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November 02, 2014 - 12:57 a.m.
"first day in california" or "new found glory"

12:57am PDT

Hey Journal!

WE'RE IN CALIFORNIA!!! That a LONG day it's been! I think we've almost been up for 24 hours and I am exhausteddddddd.

We got up this morning at 4:30am in New York. We got our last minute things packed, got dressed, and then my mom came at 4:45 to take us to the airport. We loaded our suitcases into the car and we wound up leaving the house at 4:50.

We got to the airport around 5:45. We checked in, which went pretty quickly, and then we headed through security. Everything went really smoothly and quick.

This was the first time we had ever flown Virgin America. I really liked it. The place was really cool with purple and blue mood lighting. The windows were closed when we got on, and almost everyone left them closed so it was nice and dark on the plane for the whole flight. I remember other airlines making us OPEN the windows for takeoff and landing, so not having to do that was really nice.

We took off at 7:00 and I tried to get as much sleep as possible because I knew we had a long day ahead of us.

Dan and I switched out seats because the plane had a lot of empty rows and we figured we would get one by ourselves so we had the middle seat open. When we wanted a drink, we just had to order it on the TV in front of us. It was better than having to wait for them to take everyone's orders and then make their way down the row!

Everything on this flight was great... my only complaint would be that thye don't give ANY snack for free. I brought some Uncrustables, so I was good... but some pretzels would have been nice. It's a little cheap of them.

So, I slept for a couple of hours, I think.... and we arrived at LAX at about 10:00 California time, 1:00 New York time.

It was really weird because it completely felt like it SHOULD be 10:00am, not 1!

We made our way to get a shuttle to the rental car area and then we got our car. We had selected a "compact" car for $160 for the week. Unfortunately, they were out of that class of car. Instead, they gave us a free upgrade to a CRAZY 2014 Black Ford Mustang. It's a litle ridiculous, and little wild, but it's a convertible and I think we will really enjoy that once the weather is nicer!

Today was a little chilly, but not terrible. It's supposed to be much warmer throughout the week, so that's good!

Now that we had our wheels, we had nowhere really to go. We decided to start by driving through Topanga Canyon. I heard (on Boy Meets World) that it was a beautiful place, so I wanted to see for myself. I don't really know what I expected...I wasn't blown away by its beauty, but it WAS different. It was interesting.

On the way there, we stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. I had a $5 off coupon we wanted to use before it expired. Our waitress was really nice, but really wild. She didn't even know we were there for like 15 minutes, so it took her forever to come over. Then as she was bringing us our food she tripped and dropped Dan's wings all over the floor. Disaster! I saw it all happen, but I pretended I didn't!

After the Topanga thing, we went to Malibu. We just drove up and down the PCH there and checked out the area. We wound up driving past Julie Andrews's house.... that was interesting! It's huge, as you would expect.

We got out and walked along the beach and touched the Pacific Ocean and then we drove past Santa Monica.

Then we headed to our hotel. We actually hadn't booked a hotel yet, but Dan wanted to stay at the DoubleTree in Anaheim because it was close to the House of Blues, where we had to go later in the evening.

I slept a little in the car on the way to the hotel and when we arrived we booked it from the parking lot. We purposely waited to see if the price would go down, and it did. It was about $15 cheaper today than it was yesterday.

We don't have any other hotels booked for the rest of the trip, so we're going to try to decide what we want to do and where and when soon.

Our hotel is really close to Disneyland and the House of Blues (at Downtown Disney.) We got checked in, and they gave us free cookies. I was really excited about this until I realized they were walnut cookies. Blast!

We got settled in at the hotel and then we took a nap. We slept for 1 hour and then got up, got showered, and ready for the big New Found Glory concert!

We walked to the House of Blues and on the way I got a piece of pizza for dinner and Dan got a sandwich from CVS.

The doors opened at 7 and we got a place in the balcony right along the railing. It was nice to have somewhere to lean while we were standing for the next 4+ hours and it had a great view. The show started at 8:00 and there were three bands before NFG. The first was called Better Off and they were pretty good. The second was called Fireworks, and they were terrible. The Third was very good, called We Are the In Crowd.

Finally, at about 10:40, New Found Glory was on! It was a really good show... they did a bunch of new songs, but also a bunch of old ones! It was crazy to think that I saw them at Marist 11 YEARS AGO! That's so weird.

When it was over... I think around 11:30, they came out and played a few more songs and then... and I thought this was really cool... instead of leaving the stage right away, they all stuck around and said hi to people in the front row, handed out their guitar picks, set lists, and drumsticks, and didn't rush off. I mean, they were only doing that for a few minutes, but it was cool.

We walked back, through the Disneyland entrance, and then to our hotel. It was a little chilly out. It is supposed to warm up, and it had better!

We are back and EXHAUSTED now. It's almost 1:00am here... that's almost 4:00am at home and almost 24 hours since we got up!

The good news is that the clocks go back tonight so we get an extra hour of sleep to help us get caught up and acclimated to this time zone!

Bed time now! Until tomorrow...

Goodnight. :)