It is now more than 2 years since we had the accident – Or a better way to look at it, Joep has now enjoyed 2 years of extra life – Or an ever BETTER way to look at it, it is less than 1 YEAR until we get married!! All of these things warrant significant celebration and this year we decided to escape the cold to celebrate all the wonderful things life has given us. Well, we didn’t decide it. Scheuten decided it. Joep was in California for work the week before our anniversary and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to (a) escape the Ottawa winter for a few days (b) celebrate our anniversary in style and (c) explore our new home!
By now it is no secret that we are moving to California some time next year. Exact dates continue to be a work in progress but we’re getting there. After a few days apart I met Joep at LA airport on Thursday night. He had just enjoyed an evening at Shutters restaurant in Santa Monica where all the celebrities hang out. Very impressive apparently. Upon arrival in LA we headed straight out of the city to Laguna Beach. For those who don’t know (which shouldn’t be many of you given how huge a hit the reality TV show named and set in Laguna Beach was!) Laguna Beach is a seaside resort and artist community located in southern Orange Count, California, USA. It lies 82km’s south of Los Angeles and 117km’s north of San Diego. Most importantly however, it is known for having some of the most beautiful beaches in southern California.
I am always dubious when cities claim to have the ‘most beautiful beaches’. I firmly believe it is because I am Australian. And we really DO have the most beautiful beaches. So I find myself constantly disappointed with the beaches on offer in other places. Yes, us Aussie’s are an incredibly spoiled bunch. However, for what I believe may be the first time ever, I was very happy with the Laguna Beach beaches!
We got to Laguna Beach after a 45 minute car ride and it was late and we were both exhausted so we hit the hay immediately. On Friday morning for the first time in over a year, Joep got up and left for work and I stayed home! I liked this role reversal very much. I spent Friday wandering around the town and soaking up the atmosphere. The town is full of tiny little art galleries, book stores and café’s. I was in heaven. After countless hours of just wandering around, Joep called to say that his Friday had finished early and that he would meet me for a late lunch.
Matt (Joep’s colleague that we met in NYC last year) tagged along for the ride and boy were we glad he did. He is a Laguna local and subsequently knew of some great restaurants … case in point: Casa del Camino. It is an amazing restaurant perched atop a restaurant which is perched atop a cliff over looking the ocean. It was glorious! We sat outside enjoying the warm afternoon weather and had a few beers whilst chowing down on some amazing food. A very nice start to the weekend!
After lunch Joep and I took the opportunity to chill out on our hotel balcony enjoying ocean views and a few snacks. Heavenly. I love being warm. Before too long we decided it was eating time again (I’m sure you are all noticing now that the entire day was eating time … from café’s in the morning to a big lunch to snack on the balcony and now dinner time? Seems excessive. It is. Whatever, we’re on vacation.). We walked back into the heart of the town to meet up with Matt and his fiancé Tiari at yet another great restaurant for dinner.
The food was amazing and the company was wonderful and we enjoyed a lovely evening. Alas Ottawa is 3 hours ahead of California so by 9pm I was exhausted! The excessive eating probably contributed to the exhaustion as well. Either way, we decided to call it a night and started to walk home. On the walk home we passed through the town and we were so impressed! The streets were positively teeming with people out enjoying a Friday night meal and a few drinks. The atmosphere was great! These Californian’s sure know how to live. Alas I was exhausted. And as much as I wanted to join in the fun it just was not possible. So home time was the decision.
It was a good decision though because we were up bright and early Saturday morning to make the most of the day! And what a day it was! We had a quick snack at the hotel before hopping in the car and driving to San Diego. We were there within 45 minutes and out wandering around the city. Its actually a really nice spot and even though it was early Saturday morning there was heaps of atmosphere on the streets and super friendly people! One man even admired my Saturday morning outfit from a great distance shouting out about it. No, he was not being disgusting. And no, he was not still drunk (I think). He just liked my dress. This pleased me greatly.
After wandering around San Diego for a while and deciding that we would DEFINITELY visit there again soon, we stopped for a bite to eat. An hour and a bit later and we were stuffed to the gills with a delicious brunch courtesy of Café 222 (which comes highly recommended). And once again we were eating outside. In December. Heavenly.
