Thursday, 27 March 2003

Back and gone again

Monday night we came back from LA. We had lots of fun on this weekend trip. On Thursday we met up with David at his workplace to take the BART to Hayward where Jesse would pick us up. Turns out the day after the beginning of a war is not the best time to try to go to downtown San Francisco. The bus stopped before it reached Market St because Market St was crowded with protesters. So we had to walk the rest of the way with our big bags. We were almost half an hour late. But it's good that people are protesting. So we didn't complain. The rest of the trip went very smooth: Jesse picked us up at Hayward station and drove us to her house where we picked up Linnea and then we were on our way. We took Interstate 5 down to LA where we arrived around 10:30pm. Jesse and Linnea dropped us off at our hotel in Santa Monica (I think) and continued on to Jesse's sister Barbara's place where they were staying. David, Mikey and I got us some booze from the liquor store and then played some games before going to bed.

On Friday Jesse, Linnea, Barbara and her boyfriend Frank picked us up and we all drove to Venice Beach where we walked along the beach for a while and then into town for a pizza. Later we went back to the beach and met up with Chad who lives close by. We also walked along part of the channel that is still left. I wouldn't say no to a house there. Very beautiful area. We got stalked by ducks there. They just kept following us wherever we went. It was pretty cool. After that we went to some restaurant to have a couple of drinks. They also offered free Nacho chips and salsa. Nice :) Then we went to Barabara and Frank's place where Frank showed us some of the comercials he had made (he is a director). His stuff was great. I'm just hoping he'll be able to sell those. I want to see cool commercials like that on TV. In the evening we met up with Jesse's other sister Ann in an Indian restaurant where we had very good food. Then Jesse, Chad, David, Mikey and I picked up Chad's roommate Chloe, got some booze and drove back to our hotel where we played games until 4am or so. Actually I stopped playing around 2 myself because my arm hurt and it was painful holding cards.

Saturday we met up with everybody again and first drove to Ann's place. She lives in a beautiful old house with high ceilings that immediately reminded me of our place in Berlin. Ann joined us on our trip to the Hollywood cemetery. On the cemetary we were attacked by geese. One of the employees there told us that were just trying to protect their nest and that they are usually very friendly. He had even given them names, so I guess they've lived in that little pond for a while... In the evening we met up with Mike, an online aquaintance of ours, in a Mexican restaurant. The food was nothing special but the Margheritas were good :) After that we went to Barbara's place again to watch LA Story (very funny movie about LA cliches) and to play with the costumes and costume accessories Barbara had at her house (she's a costume designer). Fun!

On Sunday we had originally planned to go to Magic Mountain (a theme park with lots of cool roller coasters) but I couldn't have gone on the really fun rides because I wouldn't have been able to hold on with my left arm. So the others decided that we should all go to Disneyland. Unfortunately the ride that Barbara had made the costumes for was closed. We had lots of fun there though. I used to think that Disneyland was only fun for children but that's not true.
They have this new fast pass system there that allows you to take a special, much less crowded line if you have a fast pass for that ride. You can never have more than one fast pass at the same time but once you've used up your pass you can get a new one. It saved us a LOT of time at the Indiana Jones ride (which was extremely well done. They even had the rolling rock). All the rides were okay with my arm even though the jerky ones like Space Mountain hurt a bit. The other thing that's extremely cool about Disneyland is that they are open until 11pm. David bought each of us one of those glowing rope thingies. It was fun playing with these and also much easier to find one another in the dark. We met up for dinner with Linnea's roommates in a restaurant in Disney village and then drove back home.

The next day we got up early because we wanted to take the longer but much nicer 1/101 back up north. The drive was fun. Jesse and Linnea had to pick up Jesse's son from school, so they brought us to the Caltrain station in San Rafael. We were lucky and a train arrived just when we got there. We took that to San Francisco and then the bus home.

Mikey and I are going to rent a car tomorrow and join Pooh on her way to Tahoe where we'll pick up Pooh's friend Jiri (who has been skiing there for the past week). Then we'll go to Mono Lake where we'll stay the night to watch the sunrise there (which I've been told is beautiful). Then we'll drive on to Death Valley where we'll spend the rest of the day. Mikey and I will then go on to Las Vegas which we'll use as a starting point for a canyon and national park tour, Pooh and Jiri will go towards Yosemite.

  Posted by Edda at 10:55 CET