Hey everyone, I am back from my little road trip to California/Mexico. It was another interesting time I must say. I will break down the trip for you by location:

Tijuana

Tijuana was an eye opener. We parked our car on the US side of the border and then walked across so we didn’t have to worry about getting our car torn apart on the way back.

The place is a little sketch and gives you a feeling of being unsafe. There are shops everywhere trying to lure you in to by stuff and by the end of our little excursion I was ready to snap.

It is pretty sad to see some of the stuff there. There are donkeys every 10 feet with stripes painted on them to make them look like zebras. They did not look like they were enjoying it very much.

On a good note, I had some of the best Margaritas I have ever had there. The place we ate at offered us happy hour early if we came in so we thought we would give it a shot. The food was also pretty good.

Coming back into the US was not too bad since we took a charter bus that drives you to the border for 5 dollars. From there, we just had to hop in line and show our passport to get back in the the US. It was worth seeing and I can now cross it off the list of places I have been.

San Diego

I love San Diego and would love to move there. The city is awesome but the cost of living is pretty high. I looked at a few apartments in the Pacific Beach area that I could afford so that is still an option.

We ate dinner on Coronado island, which is a very nice place. The view of downtown San Diego is amazing from there. I loved swimming at the beach there and looking at the aircraft carriers in the distance. I also managed to see one of the largest ships I have ever seen come by.

Oceanside

We stayed at a hotel in Oceanside since I am debating about moving here. I love the city because it feels like a small surf city and doesn’t have all the traffic that the big cities have. Plus rent is pretty afforable right by the beach.

I got pretty drunk at some Lobster place on the beach and drank a few too many Coronas and Margaritas. The ocean was much warmer than I remember a few months back. The surf was real nice but I did not have time to find a place to rent a board.

The Way Home

The drive back to Phoenix was pretty interesting. Driving through Calexico on the way back was HOT. It was 108 degrees at 7:30 PM which is fricken’ hot. We got all the way past Yuma before going through Border Patrol.

Then of course, the dog started barking at our car so we had the joy of pulling under one of their little tents. They literally searched through our entire car looking for crap that they did not find. They asked me where I was coming from and going too like 3 times.

Finally, they let us go and we were able to make it back to Phoenix around midnight. And it was still over 100 degrees…

Well today is my final post summing up my road trip to California. Monday I talked about the Pros and Cons of staying in hostels and yesterday I summed up my experience at USC.

Today, I want to conclude the trip with my experience in San Diego. The drive to San Diego from Los Angeles was not that long and it was actually pretty cool to see. There were a lot of rolling hills and huge houses along the way. It seems like their is not much break in cities all the way except for a few stretches.

Along the way, we made a stop in Oceanside, which had the feel of a small surf town that almost reminded me of Haleiwa, Hawaii. Except Oceanside is no where near as small.

From there we drove all the way to downtown San Diego since I wanted to see what it was like. Although it is not as big as Los Angeles, it still is a pretty big city. The vibe is totally different and it feels less busy than LA did while we were there.

There was a huge bridge that lead to Coronado, which is found on a small island just west of downtown. It was really nice there and it had some beaches overlooking the skyline of downtown. There were people riding bikes everywhere and it made me miss this lifestyle. Phoenix just doesn’t have this type of vibe since the city is so spread out.

Since I wanted to jump in the ocean, we headed to Imperial Beach and decided to check it out. It reminded me a lot of Santa Monica and the beach was very similar. Once my towel was laid down, I ran down to the water and jumped in, only to freeze my ass off.

The temperature was in the 90’s Sunday and I still froze to death. It sure wasn’t the Pacific ocean I remember from Hawaii, haha.

The drive back to Phoenix from San Diego was something I had never seen before. It was a lot different than the drive I was used to making from Los Angeles. The road goes up into the mountains and hits an elevation of 4,000 ft. The mountains look more like piles of rock that have been blown up with dynamite.

