This morning we stayed in bed a bit longer since Danielle was used to the 3 hours time difference and I didn’t woke up from a railway. We wanted to look at some places we went already in 2012 but this time with a different goal or at a different spot. First up was the Hollywood sign, last time we only saw it from a mall at Hollywood Boulevard, this time we wanted to go as close as possible.

On the way to the spot we had no traffic at all and so I decided to take an exit early to drive over Hollywood Boulevard. But then I saw an empty parking spot which was free until 11:00am, that would give us about 1,5 hours to look at the attractions only 3 blocks away…

After taking the usual pictures and grabbing a frappuccino (did I already wrote that it was about 25 degrees?) for the walk back to our car we continued our tour to 3000 Canyon Lake Drive. There was enough parking space and we got some nice touristy pictures.

After taking the pictures it was time for lunch which we had at the Farmers’ Market and combined it with shopping for running socks at the Nike Store, a new cover for Danielle her iPhone and a SD-Card to Lightning converter for my iPad at the Apple Store.

Within 2 hours we were done and left to the Beverly Center. This is the Beverly Hills fashion shopping mall but we weren’t there for shopping at the mall, we went towards a store 157 North Robertson Boulevard.

Yes, it was the first time we went shopping for Tommy Hilfiger clothing from the European collection this year. But the selection was limited, most of the store were speciality items from the runway collections and since we both don’t have runway sizes… But we still found some nice new items for spring.

After we were done with shopping we went down to the Santa Monica Pier from some more beach time and another sunset. It was much more difficult to make good pictures here since it was really crowded at the beach. But we got some and that with a free parking spot only minutes walking from the pier made it a successful night.

We went back to the hotel because on Monday we wanted to be at the Disneyland Park as early as possible since we had hopper tickets for both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. And we made it, we were among the first to enter the park and it wasn’t crowded at all. We start of with a Starbucks coffee in Mainstream after which we visited Star Tours, Buzz Lightyear, Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Haunted Mansion and made some pictures with characters before we headed to the other park.

In California’s Adventure we enjoyed the Aladdin Musical, the Genie in the show is awesome. Afterwards we visited some rides and took character pictures before we headed back to the Disneyland Park to see the Soundsational Parade.

The parade was fun to see, this is way better as the Christmas parade in Toronto and the weather is much better too.

While waiting for the parade I found out that Siemens had a joint-venture with the Avengers in the Innoventions building and off course we needed to meet some of my colleagues and take pictures with them.

Soon it was time to leave and after riding the Storybook Land Canal Boats and It’s a Small World (sponsored by Siemens) we had dinner at the Village Haus. And when we exited we both felt cold and a bit tired which made us decided to go back to the car and leave Disneyland behind.

The day after would be our last day in California. We had an overnight flight back to Toronto which made us decided to have a really lazy morning in the hotel. In the afternoon we went to Rodeo Drive and we drove through Beverly Hills to look at the huge houses.

Early in the evening we brought back our rental car. Since the rental facility is located of the airport in a hotel they advised us to come one hour early to make sure we make it to the airport on time. In the end that made us being back really early since we didn’t have traffic on the way to the airport, the shuttle arrived in 5 minutes, there was no waiting line in the terminal and our flight was almost an hour delayed…

Both really tired we arrived back in a snow-covered Toronto and at 6:4oam we were waiting at the baggage claim and only 40 minutes later we opened the door of our condo….

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.