Madonna of the Unloved.: November 2009

So, we got back nearly 2 weeks ago, and I still haven't written about our adventure.
It definitely was an adventure.

Tuesday Oct.13 (seems so long ago.)
Somehow I got through my day of having a midterm, 2 papers and a presentation. I rushed home and procrastinated for a few hours until I finally decided to pack. Brent came to pick me up around 11pm-12am, and went back to Waterloo. Brent had to get some last minute stuff done, then we went to sleep.

Wednesday Oct.14
Had a terrible sleep because I was so excited. Since I was so excited, I started worrying about time because we were flying from Buffalo. We stopped at his parents place, Brent packed up his stuff and we headed to Buffalo. We were both very hungry so we were both on edge until we got to the airport. Brent thought we may have problems crossing the border, but everything was pretty quick. By the time we got on the shuttle to the airport, we had got a little more relaxed and just a tad bit excited. We checked in our baggage ($20US per bag, what a joke) and got through security smoothly. We decided to grab some lunch since we ended up having 2 hours to kill (after all of the irritation of being late). Since the selection was so varied (not) we sat down at a little restaurant for our first american meal. The people beside us were talking about how Toronto really is a boring city and noone should go there. Stupid americans. Brent and I played cards, and we both won fairly evenly (I let him win). We sat and waited to board the plane, thinking of ways to get in trouble ;). We hopped on the first plane to Newark, which was an hour long, then we entertained ourselves by taking really stupid pictures of ourselves, and transfered to the plane that would be taking us to San Francisco. We loaded onto the plane on time, but ended up sitting on the runway for an hour to take off. Because of this, we didn't end up getting to San Francisco until 1:15am their time (4:15am our time). On the flight we actually got dinner that was edible, it was a burrito with a salad and carrots with dip and a brownie for dessert. It was pretty impressive. Both of us were tired when we landed and grabbed the airport shuttle to La Quinta (piece of shit) after being very irritated about finding where to catch it. When we finally got to the "hotel", there was an annoying lady taking her sweetass time to sign in and was wandering around with a map because she was so confused about where her room was. We were both so exhausted we didn't even help her. We shuffled into our HUMID room and I went to sleep while Brent went for a late night stroll in the area. It was pretty amazing to get to San Francisco with warm weather. In the middle of October wearing boxers to bed and having to sleep on top of the sheets because it was so hot. Love it.