What was really strange, is how close the highway was to the Mexico border. For a while we were right along the border and I literally saw like 50 Border Patrol SUV’s along the way.

As we were driving, we came up to 5 Border Patrol SUV’s parked along the side of the road and there were a few officers standing with binoculars. I looked up the side of the mountain and saw a family of Mexicans standing at the top of it. There were about 8 or 9 people and you could tell they just came from Mexico since the border was literally right on the other side of the mountain. It was something I had never seen before and pretty much blew my mind.

The sand dunes were also something I have never seen before, it sort of looked like pictures of the Sahara Desert I remember seeing back in school. This is what it looked like:

So that wraps up my road trip out to California. The main reason for the trip was to try and sort out my life and make up some plans for the upcoming months since I know I am going to be doing something different.

I managed to put a rough plan together, so stick around for tomorrow’s post and I will share it with everyone.

One of the things I did while in Los Angeles was hang out at the University of Southern California. One of my roommates was originally supposed to attend a seminar their but we were not able to find it.

So what did we do instead?

Well, we walked around for a little while and took a few pictures. As we were walking back to our car on the top of a USC parking lot, a guy asked if we wanted a beer.

Of course, being who we are, we decided to accept. The next thing I know, my roommate and I are drinking tall boys of Coors Light on top of the parking ramp overlooking the courtyard they have on campus.

It was a great time drinking with some new people and it was fun because I am pretty sure it was illegal. Here is a picture of us with one of the guys (I am on the right):

But that wasn’t all we did, the people we were drinking with knew a few members of a band that were playing on campus as part of their spring festival. They had two stages setup, along with slip n’ slides and a bunch of other stuff. Not what I remember from college.

So we went down by the courtyard and hung out by the stage. Once again, we continued to drink tall boys of Coors Light even though we were right in the middle of campus. All the people around us looked like they were 18 or 19, but oh well.

They sure don’t do much as far as enforce rules on this campus. Their wasn’t a single security guard or police officer until the very end once we had already drank all the beer and destroyed the evidence.

What I concluded from this experience, is that I should of went to college at USC. The place is amazing and reminds you of all the movies you see that take place on college campuses.

Of course, it costs like 35 thousand a year to go their, but that’s what student loans are for…hehe.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, I will be summing up my San Diego experience. Let’s just say it involves freezing in the Pacific ocean and seeing a Mexican family trying to climb over the mountain only to be greeted by 5 border patrol SUV’s.

Yeah, it was pretty interesting.

The weekend out in California was one hell of an adventure. Drinking beer in the Parking Lot at USC, sleeping in the hostel, and jumping in the Pacific down in San Diego were just a few of the events.

I have decided I will break down the trip into a few separate posts throughout this week.

The first post is on my first experience staying at a hostel, specifically the Hollywood Hostel. I must admit, it was not what I expected at all. It was much better than I would of ever imagines. So here are the Pros and Cons of my stay:

Pros

Roommates are Awesome

I stayed in a 6 bed room with my friend and we ended up having a guy and 3 girls from Sweden as our roommates. It reminded me a lot of college dorm rooms because there are lofts and small beds. I actually enjoyed sharing the room because it gave us some people to talk to and meet. I love meeting people from other countries and they are always fun to talk with.

Fun and Cheap Place to Party

Los Angeles is an expensive city to go out in, especially in Hollywood. Luckily, the hostel allowed us to drink any where we wanted including out front on the patio. They even had a lounge that served as a bar where we made ourselves mix drinks and listened to some great music. I drank with people from Germany, Australia, England, and Sweden just to name a few.

We didn’t even go out to any bars but instead stayed at the hostel all night. They do not enforce a curfew so everyone was up partying until 3 in the morning. People were drinking in the hall ways just like it was back in college and it was awesome. I actually liked it because I spent hardly any money and didn’t have to pay a single cover charge.

