Winters in Canada are long, very long. On November 18th we had the first day with sub-zero temperatures and it seems like to comes to no end. Since 2008 we go on vacation in the winter months but this year we hadn’t planned anything because of our immigration end of September. But here comes in one of the benefits of my new job, one of our most important trade fairs took place in Southern California. And although it’s winter in California too, the temperatures over there are around 20-25 degrees Celsius above zero. Lucky me…

But how about Danielle? We decided that she would follow me and she took an Air Canada flight to Los Angeles (LAX) on the 5th of February. At LAX she got a rental car from SIXT, we got a great deal, which was a Volvo XC70 with which se drove south over the highway 1 along the pacific coast towards San Diego. She arrived only minutes after the trade fair was done and here our short Californian winter break started. After an early diner at the Cheesecake Factory and walking around in the bay area we went to our hotel the Hampton Inn since Danielle was tired from the trip and I was tired from the show. The hotel was located close to the railroad and we dubbed it Hampton Ding Ding Ding Ding since that was the sound where we woke up with on Friday morning.

After a fast breakfast we started the day with getting me singed up as a second driver on the car before we drove to Balboa park. We parked our car and wandered around ending up with a visit to the Natural History Museum with an exhibit about “The Discovery of King Tut”. This was the most beautiful part of the museum. After continuing our tour through the park we decided to visit the famous San Diego Zoo.

At the entrance we were blown away by the entrance fee, 48$ for a zoo… But since we won’t come here often we decided to go for it. And it was worth every single dollar. This is by far the most beautiful zoo we’ve ever seen. It comes close to a Disney theme park and the animals really seemed happier as in every other zoo where we have been. Also the amount of animals was huge. Needless to say we enjoyed this visit including free bus tours in the park and a the ride on the Skyfari Aerial Tram. But we wanted to see more of San Diego…

In the evening we visited Coronado Island. We went there by car and drove over the huge Coronado bridge. We parked our car near the beach, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful beaches of the United States, before we got to the famous Coronado Resort where we sat down for evening dinner until sunset came close from which I wanted to take pictures. It became cold soon when the sun went away and after a coffee we went back to the hotel.

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding…5:30am and we woke up to leave San Diego behind today. We first drove towards the La Jolla area which is the northwestern part of San Diego and famous for its beaches which are sometimes visited by seals. And we were really lucky to spot a couple or maybe not so lucky because of the smell they bring with them…



After a short coffee break we drove further north and stopped in Oceanside where we walked a long the beach, I guess this is where we got ourselves a bit of a tan from the sun. After having lunch at Tin Fish we drove further to Anaheim where we were staying int the same hotel as where we stayed during our West Coast trip in 2012.

For dinner we went to Downtown Disney and ordered pizza…I still need to get used to sizes in inches…

Both tired from the driving and being outside we went to bed early because we had two days with sightseeing ahead of us.

Last week we finally got two of the items we ordered for our entrance! We ordered them before christmas by Pier1 and Crate & Barel. Leigh the coat tree was easy to set up and was mounted in 5 minutes, the unpacking took longer. But the mirror was a bit more difficult since it’s a really heavy mirror. But I also mentioned to hook it up to our dry wall, I’m surprised how much these walls can hold.

I also got a very nice present form Danielle, our 8th Monopoly set. This time it’s a special 80th anniversary edition which she found at the Toys “R” Us across the street.

After enhancing our home on Friday night we decided to do something active to start the weekend. We started with a visit to another Dutch Store/lunchroom on Holland Street East in Bradford. It’s called Dutch Treats and here we had some Frikandellen and Kroketten.

Early afternoon we continued our way to Barrie. Barrie is located on the Kempfenbelt Bay from Lake Simcoe. We wandered through Heritage Park, got some Hot Chocolate before we decided to take a closer look at the ice-fishing which took place in the bay. It was extremely cold due to the wind and the ice but it was well worth it. We stood on the lake for about an hour before we decided to go back to our car and drive home.

Sunday we relaxed a bit and Danielle baked some delicious cupcakes. I’ve to say the Red Velvet’s are getting better and better each time she bakes them and I’m officially addicted. The other ones are the Pim’s editions which is a chocolate-orange cupcake with orange frosting, also delicious.

We also started working our again, but due to the cold weather this is not possible outside. Lucky for us our condominium has a fitness center included. We both started last week for the first time. In the evenings it’s quite busy but so far I’ve been lucky 3 times and found a free treadmill. The first time was quite difficult it was warm there was no air to cool and I was sweating extremely. But after a couple of times you seem to get used to it. Let’s hope my knee holds out a long time this year.

During the week we visited Absolute Comedy together, every Wednesday it’s the so-called Am/Pro night which means that there 5 Amateurs, 1 Professional MC and a Professional. This time 2 of the Amateurs’ performances were funnier as the professional. Overall it was a bit less than the other couple times we went but we still ad a great evening.

And finally Amazon.ca got the stock problems sorted out and we were able to finish our big project related to our movie collections. We collected about 860 different DVD and Blu-Ray boxes (over 1000 discs) over the last 10 years and we always had these sorted in some kind of library. Unfortunately this is very space consuming and in our Condo there is just not enough wall space. So we have decided to change the storage concept from this (12 Ikea Benny’s:

Into 5 Media Binders:

It was a lot of work but it saved so much space, we’ve still enough place in the binders since every binder holds up to 272 discs and we’ve a 6th binder as spare. And now I feel like getting a coffee…