Declaring the exploration a success, we headed back to the car to ensure we had enough time to enjoy Laguna. We arrived back in Laguna late in the afternoon in time to have beer on the balcony once more. After sun down we got dressed for our celebration dinner and headed down to the town. Joep had found a great sushi restaurant in the town during another trip and raved about it so that was our destination of choice. We were not disappointed. We sat at the sushi bar rather than a table which was SUPER fun and we ordered copious amounts of delicious sushi and not so delicious (but we didn’t mind coz there was lots of it) wine.
My favourite part? Almost all of the sushi chefs were Spanish! True story. And it was delicious.
We spent the evening chatting and laughing and eating. All the things that we are best at. Afterwards we stopped off at a local bar for a nightcap before heading home. Unbeknownst to us, it was the anniversary of the end of prohibition in the United States! This bar was celebrating it so we were decked out in feather boa’s in the US flag colours and enjoyed the great atmosphere! A thoroughly enjoyable evening behind us and it was time to hit the sack. We were exhausted and very content!
Sunday morning, once again (thank you jet lag), we were up very early. It was great! We threw on some comfy clothes and headed down for a beach walk. It was such a lovely way to start the day! We explored the beach trails and spent lots of time gasping in awe at the enormous, elaborate mansions along the way. It is like living in a different world. Seriously. After finishing our big walk we headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out.
But we had one more fun thing to do before leaving Laguna – Brunch! Sunday brunch at a lovely restaurant, sitting outside, overlooking the ocean. Heavenly.
We are now even more excited than ever at the idea of moving to Laguna. It is going to be such fun!
And on the fun note – Our fun didn’t end there! Our 2pm flight out of LAX went without a hitch but when we landed in Chicago for our connection Joep had a voicemail from the airline saying that our connecting flight was cancelled. Yikes. Luckily though, for the first time in months, neither of us had meetings on the Monday. Phew! That is a first! So we weren’t toooo stressed. We subsequently found out that we couldn’t get out of Chicago until 5pm the following afternoon – most people would be irritated by the delay. Joep and I took one look at each other, grinned and high fived. A chance to check out the city!!
Sadly we didn’t have any luggage with us and it was -10 degrees in Chicago with snow on the ground but this was no issue for us. Sunday night was spent in a cozy hotel room with (you’ll never believe it …) heaps of food! We then researched our lonely planet and made our plan for Monday morning. Up early, catch the train to the city and, after buying some winter clothes, go exploring!
The plan went off without a problem. We caught the train from the airport to downtown first thing in the morning and, after grabbing some coffees, headed straight for Macy’s. Once we had our winter gear we hit the streets to check out the city.
The architecture in Chicago is beautiful and, if it wasn’t so cold, I could’ve spent the day just wandering around the streets. Alas it was freeeeezing so we had some inside time. Chicago has an amazing Cultural Center which was full of great art displays that kept us entertained for some time. We also spent some quality time in Millenium Park which has some super cool sculptures. We then walked up across the North Bridge with the goal of finding a pizza restaurant that was raved about. We found it. The Chicago people love these ‘deep dish’ pizza’s. It is literally like eating a pizza pie. It sounded delicious and we were so excited to try it! We didn’t even mind that it was after 2pm by the time we got there, the pizza would take 45 minutes to cook, it would take us 1 hour to get to the airport and our flight was boarding at 16:10. Do the math. We were cutting it close.
Alas the pizza was a bit of a disappointment and Joep & I both concluded that we prefer the standard pizza. However we are glad we tried it! It was definitely worth trying. After thawing out and pigging out we then legged it back to the subway station to get our train to the airport. We were both a smidge stressed about missing our flight. Upon arrival at the airport we legged it from the station to the departure gates. Queues at security were as long and as slow as can be expected but we managed to pick a reasonable queue, get through quickly and arrive at our gate in time to board. In fact, we even had time to … wait for it … get more food! Yes. We are gluttonous.
And so ended a WONDERFUL anniversary weekend away. We loved every second of it. We are still so conscious of how lucky we are to be alive and we love to celebrate it. In addition we are so excited to have our next adventure … even though we are really going to miss Ottawa and all the pals we’ve made here. But we have plenty of time left before we leave so we’ll be making the most of it! More to come …
