the best trip ever

It snuck up on me pretty slowly. Surprise! Wake up! It's your 10 year wedding anniversary!

I have come to realize that the best way to live life is to never expect too much. It saves for disappointment! My anniversaries have not escaped this way of thinking. I mean, there are times when I have 'thoughts' that something awesome might happen. But, I usually push those things away in favor of my "never be disappointed" frame of mind.

This year, I was completely surprised when my husband took me on a "Surprise it's your 10 year anniversary trip" to Los Angeles, California. :) I guess the biggest shock of it all was that he planned every single detail. Down to who could watch my chihuahua while I was away. Given the fact that I'm not one for surprises, or change. I attempted my best face to just 'go with the flow' the whole time we were not on a schedule or going by any clock. It was the BEST time ever.

We started our journey with a road trip to Seattle. That is around 5 hours from where I live in Idaho. This was pretty exciting as we left at around 11pm at night! It was dark and we were giggling like kids as we left his mom with our own kids and drove off into the late late night. :) We arrived at the airport around 5am the next morning and boarded a plane bound for LAX.

From my experiences, I haven't ever been to California, nor have I been on many planes. So, the whole time I was pretty wide-eyed and asking 'what's this for'. By the way, we had the best laughs over those picture guides on how to escape the plane when it's crashed. hehe

We get to LA and lo and behold! We're going to take a bus!! I had never ridden on a city bus before so I was by that time, jumping up and down. I couldn't get it out of my mind that there were palm trees there, and I was in LA!! I kept looking at Sean wondering what the heck did I do to deserve someone as thoughtful as he's become? :D

For the first leg of our trip we stayed with Sean's friend from USC. His friend has been living in LA for about 5 years. So that evening, we rode the bus down to Chinatown and ate at Hop Louie's. After some laughs and some really great food, we wandered around the touristy shops. We even caught a sidewalk show that featured some of "China's best performers". It was a real treat to get a free show! Not to mention amazing sights!

I loved seeing the culture of Chinatown. I'm pretty sure a lot of it is 'show' and such for the tourists, but there are genuine people there seeking to preserve the chinese way of life while living in a very busy America! It was neat to see that side of things. I liked hearing people chatter away in Chinese. Especially the little kids. :)

After that fun filled day, we decided to go to bed early so we could catch a bus early in the morning to go down to Burbank. The one thing Sean wanted and had planned, was to take me to see Jay Leno at NBC studios. I've been a fan of Jay Leno since I was a teenager. hehe. I remember getting into arguments with a friend over who was best, Jay or Dave? She of course LOVES David Letterman.

We woke up early the next day, kinda sore and tired from walking so much the day before, but that didn't keep us from wanting to get out and see the sights. :)
Navigating the bus systems was difficult for us. A compass would have come in really handy! We eventually just asked every bus driver if they were headed to such and such a street, so we knew we were heading in the right direction. Then we had to be careful to keep an eye on where the bus was stopping. Missing your stop, or overshooting where you needed to get off was a huge deal! It might mean walking 10 or 11 city blocks if you missed. I was quite surprised by how easily most people just rode the bus. No car, nothing! The bus was their way of getting around. I loved every minute of hopping each bus, and seeing who would be driving, or riding that I might recognize from the last trip. But, I never saw any person more than once.

I also teased Sean about being a minority. Usually, I'm the darker one when it's a room full of light complected people!! But this time, it was him, a tall, bald white guy...riding a bus in downtown LA. :) He stuck pretty close to me. Heh. I thought it also funny that I know absolutely NO spanish, and Sean did. If people talked to us, he could totally get what they were saying while I was like, "say what?"

We spent the morning doing an NBC studios tour. Quite insightful! It's pretty neat all together how they make tv shows and such. We had arrived around 8am to get our tickets to the Tonight Show. That is a fun story in itself how we met another couple from KY that wanted to see Jay Leno too! And they were celebrating their 25th anniversary! We all got to the ticket office at the same time and the man at the desk announced "I only have 4 tickets left!" It was cool because there were 4 of us waiting! I would have felt horrible if we would have had to figure out who was getting what.

We decided that we wouldn't wander far from the studio since the line for the show would start around 2. It was 10am by that time. We happened to wander in front of the already forming line and noticed a lovely lady asking our friends from KY if they had their tickets and they should line up now. She told us we had enough time to do absolutely nothing except line up. We weren't quite sure if she was serious or if she was just anxious to get into the show. After a little bit of talking she told us that she had been to see 'Jay' 191 times in a row! We figured we'd sit and wait in line to make sure we got in. It's awesome to meet people and hang out with them! Most likely I would have never met 'Glozell' (Jay's #1 fan) or David and June, had it not been for our travels and a Tonight Show line! :)

Glozell then told us the secrets on how to get our picture taken with Jay Leno! Thanks to her, we have a really nice polaroid shot of Sean, me and Jay Leno. :) I will scan that soon. It definitely made our trip and our wait in that line worthwhile! Some of the best memories tho were just talking to David and June about where they were from. And asking Glozell about living in LA! She put us up on her blog if you want to check us out HERE. :) She was one of the funniest, sweetest people I have ever met. LA has some really great people in it!
We played Hearts and held each other's places in line while we went out for food, snacks or the bathroom! hehe.

The people on the trip were the best part.

We met some young guys from Michigan who were on a month long trip to California. They looked like they were about 18 or 19 years old. We rode the bus back to the Metro station with them talking about our adventures, when we saw a really pretty hispanic girl with a map. :) As tourists you see people who have maps and you wonder if they know where they're going. So we asked her and she admitted she was from LA her whole life, but that it was her first day riding on the metro! We felt like vets, so we assured her of where to go and when to get off. It was in the same direction as us, so we rode part way with her. More fantastic conversation from a person who lives differently than us! :)

The rest of our trip was spent visiting and meeting friends. A couple we hadn't ever met before. Only online. So that was a great great time! I really think that all the sights and awesome things we saw were second to the people we got to hang out with and get to know.

So many things happened I keep going over the trip in my mind. Hoping I won't forget and I keep writing down things we saw or did or said on the adventure that I don't want to ever lose in my mind! :) Over all, I feel so so blessed to have someone who knows I love to get out of my comfort zone every so often and that he sees that and wants to give me something different.
I thanked him from the bottom of my heart!

We'll see what year 20 brings eh? :)

Sorry for the long long post...but there seemed to be sooo much!
If you click on the pictures you can get to my flickr account and see more pictures from our trip.

Pillowfarmer! Out.