Ghosts of Williamsburg

After a LONNNNGG nap we went into downtown Williamsburg for our extreme ghost tour. The old town area was so cute; everything made from brick and cobblestone with twinkling lights, people dressed in colonial clothing carrying lanterns, and live bands playing soft jazz. Since we got to downtown after 8 the sun was just starting to go down which meant we got to see lightning bugs for the first time!! They are so pretty and distracting I couldn't focus on anything our ghost tour guide was saying!

The neighborhood houses college students and families now right next to some historical landmarks like prisons, loony bens, and the Capitol Building. For some reason though the streets were really dark with almost no street lights or porch lights. The only people on the streets were us and trees filled all the spaces between building making it feel like you're in the woods. 

We didn't see any ghosts on our tour but we did see tons of lightning bugs, a couple bunnies, and this cool tombstone in the church graveyard which has some eerie faces on it. The guide said this hasn't been painted; just over time the black images seemed to appear. Some people say they see Abe Lincoln and some say they see a skeleton. I see both!

 

After the tour we were starving since it was 11pm here but 8pm our time which meant dinner.  However since it's a small touristy town everything closed at 10pm, dammit! We searched and searched and ended up finding a place called The Triangle which was completely dead inside except for a few college students sitting behind us doing their best Bane impressions. Image the most perfect Bane voice: "I am currently away from my phone scheming an enormous kill job. Please leave a message after the sound of the explosion-which will have no survivors!"

We still ordered some local beers and tapas though: fish tacos and Chicken Handi. Tasty treats!  

Food for Thought

Phew we made it!! 

Our flight from San Diego was delayed an hour and a half after they discovered something wrong with the emergency exit door. We sat on the broken plane for 45 minutes before they moved us to a different plane and all the tired grumpy people complained all the way to Charlotte. The ride over was a little bumpy and made some old lady in the back scream which made a baby scream which made me nervous. So Xanny and headphones were broken out. Since our first flight was late an hour and a half we missed our layover flight into Williamsburg. We ran over a mile through the airport trying to catch our flight and as we arrived to our gate the plane was just pulling away. And to make that situation worse I lost my favorite wireless headphones while running :(

But after a few hours of waiting and the tiniest jet to Richmond we finally made it to Virginia!! We grabbed a rental and drove 30 minutes to Williamsburg where we are staying. Holy crap there's a lot of trees out here!! We left San Diego at midnight and arrived in Virginia at 1:00pm. So after  10 hours of traveling with only 4 hours of sleep we were tired, a little cranky, and STARVING!! 

First stop before the hotel was Food For Thought which was plastered all over the walls with smirking images of the founding fathers. The glasses and plates are either red or blue, you choose your side; if you know what I mean.

 My side though was the shrimp and grits
along with a fried flounder sandwich and a mango mojito. Get. In. My. Belly. 

Checking into our hotel now for a looooong nap and shower before our EXTREME ghost tour tonight 0_o

Pacific Coast Highway

It's been almost one year since I last blogged which makes me a little sad. Originally I created this blog as a way for my friends and family to keep up with all my travels when I went to Europe for 5 weeks in 2010. Since then I was using this blog to post about all my weekend travels but a majority of those posts never made it up. Sad face.

I've been crazy busy this last year that I just didnt have the time to keep up with blogging. I graduated college, somehow managed to ace my senior design project, got a new job to start my career and transferred office for my new job completely relocating my entire life to Long Beach. It was an extremely hard move for me being no less than two hours away from any family member. With no friends and no family it took me six months living here to finally start to feel comfortable. My boy friend has made the transition a lot easier for me as well. He lives in the valley which might be a drive just barely too long to make during the week but close enough to visit on weekends. Plus he lives where I was born!
Two weekends ago he and I finally had a Sunday together with absolutely nothing to do but kill time. Neither one of us thought about work or bills and my mouth was FINALLY starting to feel better after having all four of my wisdom teeth pulled! So we decided to educate ourselves a bit and visit te Getty Museum. It was perfect weather for meandering around a museum since it was pouring rain out and super windy!




After the museum we cruised all the way up PCH (the street I live on :D) to my all time favorite restaurant Neptunes Net. It was an amazing lunch!



We even found this love shrimp in the bottom of our basket of friend goodness!

After lunch we crossed the street and played around with my new fish eye camera.





So fun! Not all our pictures came out but the ones that did were pretty cool! On our way home we stopped at thousand oaks mall to check out the holiday shopping, not much if you ask me. What a tiring yet absolutely perfect day!

Ps I wrote this post on my phone so please overlook any silly typos!

The Rogue

This was our reward after climbing up the Crookedest street and sweating out our first round of beer we had earlier at O'Reilly's irish pub. We also got a warm bowl of chili, some appetizers and a burger nom nom! This little bar was cute! Huge selection of beer on tap, sports on the TVs and people shouting/gambling at the table behind us! :D



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San Francisco Hikin'

After getting through China Town and Little Italy where we made the pit stop for meat and cheese, we FINALLY made it to the Crookedest street. It only took us three hours, a few circles around Union Square, about four miles, and a few blisters, but we finally got here. It was getting pretty cold and windy but took a deep breath and tried to regain some energy to make the hike up to the top of this hill. And when I say hike I mean hike. This was one of the steepest streets I have ever had to walk up, and about half the walk up the hill just to get to the crooked street had cement steps. These "steps" though almost made the walk worse. They were about three inches tall, just high enough to make you need to pick your legs up higher than normal just to take one step. I was half tempted to just walk on the street where I could regulate my own stride but the drivers are crazy. Eat or be eaten in big city traffic my dad would say.



We definitely broke out in a sweat hiking up that hill and had to stop half way to catch our breath. But it was worth it once we made it to the top. The view was beautiful you could look all the way down Lombard street all the way across the City and you could see straight across the Bay. It was funny to watch tourist driving down the crooked street all with a passenger leaning out the front seat holding a video camera. The street was actually really pretty, it was paved with flat brick facing and lined with flowered bushes. The houses along the street were also old fashioned looking, very San Francisco-esque.



After snapping a few quick picks and dodging a few obnoxious tourists blocking all the walkways we went back down the street, which was also difficult because the street was so steep. Definitely too steep to run down :D



After working up a sweat on that mini adventure we headed to the Rogue for a few beers and a snack!



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Chinese Chikn

My sister would NOT like this. She was just asking me about how you hang/dry meats without them spoiling and going rotten. I told her as long as you keep them away from bugs and dirt (and wet places) it should dry just fine. But this little chinese market in China Town definitely proved me wrong. These were whole chickens, freshly plucked and hung from their necks right in the front window to dry out. They looked pretty gross to me, and for some reason they turned a shade of red. The ones right under these piled up in pans were even worse, again whole chickens dried out with some feathers and quills still stickin' out of them!! Ick



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First Meal in the City

We got a little lost coming into the city and almost the Bay Bridge into Oakland :O but I told Ty not to fret, I had my handy mandy blackberry to tell us the way to Hotel California. Luckily they let us check in three hours early so we could park the car in their garage. $33 a night isn't bad for parking here and our feet work perfectly fine so we don't plan on even looking at that car until Saturday. We wanted to meander around Union Square since its only three blocks from our hotel but first we decided to get some grub. Since Union Square is maximum shopping and minimum dining we walked right through the square, and past china town to find some off the path restaurants. We ended up at a small pizzeria on Kearney street. Very tasty Italian style pizza made in an open kitchen so you could see them make it. We got a motzerella and hot salami pizza with a few Cokes, nom nom nom!



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