Having grown up in New York and South Carolina, and even now as an adult, still growing up in Florida – I am an East Coast gal by nature. Don’t get me wrong, I love the East Coast and it’s novelties but every time I visit California, I leave feeling more and more like a West Coast gal by heart.

From the sky high palm trees, to the cute artsy shopping districts, to the strong Asian influence everywhere you go, California is certainly it’s own little world. Although I have crossed San Diego and Los Angeles off my list, there are certainly a few other spots I am looking forward to visiting: San Francisco, Napa Valley, Palm Springs (hello Coachella!). Growing up watching Full House, it has always been a dream of mine to walk the same streets Danny Tanner used to rule on TV back in the 90’s (oh how I loved that show). There’s no doubt in my mind I will soon be there one day!

Now that I’ve confessed my California love affair, my ‘other’ main squeeze, Jared, and I decided to start off the new year with a fun-filled trip to the west coast. Jared had never been and it had been years (3 to be exact) since I last visited California so as you can probably guess I was itching to go for a while now!

We were so excited about our trip that we started a “bucket list” of things to do a month or two in advance! Haha. We stumbled upon this app called Wunderlist to create a checklist of things we wanted to do while we were there. I love this app in that we can both add anything we want to it and share with each other – we also use this app for groceries and it makes our shopping trips so much easier – thanks Mama K for telling us about it!

So fast forward – We were in LA for only four days but our trip was all that we hoped it would be! We scratched quite a bit off our list, such as: hike to the Hollywood sign, visit Venice Beach and the canals, bike along the beach from town to town, see the Walt Disney Concert Hall and LACMA, shop at Nasty Gal (OK so this was only on my list), enjoy nightlife on Hollywood Blvd, visit Koreatown and try Korean BBQ, and of course can’t forget In N Out because what’s a LA trip without In N Out right? Lol!

We took a ton of pictures and here are a few of my favorites to share with you all. The travel vlog for this trip can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seg2j2c37vw

Strolling around Venice Beach.

Checking out the LACMA scenery.

Waking up in Manhattan Beach.

First meal as soon as we left the airport. Ha!

One of the beautiful sunsets we enjoyed in Santa Monica.

I seriously cannot wait for our next trip back…who knows? Maybe next time it will be a one way 😉

What are your favorite places or things to do in California? I’m sure I left out quite a few as there are an endless amount of things to do there. Leave me your comments below. I would love to hear them to plan my next trip back.

Ciao,
Estrella