There's No Place Like Home

Happy Easter, Stylenation!  Fella and I got back from our trip to California last night.  The trip was pretty great, save for a broken camera and some nasty food poisoning, and we saw a lot of really cool stuff.  That said, it's good to be back in Chicago, sleep in my own bed again and most importantly, see Jude again!  Here's a few pictures from the trip.


We spent the first part of the trip in Hollywood, where above, we went to Universal Studios. My new ride is bolted to the ground, though I'm sure it'd be fun riding along the winding roads and hills of Hollywood.


After leaving the LA area, we stopped at the Santa Monica Pier for some quality beach time.


We drove along the coast and saw some pretty beautiful sunsets over the Pacific.  This one was just south of San Simeon.


We visited the Hearst Castle. It's a pretty amazing place, you know, if you're into giant mansions situated on the top of a hill, overlooking the ocean.


Continuing north, we traveled on Highway 1 along the central coast.  It was gorgeous, but a little terrifying for this midwestern gal to drive on narrow, winding roads on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean.


We stopped in Carmel while visiting the Monterey Peninsula.  It was a little too cold for swimming, but nice to walk along the beach.


Our next stop was Yosemite National Park.  We got to see giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove.  I mean seriously, these trees are huge!


Yosemite is also home to beautiful waterfalls, which are especially great to see in April because the snow on the mountains is beginning to melt.


After leaving Yosemite, we stopped in Napa to visit my brother and some wineries.  Unfortunately for me, I was recovering from aforementioned food poisoning while in Napa, so I couldn't actually try any wine.  But lucky for Fella, he had me to drive him around the region.  The countryside there is just beautiful, but since our camera broke in Yosemite, we didn't get a ton of pictures in Napa.  So shoot, we'll have to go back.


Our next stop was the Bay area.  First we went to Oakland to see the first show of the first ever Railroad Revival Tour. The picture above is the sun setting over the Bay Bridge, as seen from Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.


We spent our last day of the trip in San Francisco. We walked the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge, and drove across the bridge into Sausalito in Marin County. I was disappointed at the lack of Sausalito Cookies there, but the bridge was pretty cool anyway.


We also walked up and down Lombard Street.  I have no idea how people in San Francisco deal with all of those hills on a daily basis - my calves definitely got a workout!

I'm slowly getting caught up on all of your blogs since I've had pretty limited internet access lately, but I hope you've all had a good couple of weeks!