My Trip to LA/San Diego Part 2!!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope Santa was good to everyone this year! It was great to hang out with family but it's time to get back in the grind!

So I left you in my last post explaining about making it to the Venice Beach pier in time for the sunset! Definitely needed a California sunset picture! With a great meet up with our friend Melissa and after a great Italian dinner, we headed to Long Beach in anticipation for a night full of fun.

Well...it was an interesting night that's for sure.


After walking through the ghetto of Long Beach, being asked twice if we were headed to the club, etc. we finally landed at an Ale House that wasn't all that bad.

We spent a drink at the Ale House and then headed to a place called Alex's Bar. For those of you who are True Blood fans, this is Fangtasia. The outside of it where they tried to kill Russell, the inside, the stage where the bands played is where Eric sits on his "throne", etc. Literally...this bar WAS Fangtasia.

This bar was a good time:

The band wore Whip It hats so of course we had to take a picture with them!

 The next morning we headed to Manhattan Beach and took a short drive through Hermosa Beach and part of Redondo Beach (which is gorgeous) and then headed back up to LA to see the infamous Hollywood sign.

This was your view from a scenic overlook- all of LA! Wow! Just around the corner, of course, was this:

The sign is a lot smaller than you might think!

An interesting fact about the Hollywood sign: It used to say "Hollywoodland" but in the 1930's (I think that was the decade) a landslide wiped out the "land" letters. In the 1970's they paid over $20,000 PER LETTER to restore "Hollywood" and dubbed it a social landmark.


Due to time restraints we could not go on a hike, but instead started to make the 2 hour drive down to San Diego... BYE BYE LA!!

Our drive took us through Laguna Beach (for you MTV lovers out there) and through much of San Diego. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we arrived but the city gets all lit up so it was actually pretty!


The next day we visited La Jolla Beach. Apparently seals hang out at the beach all the time and you can actually go swimming with them! Though we did not go swimming, I was able to capture these:

Very cool sight to see...


Anyway, now it was down to business and the whole reason why we went out there in the first place... The Baltimore Ravens!!

Making signs for our Ravens and NBC was something we really wanted to do so we gathered some materials and went to it!

Nothing fancy, just enough so you could read it from far away :)

Our final products?

Me and Sean with our signs!

(We had no idea that our signs would never be put to use because of the disgust that was the Ravens that night but we had fun anyway!)


Tailgating was a lot of fun as we saw SO MANY Ravens fans! I even met up with a bunch of people I went to high school with and saw some old friends along the way!

As we took our seats inside Qualcomm Stadium, we were so excited about our view:

We had GREAT seats! Thanks StubHub!

Like I said before, we sat almost in total silence for the game since my team played like crap. However, San Diego fans were actually very nice and not rude, unlike other team's fans....

Our time in San Diego was short lived as we had to return to Baltimore the next day (Boo!)... If I could move out there tomorrow, I would! It was such an awesome city!

Having a non-stop flight from LAX to Dulles is very tiring but I got a second wind when we landed, I looked at my phone, and saw that the Steelers were losing to the 49ers! Woo hoo! Thanks San Fran for helping the Ravens out!

This was one of the sights I came home to:

They even lost their team spirit that day!


Anyway, that was my trip to California in a nut shell. If I come across any more great pictures I will share them!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year! Be on the look out for a duo challenge with me and Cait !!

Let's welcome 2012 with a bang ... and on our own two feet...





Until the next step bloggers...