California Dreamin'

The first trip that Lee and I took together was a road trip down the California coast during the summer of 2006. We started with a picnic in Monterey, then made our way down Highway 1. We stopped for a dinner of burgers at The Habit in Santa Barbara (pretty delicious, but it's no In-N-Out!) and got to Los Angeles after nightfall.

As much as I hate on L.A., I have to say that we enjoyed ourselves -- a lot. During our SoCal adventure, we went to the Santa Monica boardwalk, the Getty, the Century City Mall (random, I know), spent some time on Rodeo Drive, shared brownies and wine with Ana on her rooftop, went for dinner and drinks at the Bonaventure, visited the college that served as the set for the Harbor School on The O.C., went for a stroll and afternoon tea at the Huntington Library, and spent a day in Laguna Beach. We had a nice dinner at Cielo, a Beverly Hills restaurant that was reviewed as "the kind of place you would take your junior prom date." (I guess high school juniors in Beverly Hills are just really fancy?) We were both relieved to find that we made it through the trip without any of that quarreling that tends to flare up when you spend extended periods of time trapped in a car with someone -- the only real issue was that I only had about 3 hours' worth of music burned onto CDs, so we just listened to the same music over and over... until Lee decided that he couldn't handle listening to Hilary Duff's "Come Clean" anymore, haha.


All smiles as we set out for our Highway 1 road trip:


I'm glad we took the scenic route:




Hi, Liz! I think this was taken in Santa Barbara.


A lovely afternoon at the Getty.




Smog, yum...


Hanging out at the beach. Who knew back then that we'd end up married?


Japanese garden at Huntington Library:





Being the good-natured guy that he is, Lee humored me by taking the drive down to Laguna Beach, the site of where all this delicious MTV reality goodness began...




We decided to channel LC & Friends by dining at Pomodoro for lunch:


I thought this was pretty cool; it's mounted in the middle of downtown:


Laguna Surf & Sport, former place of employment for Stephen on Laguna Beach: The Real O.C.


Laguna has a lot of cool artsy outdoor spots, like the below:


Since it took us about 12 hours to drive from the Bay Area to L.A., we decided to take the fast way back home. Here's a shot of me on Highway 5. It was... a lot of open land.