Thursday Oct.15
I woke up at 8:15am to check out the complimentary breakfast. I assumed it would be some toast or cereal with coffee and juice, but it ended up being pretty spectacular considering it was free. I went back to wake Brent up, and dragged him half-asleep to the breakfast. We had tea & coffee, waffles, bagels and yogurt, then went back to the room, put on our jogging gear (Brent somehow fit into my shorts, lol) and went for a jog around the ugly industrial area we were situated in. There were some pretty funky looking trees growing and we were introduced to the BLUE MAN. The BLUEMAN was incredibly entertaining and I enjoyed his company. We didn't go too far since we didn't want to get too far from the "hotel", so we jogged back, showered, checked our emails in the lobby while we waited for the shuttle (I lost the key for this entire time) and went to pick up our rental car at the airport. The San Francisco airport is interesting like the Toronto airport because it has these shuttles that take you to different places around the airport. The funny thing that happened here was the fact that it has a sharp turn. We were standing up and manly Brent stumbles on the turn. While he fell, he decided the best way not to fall was to grab my bossom for leverage in front of everyone. Not only was this just an awkward situation, but I was not wearing a bra that day... so, well you get the picture, as did everyone else. Ha haaaa, so funny. Anyways, we finally get to the rental car place and I got very frustrated because they screwed up our reservation. Long story short, this costed us an extra $250US for the 4 days, which I was not impressed about. Brent said that we could take care of it later, so I left irritated and we picked up our car. We were supposed to get a stupid economy Aveo or something, but when they drove up with a Dodge Charger, we both looked at each other and laughed. I guess we had got upgraded (or screwed over) to a red gas-guzzling car. Brent did all the paperwork and we booked it out of there. We got back to the "hotel", I found the key to our room and ran back because I wanted to get out of the shithole and to NAPA VALLEY! On the way back to the room, I noticed a sign in the hallway that read something like...
" CAUTION: THIS FACILITY HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CARRY CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES THAT COULD BE HARMFUL TO YOU. THIS FACILITY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE."
Well, that just made me want to get out of there even more, but I should've taken a picture. And the saddest part of that was the fact the room was still a $130US/night room. After about 2 hours we left the "hotel" and headed North towards Napa Valley. We drove through downtown San Francisco and on the Bay Bridge which is miles long above the water. It only took about 1.5 hours to get to Napa. We actually ended up driving through Napa (since there actually isn't anything there) and into a town called Yountville where our B&B was located. The scenery was pretty amazing driving through the mountains, even though it was a little cloudy. After driving past our B&B like 4 times, we finally found it. The house had a large garden, and our room was on the main floor with a private garden patio with a link to a hot tub. The lady who owned the house was incredibly nice and gave us a couple wine tasting coupons. It was getting later, (like 4:00pm), so we drove into the town of Yountville and looked for a place to eat dinner. We decided on a place called Hurley's, which served traditional Californian food and made a reservation for 8:30pm. We then drove around trying to find the Goosecross Winery. It was almost 4:30pm, which was when they closed, so we dashed inside to have a quick wine tasting. Since we had a free coupon (at this place, a wine tasting was $10US a person), we started with whites and then to reds. It was pretty busy in there, and I'm not sure if the guys working there didn't care, but fuck we were both drunk after our 5 tastings. It was good it was free since the wine itself wasn't very good. After that, Brent (slowly) drove back into the town to look around. We went by this cool spa-looking place which was very modern and cool looking. We decided to stop and look around the place, and found out that it was a new hotel built this year. A very expensive hotel (starting at $550US/night). It was happy hour by then, so we both got a beer and looked around. Brent bought me some oil from the spa there which smelt really nice. I was really tipsy at this point, and it was only 5:30pm. We stopped by a grocery store and picked up some chilled wine, crackers, jelly, some local chocolate and some yummy cheeses for an appetizer before dinner. We had a very flamboyant guy helping us, and we got some really delicious cheese out of the deal. We drove back to the B&B and sat outside for our appetizer. Brent drank nearly the entire bottle, so when it came time for us to head over to the restaurant, I drove. The restaurant was quite quaint and we ordered some calamari for an appetizer, Brent had a burger (big surprise) and I had a very nice salad since I wasn't very hungry. At this point, Brent was quite wasted so we headed back to the B&B and went in the hot tub to relax before bed. The stars look the same as they do in Canada, but since we were somewhere so deserted, they were that much brighter and lovelier.

