Thursday, April 1, 2010

Laguna Beach (Mis)adventure.

Some cool stuff has happend lately, I consider even the "bad" stuff to be cool in a way because it's better than being bored. I just got back from a three-day vacation to Laguna Beach with my parents. It was for their 25th anniversary, but they wanted me to come too because I guess they love me or something :) My boyfriend David stayed at our house while we were gone to keep the dogs company. I wanted to invite him too, but our dogs get depressed when they're alone for too long, and we would've had to get a bigger hotel room and bla bla bla. We stayed in a beautiful place called the Aliso Creek Inn. By the name, you might have gathered that it was near a creek, and you would be right. Our hotel room was just across from the creek which wound through bright green hills. It felt remote even though it was a two minute drive to the busy Pacific Coast Highway.
Our room was more like a cabin.


Laguna Beach was a cool place because the town was crowded along the coastline, and the hills beyond it were mostly preserved in their natural state because it's protected land.


It's about an hour and a half drive from my house, which is not bad in my opinion. But, for reasons which I will explain later, we had to make the roundtrip drive twice in the span of three days.
The first day we went shopping, and didn't buy anything- miracle of miracles!
I thought this was a cool looking building, across from the place where they have the Festival of the Masters (a festival where people build sets and pose to look like famous works or art). On the hill next to it was a tiny light-house looking thing. If anybody thinks they know what the hell that was for, please enlighten me.
This is where we ate lunch on the first day.

On the second day, we ate a delicious breakfast at a place called the Greeter. Then looked at a few shops and went for a short walk on the beach.
These pictures of my parents illustrate how much like a little boy my Dad is. I told my parents to pose and pretend like they love eachother. He hates cheesy shit like that.
I like this picture of a guy walking a pitbull and a Yorkshire terrior. Which one do you think belongs to his girlfriend?

We went to a nature center and hiked through the mountains and along a beautiful lake.
In the last picture, you can see a lot jet-trails scarring the sky. It was a reminder that even though we were in the wild, civilization wasn't far away. Plus you could hear the freeway.
I took these pictures as an old couple passed us on the trail, and my parents kept walking. It was like looking into the future.
In the middle of this pic is a California quail sitting on a post.
It was only 12:00 or 1PM after our hike- sometimes I don't even wake up until that late, but I wasn't tired because we were doing fun stuff. I feel sorry for my Dad, though, because there was some sort of confusion at his work and people kept calling him. He also wanted to play golf and ride his bike, but the course was closed, and when he'd gone out to ride in the morning, it was freezing cold, so he had to cut it short. He was stuck with us. :) My mom and I wanted to go to a modern art museum, and he grudginly came along. It was hillarious because the first thing we saw when we went into the museum was a photo of two guys wrestling, naked. Ah, the arts...
After the museum, we walked along the coast some more.
In the last pic are some girls on the beach taking a picture of a message they wrote in the sand that says "Happy B-day Yutis" (I think that's what it says, I've never heard that name before). I dunno why, but I like the idea of taking picture of people taking a picture, and them not knowing about it. It's the same kind of acceptable spying as Facebook and Myspace. Don't worry, I'm not into actual spying- that's disgusting.
This was a weird sculpture. What do you thnk it looks like? My mom says a flamingo, and David thinks it looks like a fairy-comet falling to the earth.. :)
I was tired when we got back to our hotel, but I resisted the urge to nap and practiced my guitar instead. After that we went to the pool, the water was cold but it felt good. My dad and I played ping-pong by the pool until both balls rolled away under a fence. I read a book called Mexican Whiteboy- I'll explain the significance of that later. We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, where the waiter was a muscular, somewhat intimadating man who spoke with an accent. The restaurant had a fireplace in the middle where they baked. We had something I'd never heard of before, I think it was called Timboli, which was pasta and vegetables baked into a flaky crust. It was some of the best Italian food I've ever had. That was another cool thing about Laguna beach- everywhere we ate was good.
This was a creepy building across from the restaurant. I think it's mysterious.

Back at the hotel at about 10:00 PM, my mom and I were reading. She wanted to go to bed soon, but I wasn't feeling that tired. My phone rang, and I figured it was David. I was right, and could tell by his voice that something was wrong. He told me he'd lost his keys at work, and our house-key was on them. Oh shit. He said he'd looked everywhere and asked everyone in the store if they'd seen them, but no luck. Usually my friend Kristin who lives down the street has an extra key, but a few months earlier I'd taken them and not given them back. It was because my parents were asleep in the back bedroom and David and I rang the doorbell and called their cellphones and the house phone, but no answer. I left messages on their cellphones, but not the house phone. My mom said I should have left one on the house phone because she would have heard the answering machine. The reason why I didn't have a house-key was because I didn't bring one because my mom and I had gone out together to see Shutter Island, and I figured we'd come home together, so I wouldn't need it. We met David at the theater, and after the movie I went mini-golfing with him. When my parents didn't answer, we went to Kristin's house to get the key, and I never remembered to give it back. So all this trouble came from one stupid decision not to bring my keys.
My mom and I thought about calling a locksmith to open the door, but we figured they probably wouldn't open it without us there. The dogs had been inside since David left for work at 4:45 PM, and we didn't want them to go to the bathroom in the house- especailly since the girl, Mojo is old. Plus they needed to be fed in the morning. We decided it would be best if we drove home to open the house ourselves. I wasn't that tired anyway. I wasn't that bothered by the situation because I'd had a good day, and lately I've realized that a lot of bad things become funny in time. Bad or good, it's all experience, which makes you a more mature and unique human being.
My mom and I felt really bad for David, though. None of us were mad at him, especially not me, because I've done similar things- like forget the tickets to a concert. It was annoying, but not as bad as it could have been- at least we were somewhere where we could drive home in less than 2 hours. It actually only took an hour and 20 minutes because there wasn't much traffic.
In the morning, we drove back to Laguna because my Dad was still there and we still wanted to spend more time there. But when we got there, it was drizzling and a lot of the shops were closed. I didn't mind because it was beautiful and we ate another awesome breakfast at the Greeter, and I slept on the way home.

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