California Part 1–Los Angeles

Remember back in October when I was planning our trip to California? Well we went… in December (and had a fabulous time!) and here I am in April finally getting around to writing about it…insert embarrassed emoji face here.

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Robert has the week between Christmas and New Years off every year which lines up perfectly with my Christmas break. We decided this was the perfect time for a trip, and California was not only a destination on both of our bucket lists, but it was also far enough away and big enough to justify spending an entire week there. In true Laurin fashion I had planned our trip down to a T, we would fly into LA, spend two days there and then drive up the coast to San Francisco, stopping in Carmel for a night to break up the drive.

We headed to the airport the day after Christmas, said goodbye to Renly and boarded our flight to Atlanta. We were both hungry when we landed in Atlanta and decided to grab some lunch before boarding our flight to LA. We unknowingly cut it a bit close which ended up working out in our favor. When we arrived at our gate, the flight attendants were in a tizzy trying to accommodate a group of French teenagers who were flying standby. Only one of the group spoke English so they didn’t want to be split up. When Robert and I arrived, they had already given our seats away to some of the group and ended up putting us in the only two available seats left, which just so happened to be in first class. Win!

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First Class Food First Class nap

After a second lunch, some wine and a delightful nap since our seats laid completely flat, holla, we landed in LA, well rested and excited to start our trip! After waiting in line at the rental car company for the better part of forever, we made our way to our hotel, the Figueroa in downtown LA.

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The boutique hotel had a lovely lobby.

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The rooms were small and somewhat sparse but clean, decorated in a sort of boho-chic theme. Robert is used to larger, more traditional hotels and didn’t love the Fig, but I thought it was quaint.

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The staff recommended a local Mexican restaurant for dinner, El Cholo.

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Robert and I both enjoyed our meals and went to bed early, full from dinner and ready to hit Hollywood the next morning! I woke up bright and early the next morning only to find poor Robert had been up vomiting the entire night. He is convinced it was food poisoning, but before you cross El Cholo off your list you should know that ALL of Robert’s family had the stomach bug prior to us leaving, so who really knows. He was a pitiful sight so I walked a few blocks to a grocery store to buy him some gatorade and a few slices of toast. After a few more hours of sleep, Robert rallied and we headed out to Hollywood Boulevard.

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Planning (& Protein Pancakes)

Hi! It’s been a busy week around here. I had last Tuesday off from work which I initially hated but ended up LOVING. A long weekend is great but a mid-week day off increases my productivity exponentially! Errands are a lot more fun when they aren’t taking up your weekend. On my day off I slept in (marginally), took Renly for a run (exercise!), made myself pancakes (healthy pancakes but that still counts), went to vote (America!), shopped for a few early Christmas gifts (HoHoHo), prepped dinner early (so nice) AND baked and individually bagged 168 cookies (you read that right, 168). Like I said, busy!

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Why would I bake and bag 168 cookies you may ask? Why for wedding welcome bags of course! Two of my sweet friends tied the knot yesterday! Having just been a bride this past June I KNOW how much it takes to pull off a wedding (unless you have an unlimited budget to hire someone to do it all for you…I DON’T know what that is like but I can imagine it’s pretty great and stress-free). I made the mistake of trying to do way too much myself before the big day. So my advice to future brides is the same as I gave my friends…delegate, delegate, delegate. When people ask if they can help, take them up on it! You shouldn’t be baking 168 cookies the week of your wedding, let your friends do it! I was more than happy to help with this task and I’m so glad they let me so that they could move on to more important things, like soaking in all those fun last moments of engagement before it get’s really real! Eeeek, just thinking about that excitement makes me nostalgic for my own wedding. And before you roll your eyes at me, I’m STILL a newlywed so I’m allowed to be sappy and romantic when I reminisce ( I hope I always am Smile). Their wedding was absolutely perfect, beautiful and FUN, congratulations Addison and Andy! And since it was in Hilton Head Robert and I got to host some of our college friends who were attending, always a blast!

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The Bride’s Grand Entrance…. so cool!

 

Another thing I did during this busy week falls under the category of Laurin’s Top 5 Favorite Things Ever To Do In Life: Plan. Confession: I am not one of the rare breed known as a “spontaneous person”. I like a schedule, I like to know what the day/week/month holds and I REALLY love lists.  For years I have tried to fight my Type A-ness and work on “flying by the seat of my pants” but I.just.can’t.do.it. I was born a planner and I will always be a planner. Time to admit it and embrace it, as my best friend Anna says, “Type A’s make the world go round!”. I may not be the friend you call at the last-minute for a trip to the beach, but I am that friend that if given notice will happily show up to the beach with a fully stocked beach bag, drinks and homemade snacks Smile

 

So what was I planning? Well my favorite thing to plan…a trip! I have been itching to go somewhere and Robert has some time off between Christmas and New Years so we are going to California! Neither of us have ever been and California has long been on our list of places we would like to travel to in the US. Other front-runners on that list are Chicago and Texas. Chicago seemed way too cold to do in December and my parents love San Antonio so Texas might be a trip we save to do with them, so California it is!

 Planning
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