Friday Oct.16 (The best day of all)
We woke up at 8:45am to have breakfast with the other guests. I woke up a little earlier to have some tea in bed, but I couldn't find any so I waited until breakfast. We had this special oatmeal with a custard, sausage (which Brent really enjoyed, lol) and fresh fruit. We sat around and chatted with the other (much older guests) and got a feel for what we should do for the rest of the day. We were informed that the North part of California (the part we were in) had very different people and lifestyle than they do in Southern California. We went back to our room, had a tickle fight, showered, took a little walk around the property and packed up our stuff. We got a map of the area and the wineries (all 200 of them) and missioned away from our little B&B (and my dream house on a hill) and on the road. I had looked up a specific winery before we left called the Castello de Amorosa, and I really wanted to go. We drove further north through the amazing scenery - someone had granted us the most perfect weather for our day, sunny warm and wonderful. We passed many interesting-looking wineries, went through a little town of St.Helena, and finally found the Castello de Amorosa, which is a winery in an old CASTLE. This was absolutely amazing. We drove up the driveway, parked and started to walk around the area. It was situated on a hill overlooking the entire landscape, filled with so many grapes, trees and mountains. Truly breathtaking. To look around the castle we had to pay $15US, which included a wine tasting. We walked around, and took some pictures. We both climbed up onto the high balconies and got in trouble because it was not allowed since it was so high off the ground (although we did get our pictures, ha!). Brent and I toured the castle on our own, all the while smelling the wood burning in the fire place, smelling fresh wine being made and looking at a real castle. We wandered into a couple rooms we were not allowed into (which was so bs) and into the Great Hall, where we took my favorite picture of us from the trip - us sitting in the King and Queen's chairs. After a little while, we decided to head down to the basement to do the wine tasting. We bought a couple post cards and found out there was a true dungeon in the castle below us with creepy killing devices they used in the distant past. Brent was telling me about one that a person goes into a box and there are special holes to stick knives in the body in areas where it wouldn't kill someone, but develop a great amount of pain and torture. Fun. We went into the wine tasting place and had Gordon help us with the wine tasting. We were only supposed to have 5 tastings each, but Gordon gave both of us a taste of each... 20 wines. Considering it was only 11:30am, we tried not to get tipsy but it was really hard. We both had the equivalence of about 4 glasses of wine. These wines were much nicer, especially the SWEEEEEEEEET dessert wines, and ESPECIALLY the dessert wine that I frikkin' loved which was $79US a bottle. Gordon gave us some chocolate to have along with it and we were both in heaven. We finally dragged ourselves away from the winery, and tried to find a specific winery&deli we had to advised to go to called Sattui. We drove by it at first, but then we parked and ventured in. This place was AMAZING! You can go buy a bottle of wine, and food from the deli and have a picnic. That is exactly what we did, I loved this. We first had a few samples of cheeses they were giving out (we were starving) and found out they made over 100 different cheeses there. We waited in line for about 15 minutes (so busy), got a little messy with raspberry chocolate sauce they were sampling, and ordered our DELICIOUS meal including: an italian sandwich, a couple artichoke hearts, seafood salad, and a tomato and FRESHLY MADE creamy mozzarella pesto salad with organic mango juice. We found a table outside and devoured our meal. It was so frikking delicious, I was so content. Once we finished all our food, we headed back onto the road towards San Francisco. Since we didn't have GPS, I was the direction marshall guiding us on our travels (I have to say this because I was, and Brent too very impressed with my direction skills). We took the long way around the water so we could go across the Golden Gate Bridge. The drive was quite amazing and we successfully crossed the bridge. It was a pretty amazing experience. I felt like I was living a day in Full House. Somehow we didn't get stuck in bad traffic, so we drove around the INTENSELY crazy streets of San Francisco, including down the "crookedest street in San Francisco" which was, the crookedest street ever. Brent had alot of fun driving down it, then we went down to the water, parked and walked towards Fisherman's Wharf. We wanted to take the trolley, but the lineup was ridiculously long. We walked along Fisherman's Wharf, saw Azkaban - I mean, Alkatraz prison, saw a guy catching crabs (the real kind), saw seals/otters in the water below us and sat along the walkway and enjoyed the moment. Once we started to get hungry we drove down towards Union Square which is the main shopping district. It took us a while to find a parking spot, and when we did, we noticed that we were in a very sketchy area. No wonder the parking was so cheap. We stopped by a corner store and got drinks for a 1/3 of what you would pay here, and walked towards Union Square. We went into a jewelery store to look at pearls (which were a little more than expensive), then Brent took me to Macy's and Victoria's Secret and looked around at some pretty things, and Brent bought me some pretty things as a gift. Most of the stores were closing, but we stopped by Barnes & Noble for a peebreak and got Brent's mom a Halloween card which I thought she would like. I wanted to do Thai for dinner, and asked an asian girl in Victoria's Secret for a recommendation, but she got really confused so we left to find one ourselves. Apparently Obama was at Union Square just the day before we were there, oh well. We walked around Union Square and somehow found ourselves in "Little Thai Town" like, 2 blocks from Union Square. We ended up eating at a Vietnamese restaurant by the window. The day seemed to be made specifically for us. We order some tea and soup and a meal each. The soup was a Hot& Sour soup which was MILD. At the very end of eating the soup, right before our main courses got there, I bit into something that looked like a green bean. Unfortunately for myself, who hates hot food, bit into a habinaro (SP?) pepper. My mouth started to sweat a lot, my eyes started watering and then my mouth was ON FIRE. I had never eaten anything that hot in my entire life. Brent was sitting across from me laughing his ass off while I was in temporary hell. I couldn't enjoy the rest of my meal for at least 15 minutes because everytime something hot hit my tongue, my mouth was back on fire. Once it wear off, I got to enjoy my meal which was realllly realllly good. We wanted to stop at The Cheesecake Factory for dessert, so we went up to the 8th floor of Macy's where it was absolutely packed and had over an hour wait for dessert. I tried to find another location in San Francisco because Brent really wanted to go, but it was to no avail. We decided it wasn't worth it and time to head back to the car- wherever it was, since we didn't exactly pay attention, and found it after walking past some really cool places including a Dr.Seuss art gallery. Brent made sure that everything was still in the car, since the windows somehow were down, and we started driving out of San Francisco to find a cheap hotel for the night. Earlier in the trip, after we left San Francisco the first time, I noticed that I left my favorite stuffed animal that I've had forever in the "hotel" the first night. We went back to see if it was there, and it wasn't. I took a minute and was actually quite distraught after losing my Snort that I slept with every night. Yes, I am 22 and sleep with a stuffed bull. We drove... and drove... for 3 hours around stupid Campbell trying to find:
a. someone that knew where a motel/hotel was
b. a frikking motel/hotel
Finally we found a couple motels which was "cheap" ($100US) but not cheap enough. We continued to drive until we found a Motel6 which still cost $70US for the night. It had been a long day, so we buckled into our dingy and disgusting motel room and went to sleep.