Free Pancake Breakfast

The price of the hostel was pretty cheap in my opinion, but it even included free breakfast. I was expecting to be served pancakes, but instead they have a huge tub of batter and you cook them yourself. I thought it was pretty cool that everyone made their own and washed their own dished when they were done. It really was different than what I have been used to staying at hotels all the time. Plus they had free coffee which is always a plus.

Cons

No Air Conditioning

It was in the 90’s on Saturday in Los Angeles so it was pretty warm throughout the day and night. I was given a top bunk in the room and it was HOT trying to sleep at night. I woke up in a puddle of sweat a few times. Luckily, I ended up getting drunk enough to the point where I just passed out and slept through the whole night.

I really did not have any cons for the place other than it being hot. I met a lot of fun people and managed to have a great time without spending much money. Something I need to start doing all the time if I am planning to travel around the world this year.

I highly recommend it to anyone that is open to sharing rooms and sleeping on a single sized bed. It is pretty cheap for what you get and the length of stay is very flexible.

Once again, this past weekend was another busy one. My friends and I went out in Tempe Friday night and had a good time. While we were at the bar, we decided that Saturday morning we were going to hop in the car and drive out to Los Angeles.

So Saturday morning, feeling a little hungover, we hoped in the car and headed out of Phoenix at 9 am. For the next five and a half hours we drove through the desert. The drive was not too bad, much better than the drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas.

Along the way, we made a stop in Indio, California, which is one of the only cities I have ever seen with such a lack of restaurants. We had to drive for half an hour just to find a fast food restaurant to eat at.

Once we came in to the city, we drove through downtown Los Angeles and then hopped on the Hollywood Freeway towards Hollywood. All I can say is that Los Angeles is one BIG city. It made Phoenix seem tiny in comparison. Once we got to Hollywood, we drove up Sunset Blvd. and just did some sight seeing to see what it was all about. We could see the Hollywood sign for the first time which was cool to see.

From there, we drove to Beverly Hills since we wanted to see Rodeo Drive. It was pretty crazy, considering the second we turned on to Rodeo a Rolls Royce with 20’s on it came flying around the corner. There was a lot of paparazzi running around the sidewalks. One guy with a video camera was trying to chase Kobe Bryant’s Mercedes which seemed pretty intense. The guy was literally hiding behind bushes and climbing behind buildings.

It was pretty eye opening to see so many Mercedes, BMW’s, and other exotic cars just cruising around. You can definitely tell all the money is in Los Angeles.

Going out was a whole different story. Since none of us are very smart, we didn’t even think to pack sport coats and nice shoes. Most clubs had pretty strict dress codes so we knew we weren’t going anywhere fancy. We ended up going to the Pig N’ Whistle in Hollywood for a few drinks and then tried out a few other small bars. Eventually, we ended up driving down to Santa Monica to go to the World Cafe.

Of course, when we got there around 1 am, they were no longer letting anyone in. From there we tried a few other bars but none of them were letting any more people in. So we ended up making the drive back to Hollywood Hills to crash at the hotel room.

Yesterday, we managed to do a lot more sight seeing. We drove up towards the Hollywood sign and did some hiking to get as close as we could to it. The letters are definitely bigger than they look from down on the ground. We could also see the whole city and it was crazy to see the size of the whole area.

We also drove by Universal Studios and looped around to Bel Air. UCLA was right there so we drove around and checked out the campus. We then drove towards Malibu to see how the beaches were there. Malibu is amazing and the beaches are larger than I thought they would be. We then finished the day out in Santa Monica, with a few beers and some food at O’Brien’s Irish Pub.

The whole trip was fun to just get out and see Los Angeles for the first time. We are heading back in a few weeks for a longer trip and have some tickets to the Price is Right. I am hoping to find myself in the showcase showdown, but we’ll see.

What I did manage to conclude this weekend is that Los Angeles is definitely somewhere I am thinking about moving to this summer. The city is great and there is so much to do. Being near the ocean is something I have missed since I was in Hawaii so I am hoping to get back to it.