After we left our hotel in Anaheim, I asked to drive by the Angels stadium since it was close by. It wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind, and it's part of the reason why I'm so glad we were able to take the trip! At this point, I don't think it'll ever come up in the story, but I wanted a sense of how big it is and how long it actually took to reach from Burbank.
So this is what the whole trip was planned around! We didn't actually go on the property at all, but we walked around it and timed the distance between the school and where I decided my OC would live. I'm so happy that I got to see Burbank in person!! I actually got some really good ideas while we were there and I definitely wouldn't have come up with them just from looking at Google Maps.
Point in case: I didn't realize there was a donut place up the block from my OC's house! We actually stopped at a Yum-Yum Donuts on our way out of San Diego because I wanted to say that I tried them. It was good! I didn't notice any difference between it and Dunkin Donuts, though.
After we did the stuff with BHS, we went to lunch! It was really good but my stomach was too small ;; We went on a Friday, so there were people with cool cars parked there for a car show, and we got to walk around and look at them.
After we ate, we went back towards the high school and visited the Burbank Town Center. It's a lot different than ours at home! Theirs is essentially a mall, where ours is a mixed shopping / residential area that takes up a couple blocks. There weren't many people there when we went.
This store was close to the anchor store we walked in from (I think Macy's??) and I was just like (✧ ⌂ ✧) it's even better than a merch hall at a convention!! I bought a couple notebooks for pretty cheap and a One Piece notebook as a souvenir for a friend (which as of yet still has not gotten to him ;; ) I really wish we had stores like these at home!
This thing was in the big open area at the bottom floor of the mall. It was really cool! I have no idea how much it would cost but I watched the one kid jump on it. I think it would be pretty cool to play on, since the kid was going really high up.
There was one clothing store that was my aesthetic and I was (✧ ⌂ ✧) all over again. Most of the dresses were out of my price range, though (｡•́︿•̀｡) This was the only thing I could really find. It was on sale for $27 and I was so happy when I tried it on that I decided it was worth it. I wore it to the family picture we took after we got back from the trip! I also got hair bows from the store too, but I don't know if I have a picture of just those. Those marks on my feet are from walking around all day omg I'm so embarrassed
The next day we did something equally exciting: Little Tokyo! It was awesome to be there when everything was open. I don't really have any pictures, but I hit pretty much all of the stores that sold stationery. I was really happy to be in a Kinokuniya again! The one in NYC was more impressive, but I was honestly just so happy I got to go in. We also ate at the bakery we did the first time, which was awesome! I really looked forward to that. We walked a few blocks away to a different shopping center and found a Daiso and I was very ᕙ(* •̀ᄇ•́ *)ᕗ Honestly if we had Daiso back at home I'd probably be broke ... All the stuff I bought is super quality! I finally got cheap washi tape ♥ The craft stores here at home sell some but they're, like, $4 a roll x__x Everything in Daiso is $1.50 unless they say otherwise on the packaging, so I got more notebooks and more pens. I'm seriously in love with all the stationery I bought (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) Two of the pens came in matching sets, so I gave them to two of my closest friends! One is going away for college and the other is still in high school (and is moving about an hour away by metro) so I was glad that I got to give them those souvenirs.
After Daiso, we walked over to The Last Bookstore! We passed by it last time, but like everything else, it wasn't open yet then. They actually have a security checkpoint right inside the door! My dad had to wait outside with all my Little Tokyo stuff ;; I was lucky enough that my backpack was small enough they just waved me through.
This was right past the doorway. There was a poster taped to one of the support columns that promoted a Fierce Reads tour, and then when I looked at it I realized I'd walked right into it 10 minutes after it started!! I was internally screaming for a couple minutes. I follow Fierce Reads on Twitter but I never really pay attention to the tours because very few come to DC, let alone being places that I can reach easily. I'd actually heard of all the authors before too! I haven't read any of their books yet, though, and all the chairs were full, so I just stood in the area for a couple minutes and then wandered off. (I picked up a bingo sheet and two pens so I could give one to a friend ;; shh don't tell anyone.)
There wasn't a very good vantage point from the second floor, but the floor plan of the building is pretty cool. They had a couple art displays on the second floor and they had all the cool displays of books that you hear about on the internet like shelves arranged by color or the huge arch walkway.