Saturday Oct.17
Since this place didn't have a continental breakfast, we woke up and headed to McDonald's (woo) since we didn't know where else to go. We ate on the way, trying to find our way back onto the route we got off of the night before. It ended up that we picked a good place to stop because the highway lead us directly towards the Pacific Coast highway. The air instantly got cooler once we got near the ocean, but the weather was just as nice as the day before. The roads along the coast are all through the mountains and incredibly zig-zagged. Considering the amount of miles we travelled, it took us a very long time to get far. Once we hit Monterey Bay, we stopped at the first beach off the highway, right after the fields and fields of strawberries. We walked down to the ocean and for the first time the entire trip, we stuck our feet in the ocean. The cold, cold ocean. Brent and sat together and enjoyed the sound of the waves and the picturesque view we had. We took a quick stop at 7-11 to grab a map and some snacks and were back on the road. After a few hours, we needed gas and food. We were both starving. We finally found somewhere to fill up and stopped at the first restaurant that we saw called the Lotus Lodge in Big Sur. This restaurant was very expensive for what we got, but we paid for the view, not the food. We were perched on a cliff basically looking out onto the ocean and along the coast. It was amazing and WARM. Ah, I miss the warm. Our server was a 50-60 year old man that was a crazy joker and loved his job. He was very entertaining. At some point, there was an accident on the road, so we got out and went for a look. Apparently a motorcycle had got stuck underneath the front of an RV. Yikes. The traffic didn't take too long to clean up, and we were back on our way. We drove through many national parks, all smelling so delicious and fresh. It was so amazing being near the sound of the ocean and the smell of the trees. We finally got to San Simeon to check out the Hearst Castle, but the waittime would be too long, so we checked out the souvenir shop which was crazy expensive, and looked at some pictures in books of what it looks like and the story behind it. We grabbed a drink and got back on the road. Since we didn't have a place to stay again that night, we stopped in Morro Bay to fill up on gas, and check the internet to find a hotel for the night. We ended up finding a coffee shop that was closed, but the guy let us in to use the wireless. He was an older man again, very friendly and righteous, and Brent had a nice chat with him until we booked a place to stay in the middle of Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. We went down to the water to look at the sunset, but it was too cloudy, so we got back onto the road. About 15 minutes later, we look over and the sunset is all pink and colorful. Lame. We drive until we get into Thousand Oaks (where we were staying), find our hotel which ended up being very nice and we got a suite room too. We dropped off our stuff, decided we should find something fun to do. We had seen this UBBER awesome mini-putting place on the way in, so we ventured out to it. It took us a couple times to find it since we didn't have a map, but we did find it. It only cost $17.50US for us both to play, and it was the coolest mini-putting place ever. It had huge castles and churches you had to play through, and it was really fun. The couples in front of us were quite slow, so we filled our time with making out and throwing mud at each other. It was pretty late by this time, so I tallied the score, (WE TIED, so lame) and went to find a Subway for a late night snack. Since no one was helpful, we ended up going back to the area where our hotel was, contemplated stopping for tacos, then went into a grocery store and bought sandwiches and a Michelina's since we had a microwave in our room. We had a mini feast, stayed up for a while then fell asleep in our nice hotel room.

