Jet lag

After New Orleans, we travelled back to San Fran and drove to Yosemite National Park for a few days, followed by Palo Alto.

Yosemite was amazing – quite a change from the city/city/city we had been doing. We had really nice weather – cool enough for walking but not too cold that we were complaining.

We stayed at Camp Curry in a basic tent – it had real beds, a light inside and – most importantly – a bear locker for our food and cosmetics. They are really strict about this at Yosemite.

On the first day we were there we climbed Sentinel Dome – an 8km uphill steep incline that seemed to never end. We walked up and down it that day. It was a major feat for me and left me stoked, but super tired!


  
  
  
  
Yosemite National Park celebrated its 125th birthday whilst we were there and they had some sweet celebration events. Lots of kids were attending and involved in the events which was great to see. The whole Yosemite experience reminded me of school camp. Heaps of fun.

From Yosemite we drove to Palo Alto so I could nerd out in Silicon Valley and Stanford. So awesome. Our friend recently landed a job at Google so he showed us around the Googleplex campus. That place is wild! Endless food, coffee, a bowling alley, g-bikes and g-buses, nerf guns and schwag. They really want their peeps to stay there as long as possible and have a great time working there.

We also got to go to a Stanford vs Arizona College football game. Totally like the movies. Nuff said.


  
  
  
  
  

We headed back up to San Francisco after Palo Alto, but I am going to write about that another time. Right now, I am in Copenhagen and majorly struggling with jet lag. It’s 5:00am and I have been up all night. I am hoping my sleeping patterns get a bit more normal soon… 😐

The quiet life 

LA was awesome. We flew in from Denver after a very delayed Spirit Airlines flight. First on our agenda was to pick up our rental car – which involved a hectic shuttle bus to the car rental depot followed by an extravagant insurance upsell from a customer service representative. Now that we know what it’s like to drive in LA, the insurance we purchased was an EXCELLENT move, except it meant that we couldn’t rent a GPS for our visit to LA and San Diego. Eep.

Nevertheless, we ventured out to the car park, only to find there were no cars available. Hilarious. After a short wait we were on the road (and guessing how to get to our accommodation). Surprisingly we managed to navigate our way downtown (thank you Google for saving our offline maps of the city) and arrived at our accommodation really easily. The AirBNB we stayed in was amazing; it featured a gorgeous view, a pool, gym and a friendly security man who helped us figure out how to open the lobby door.

Highlights of our time in LA included visiting and being part of the FRIENDS Central Perk set, going to a historic Dodgers vs Cubs baseball game where the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta threw a ‘no hitter’ against the Dodgers (the first in his career), stumbling upon a movie set on our walk to The Last Bookstore and eating at The Pantry where our waiter dropped the c-bomb. LA, you’re one crazy beast.