Southern California/Mexico

Sean & Sherry Down Under

Southern California/Mexico

| | Southern California/Mexico | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

February 8 - 12, 2002

We arrived in LA on February 8, 2002. It was 75 degrees F(approx 23 C) and Sean forgot to take his long underwear off before we left Canada, Yikes.

What can we say about LA, hmmmmm.......for those of you that are here to look at the pictures we can describe it simply by MONEY, MONEY and if we forgot one thing it was definitely more MONEY!!!

Our stay at Melinda & Curtis's resort in LA started by being chauffered from the airport to Orange County (thanx Curt). Along the way we recieved a grand tour of Newport Beach, where else would you see numerous yacht & auto dealerships (Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes etc). Next stop Laguna Beach where the hills were covered by homes starting at $1 mill(even the trailers you find in Garden and Root River).

We were recieved at Melinda & Curtis Travis's five-star "resort" to a full Italian dinner and started the next day with an all-you-can-eat 5 course breakfast in the morning. As you all know, when you are entertained by an Italian host - it is quite dangerous to say no - you must eat everything on the table or endure the wrath. There goes Sean's Californian diet! (Yah Right!)

It was agreed collectively that we would not visit Las Vegas on this trip but rather head south on our first outing. We stopped first in La Jolla (La Hoya?). You see it in the adjacent beach and seal photos. For us movie buffs La Jolla is where Catherine Zeta Jones lived in the movie "Trafic".

La Jolla Pictures

We did not stay long in La Jolla as we were all preparing to smuggle our little Illegal Alien (Melinda) to and from Tijuana, Mexico. The best way to describe Tijuana is a practice run for Malaysia with the heat and crowds. The deeper we went the more it smelled like Mexico and the more the children touched us to beg for money!

We did not muster the courage to eat any shaved meet or bowls of "stuff" in Mexico - we did however enjoy 99 cent Coronas (see picture). Staying true to the spirit of Tijuana we did go to San Diego and eat Mexican on 5th St. We watched the sun go down at the San Diego harbour it was quite beatiful.

The other things we have noticed about California besides the money, huge houses and great cars is health food and all kinds of people.

The average temperature for our stay was 75-82 degrees F (23-30 degrees C - I think). We also went to Venice Beach/Muscle Beach and saw the boardwalk from the opening credits of Three's Company (rollerskating), the basketball courts from White Men Can't Jump and again very alternative lifestyles.

We drove around to see the stars homes - OJ's house and the fated path he took from Nicole's house, Aaron Spelling's palace and the PlayBoy mansion. We seriously never imagined that houses could be so big. We ate lunch on Rodeo Drive and stepped into some shops(the ones that do not require appointments). We made another collective decision that if we wanted to eat for the next year we could not shop on Rodeo (or was it that we had no room in the suit cases???).

We did all of the tourist attraction stuff that there is to do in LA (beaches, frozen yogurt in the gay district, walk of stars, Chinese Theater, Hollywood, Sunset strip) and then we went to Disney !!!! (Thanks Mom and Dad T.) Tons of fun, no lines and another beautiful day. Sean drove in LA on a weekday morning and we survived.

- Sean & Sherry

P.S. Thanx Melinda & Curtis you were fantastice hosts, we never imagined that our stop over in LA would conjure up so much interest and instill that much ambition.