Sunday Oct. 18
We woke up early to go for another continental breakfast. We had bacon, eggs, yogurt, juice, coffee & tea, then showered and got back onto the road. We left early so we could be in Venice Beach early too. The weather was kind of crappy in the morning while we drove down the coast, once we got to Venice Beach it was pretty nice. We stopped at the Cotel (hostel thingy) we were staying at right on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, and we were informed that we were actually staying at their Hotel that was owned by the same person down the road instead. We assumed they lost our reservation or didn't have a room for us. We headed to the Hotel and checked in. They told us we didn't have a ocean view room anymore, but the room itself was nicer. We were kind of bummed about the view, but when we got up the room, it ended up being very nice AND had an ocean view and a view of the Venice Beach boardwalk right below us. It worked out so perfectly. We dropped off our stuff and walked around the boardwalk looking at the vendors and enjoying the view. We walked down to Muscle Beach, and turned around so we could grab some lunch and eat it by the ocean. We went to Subway, grabbed a couple drinks and a 6-pack (for Brent) and sat underneath some palm trees and ate. I was very excited about my sub because they put AVOCADO onto your sub in California because they can, sooooo good, oh my. I went to sit on the sand for a little while, and somehow I fell asleep for probably 45 minutes. When I woke up, Brent was still sitting drinking his beer near the water. I couldn't believe he let me pass out like that. It was so nice though, wow. And I got a burn, bonus. We walked back towards the hotel stopping at some shops along the way, Brent bought me a cute little black dress, hung around for a little bit, and went our separate ways to check out the area on our own. My job was to find somewhere cool to eat along the boardwalk. I checked out a couple neat stores and bought a couple things including some new jeans, a sweater and Murano glass pendant. When I was walking back, Brent called out to me from our window. He had just got back with more beer and was sitting watching the weird people from our window. We had a couple beers, all the while Brent looking out the window at people, taking videos of people fighting on the street and I watched a little bit of tv. We were both hungry and decided to go to the little bar/restaurant right beside our hotel, since it had a nice patio. We got a spot right when we got there, and sat beside a nice couple visiting from Northern California. We ordered some beer, wings and pizza (SO GOOD) and enjoyed the moment. The pub next door had The Doors cover band playing which was really really good. It was really neat background music. There was a really huge douche who we saw punch a guy in the ear, and was causing trouble right beside us, and didn't pay his bill. He was on something intense because he was swearing and doing weird things the entire time we were there. Brent "surprised" me with a pearl necklace (the real kind) and matching earrings as a present. In the distance we could see a ferris wheel, so after dinner and after the couple sitting next to us offered their place in Hawaii for us to get married (ha haaaaaa, seriously) I drove down to Santa Monica. We didn't want to pay for parking, so we found a spot closer to town. We walked down to the Santa Monica Pier to go on the Ferris Wheel. Our timing was absolutely terrible because we got there RIGHT when it was closing and they didn't let us on. We walked back up into Santa Monica and found a cute little cafe where we had some tea before we headed back to the hotel. I took some time to go to the roof of our hotel and look at the view (and the prostitutes) along the boardwalk then headed to bed.

