneyland and other "suffer-in-the-summer" theme parks. We hit them all! Rob and Lisa tested their cold weather courage on a variety of killer coasters at Six Flags and Knott's Berry Farm. We even managed to coerce Mary Ann into her first coaster ride - the new Screamer at Disney's California Adventure (yes, she screamed). The Screamer's not bad for ol' namby-pamby Disney. If you don't bury your head into the backrest when that sucker takes off, the resultant whiplash can leave you with a two-hour headache. No joke! 

We managed to miss a lot of museums on this trip, and instead concentrated our cultural studies on such "cult" icons as Disneyland, Hollywood Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, Venice Beach, Universal Studios and lots of time (whether you want it or not) on the LA Freeway! For those in our troop who had not seen Disneyland before, it came as a bit of a surprise. The original Disneyland is not nearly as big as the Orlando site. We found that without wasting away in the usual long line-ups we could thoroughly cover both the Magic Kingdom and California Adventure in just a day and a half instead of the 3 days we had allocated - hence more frigid beach time! We found we also had time to witness a "live" taping session of Spin City at CBS Studios - the one where Charlie's felonious father comes to town and Carter's dog dies. Doesn't sound hilarious, but it was!

Then we followed the frigid weather further south to San Diego. Mary Ann decided to "chill" out by the pool at the La Jolla B&T Club while the remainder of our expeditionary force braved the border. Tijuana was a "hoot" with touts on every comer offering their wears at "100% off" and street-side hustlers trying to get us to sit on miserable-looking zebra-striped donkeys for "souvenir" photos. Right! But we did find a super restaurant with seats outside on the balcony for mucho Margaritas. Yes, it was warm in Tijuana! Pat also found a couple of great arts and craft shops that made this sojourn justifiable. We also managed to squeeze in day trips to the fabulous San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal Game Park and Sea World. These places are definitely "must see."

So, despite the cool reception, LA and San Diego weren't too bad. We had a lot of laughs, had some dam good meals, drank some excellent local wines, picked up a few souvenirs, saw a few stars, and managed to miss the worst of Edmonton's winter. Here's some photos: