California Gurls

(that is, my mother, my sister, and I–though we don't wear Daisy Dukes with bikinis on top)

So here we are in sunny California. We’re staying about an hour outside of San Francisco, and it’s pretty awesome. I neglected to take pictures of the plane, so here’s a generic one for you:

During our five hour flight, I amused myself with knitting

(Three hour sweater, with some kind of wool-alpaca mix that I have lost the ball band to)

and Yale iTunesU lectures––I’m not quite sure what my family did, except that it involved a lot of rolling of dice.

Once we got off the plane (and were spoiled for the results of the Germany-England soccer game), I remembered to take pictures: mostly because waiting at the car rental place took forever.

Although there was a woman with cool hair,

Little Sis and I were bored. So we played Slide and took pictures of ourselves being fabulous.

Our new car is SO CUTE that I want to eat it with a spoon. Or change its diaper. Or just feel really cool and hip driving around in it (despite how long it took us to find the trip meter reset button).

One thing about California is that they’re way more intense about rules and regulations, so we had to be very careful not to break some rules that were ‘photo-enforced.’

The extra precaution-taking was more than made up for, however, by our excitement at being in a place with LETTERS written on HILLS. And for me, seeing the completely different vegetation was a personally awesome experience.

Of course, being in California, the first thing we did was go to an In-N-Out.

I’ve (obviously) never been to one before, but I liked that the menu was very basic.

It made choices easy and also in this case, meant that the food was very good. Well, the burgers were. The fries, not so much (we still ate them all).

Overall, Elevation Burger is still better––their shakes are more drinkable and bigger, as well as having a spoon for when your straw gets clogged, and while their burgers are smaller, their fries are far superior.

After lunch, we were pretty tuckered out, so we headed to the hotel. Livermore is about a 45 minute drive from San Francisco, but with the amazing scenery, it felt more like ten minutes.

Although there was some confusion.... We thought this was the San Mateo Bridge.

No. It was this.

Unfortunately, my camera skills aren’t great, so I couldn’t capture exactly how pretty everything was, but I did my best.

There was some interesting algae growth––the result of eutrophication? in the part of the bay we were driving over, as well as some white stuff that we assumed was salt.

Eventually we reached our long term residency hotel. It matches our car in its adorableness, and we couldn’t wait to get settled in. Our new home is small, but cozy, and I think there’s enough space that we won’t all be biting each other’s heads off. At least let’s hope so.

It may be only 5:00 here, but for me it feels like the end of the day, despite the heat of over 100˚F weather. At least there aren’t many mosquitoes. So here we are, in California, eating samosas and excited for the summer. How are you? Where are you? I bet it's not as cool as here.