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The lighting was kind of dim and there were just enough people around that it was hard to get a shot of the cool book arrangements. These are the only two I have ;;
After The Last Bookstore, we rode the bus down to Venice Beach. It was a pretty long bus drive but it was kind of nice to be able to sit and chill. It did get kind of boring after a while though.
The beach was really wide! I've actually seen the Pacific Ocean more times than the Atlantic Ocean in the past two years or so. (I honestly don't even know if I've been to the beach at all in the past two years other than in Hawaii.) We didn't walk in the sand but I would've liked to walk along the water a little bit. But then I'd probably hate myself the rest of the day for getting sand in my sneakers, so it was probably for the best.
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I'm pretty sure I saw a commercial the other day for a Kidz Bop CD that made it look like the music video was filmed in front of the V thing on the left. Venice Beach reminded me a lot of the boardwalk at Ocean City, which I find a little sketch ;; Venice Beach is really pretty and all but I'm not really sure I would go back when a bunch of people were there like there was when we went.
After that we rode the bus a few more stops up to the Santa Monica Pier. My friend told us that we should go on the ferris wheel, but Mom said that it was pretty expensive and there were even more people than at Venice Beach, so we stayed pretty close to the entrance.
We walked from the Pokemon boutique up to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a really long walk and it got dark on us >< It was kind of creepy since the area we had to walk through had very few people. The area with all the stars also reminded me of Ocean City's boardwalk, and it was kind of the same as Fremont Street in Las Vegas in that it was really crowded and a bunch of people were drinking at the restaurants or smoking. I don't have any pictures of it because the light quality was terrible and it was almost impossible to stop long enough to get a good picture. (Not that I really wanted to stop, anyway.)
The next day we drove down to San Diego to tour this huge monstrosity of a ship. We got a late start in the morning so we didn't get to the museum until early afternoon, and we were there right up until they closed.
We ate dinner at a place on the pier and got drinks from a different place. Then we hopped back on the bus and rode up into Hollywood. I'd learned during one of my graduation ceremony practices that there was a Pokemon pop-up store that was opening the weekend we were there, so I was really excited about it!
Unfortunately, the line to get in was probably about two blocks long and wasn't moving very fast, since the store is pretty tiny. So I just made do with looking in the window instead. I'm not really sure there was anything I would want to buy in there, anyway.
There was a food truck handing out free boxes of matcha pocky to people visiting the pop-up store, so I brought them for my friends. I got to eat one of them because not all of my friends like green tea-flavored stuff. Unfortunately the cream had melted by the time I got them home and all the pocky stuck together ;; I ended up just having to break little pieces off the huge chunk in order to eat it.
I don't really have any pictures of the inside of the ship, mainly because the headset for the audio tour didn't have long enough cables to fit in my pocket when I wanted to take a picture ;; I had to juggle the unruly remote thing and my HTC, so I just never really bothered. The inside was pretty cool though! Mom initially got my audio tour in Japanese so I didn't understand too much, since most of my Japanese listening skills are from anime and I knew no military terms, but we passed an empty volunteer desk that had the codes needed to change the audio to different languages and I figured out how to switch it. I listened to a couple of the things in German even though I haven't studied that since summer after sophomore year. I figured out that the kids' tour numbers would play in English on the thing, so a lot of times I just ended up doing that.
We stayed at a hotel a little south of San Diego, so we were actually really close to the border! Not that we could've really done anything anyway with a rental car and no passports. The next morning we drove back to Las Vegas, which was the only part of the trip that was like "ugh whyyyy". I've gotten a lot better at packing lightly for trips, but that also means that I get bored of what I have to do pretty quickly when there's no wifi. I listened to the Welcome to Night Vale podcasts some when we were driving through the Mojave Desert area. It matches the whole desert aesthetic, but because I started listening to the Night Vale podcasts on our Alaska trip, I associate Cecil's voice more with cold and fog than I do dry / hot / sunny.
SoCal was really fun! I would love to go back and spend some more time doing things and visiting other areas we didn't get to hit, but I'm really happy with what we were able to see. I got to knock out both writing research in Burbank and a return trip to Little Tokyo at the same time, neither of which I really expected to ever happen. SoCal has a very different feel than here at home and I've come to notice and appreciate how different the scenery is in all of our trips.
Thank you so much if you've read this far! ♥ I know that this post is really text- and image-heavy ;; The final post in this mini-series will be about food, and then I go back to book blogging and other assorted posts.
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