Go figure, a week’s worth of southern Californian memoirs gone, floating down the river of time and memory into subconscious ether. After a week without Internet and two weeks of apartment relocation, I’ve lost the interest and the detailed memories of my trip to SoCal. I’ll try to write down what I can remember for future reference.
I would not wish my worst enemies (well, maybe) a job at Carlsbad attraction Legoland California; it’s a $50/head giant babysitting center which doubles as an excellent contraceptive for any couple wandering through its blocky estate. Beyond the Miniland recreations – admittedly, they were pretty cool, quite photogenic as evident by the amount of pictures I took solely of that area – there were kids of every variety, from screaming horrors to crying scooters and ice-cream-dripping connoisseurs. Fortunately, that evening saw Sui and I hit up a regional favorite Asian restaurant, Seafood Village () featuring Typhoon-Shelter-style crab; amazing stuff.
I’ve uploaded some pictures for your viewing pleasure; there’s a ton of pics I have to wade through in between sessions of packing and moving boxes, so it’s going to be a bit slow for a while. Oh, and to be clear, I’ve come back home for a while – these are events as transcribed from memory, embellished only as nostalgia allows.
Our journey started with indecision, as we try to decide whether to watch animals entertain us (Seaworld) or entertain ourselves by watching animals (San Diego Zoo). Pretty much everyone I talked to said to avoid Seaworld, though, and I’ve heard nice things about the “world famous” zoo and its surroundings, hence we braced ourselves for a day of wildlife ogling.
(Humans are so easily entertained; would monkeys would pay good money – uh, bananas – to be impressed with people milling around in a superficial “natural” environment?)
My poor car is adorned with the combined juices and innards of a thousand insects, most of which were probably wondering the reason why a 3500 lbs. hunk of metal would came from nowhere to smash into them at 85 mph. One’s train of thought tends to wonder when driving down I-5, quite possibly the most hideously boring highways in California, ensuring travel between northern and southern California will always be…sleepy…
Sui and I decided to take a few days off to do a bit of local sightseeing, visiting places we really should have before given our tenure in the state. My previous trips down to L.A. and San Diego have usually been functional in nature – a programming course, some conference, UCLA – but rarely have I had the chance to enjoy a bustling metropolis at a leisurely pace. I figured it’d be fun to visit places I want to see without the irritating fear of falling behind some arbitrary schedule so I would no longer be able to impress friends and family with the sheer number of famous places I stepped foot upon.
Eight-hour drive.
San Diego Zoo. Balboa Park. La Jolla Cove.
Legoland Adventures. Seaside Village Restaurant.
Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. Santa Monica Beach, Promenade. C and O Trattoria. Korean charcoal BBQ. Getty Center. New Little Taipei with its boba milk teas and $12 three-dish meals.
Pictures to come.
I, royal sitter of the interstate bus tour, supreme consumer of fast food and Chinese buffets, inhabitor of traveller’s motels and occasional pitshops, do hereby record the following of my journeys.It’s the fourth day of my Midwest travels, and writing this post grants pleasant relief from the tedium of the rolling hills and grass that dot the landscape. There’s a lot of road to travel, and we’re currently spearing through two states to get from Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone National Park. It’s certainly been a tiring but mostly boring journey.
I’m not really complaining or whining about it, though; after a few days of riding, I’ve realized that the Midwest is a fairly large and boring place whether you go through it yourself or with someone else at the wheel. Landmarks and points of interest are far from one another, and if you’re going to come up here you might as well hit everything noteworthy along the way in one go so you wouldn’t have to do it again. A bus tour alleviates some of the joyless driving and allows for a lot of sleep when you’re only getting 4-5 hours every night (though our collective pities go out to the bus driver).
Being on an Asian bus tour, though, has its quirks: it’s a federal mandate to board every bus with a loudmouth, talkative and outright bitchy older lady (i.e., “auntie”) that will leech the very life out of you if she decides that you speak her language or even remotely understand it; every rest stop feels like a Chinese invasion of restrooms and liberal looting of anything free; anything that may be unexpected (e.g., a thunderstorm, wild animals crossing the street) will give rise to its own short thunderstorm of camera flashes and awed “waaaah”s.
Worse, my parents are somewhat disappointed because I don’t exhibit the same kind of stereotypical behavior and interest in what I consider to be, I guess, mundane.
So it continues, another three days of exciting non-stop bus-riding action. I’ll try to post a few more select pics as I sort through my dad’s digital albums and pics. For now, though, I’ll post these last few; they were taken as I was under a heavy barrage of rain and hail (you can see it starting by the droplets on the pond in the first one), risking my life to take what turns out to be overexposed quickies.
Stopped over at Wyoming tonight, but thankfully motels in small towns in the middle of vast plains of nothingness are happy to give away free wireless internet access. Here’s a few pics from today, taken from my dad’s cool Nikon SLR:
By my count I’ve sat in the bus 18 hours and in vistas or rest stops around 7 hours; the past 2 days have been a blur of featureness terrain and DS gameplay.