Monday Oct.19 (Last day)
We woke up early and stopped for some breakfast at the restaurant we were at the night before. We split the cheesiest omelette ever, and went for a jog along the boardwalk. We stopped at Muscle Beach so Brent could work out there for a bit, I took some pictures of him being really manly, lol. Sorry babe. We jogged back, showered, took a couple pictures on the roof and left to the Los Angeles Airport to drop off our rental car. We decided once we got there that since our flight wasn't until 11:45pm that night, we should get another car. We waited in line for at least 45 minutes, and paid more than we should've for a car. It ended up that we got the same car, just a different color than the one we had before. I was pretty irritated with the situation, but we left and headed towards LA. I didn't have a map of LA, so to top off my frustration already, we got slightly lost on the way to LA. We finally got to Beverly Hills, parked on Rodeo Drive, had to get some money from the bank to pay for said-parking, and went to look around. We went up a street because we were both starving and found The Cheesecake Factory. Perfect! We took a seat at a table on the patio, drank Corona's and had a delicious meal and split a very yummy Raspberry Truffle Cheesecake. The amount of calories in these Cheesecakes are unreal- up to 1300 calories/per slice! We finished up lunch and went into a couple stores together. I found this really cute pair of shoes which Brent offered to buy me, but I couldn't bring myself to since they were $210US. We took to our own ways of looking around, and I bought a belt on Rodeo Drive and went to look for Brent. Since I couldn't find him, I went into a couple more stores and almost bought this cute pair of boots from ALDO because the cute, flamboyant guy was just too helpful. I darted out of there before I bought a $200US pair of shoes, and continued to look for Brent. After what seemed like forever, I found him and we headed back to the car. We drove around Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, and looked at all the ridiculous houses around there. It started getting close to dark, so we started to head back toward Hollywood and went down to see Universal Studios and Hollywood Blvd where we saw a movie premiere for Astro Boy taking place. We decided to try the ferris wheel again, so we drove back down to Santa Monica, grabbed teas at McDonald's and walked down to the pier again. Unfortunately, since it was during the week, the Ferris Wheel was again closed, so we sat at a bench and drank our teas while we watched the waves beneath us crashing into the pier. It became time for us to head to the airport, so we dropped off the car and caught a shuttle towards the airport. Luckily we got there early because the line for Delta was around the corner, and OUTSIDE the doors of the airport. Yikes. We stood in line for at least an hour and got our tickets for our flight. Unfortunately, we didn't have seats beside each other for the first transfer to Atlanta but since it was a red-eye flight we both slept the entire way. I took Gravol and had earplugs and was asleep before we took off. I just about had a heart attack when we landed because I thought I was dying since I was sleeping. We stopped in Atlanta for an hour, and took the shorter flight to Buffalo, where we got to sit next to each other right by the bathrooms. We both slept the entire way again. We got our baggage, hopped on the airport shuttle to the car (in the COLD), couldn't find the paper for the car, so Brent had to get a copy of it inside. I waited for about 20 minutes and finally he came out with it, stopped at Tim Horton's since I still had american money. The person "helping" us must have had a disability because the order was still not right when we got it, AND they have different cream cheese. We got to the border, didn't have enough money on us to pay the fee, and once Brent got some paperwork, we got over the border and back into Canada.

Since I have been writing for the past 3 hours, I am going to stop since that is the end of our travels. T'was very busy but incredibly fun. We both want to go back sometime in the future. But for now, we are going to start planning our trip down south for the winter (as long as I get a JOB).
If you read all of that, I salute you.
I am going to rest my fingers now and make dinner.
Love you babe, couldn't have done it without you.

Madonna of the Unloved.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Job Job Job Job.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Stalker.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Shepherds' Pie. Easy!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Sigh..

Friday, November 20, 2009

Yup.

Repeat. Repeat.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Water Sign.

Snort II.

Monday, November 2, 2009

California Travels!