Lots of Adventures

After being in kind of an adventure slump over the fall and winter, we've been out exploring again.

Marriage Retreat in Costa Mesa (April 3-5)
Our very last Talbot marriage retreat. They are held at the Ayres Hotel in Costa Mesa (ayreshotel.com). If you visit the website, you can see these are some pretty upscale accomdations. Obviously these retreats are heavily subsidized for which we are incredibly grateful. These have made for fabulous weekend getaways.

Disney Hall (April 10)
Our dear California relation, Don & Connie gave me tickets to see Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall for my graduation present. Of course, I invited Brandon to go with me. It was an outstanding experience all the way around. The building itself is an architectural gem and the music was captivating (well except for the super modern opening piece, which was a bit hard to engage with). It was also a celebration of Esa-Pekka and his career with the LA Phil as he was soon retiring to compose full time. After the concert, we enjoyed strolling through downtown, had lunch, and returned home on the commuter train. It was a lovely day!







San Diego (April 11)



Our friends Tim and Ali are both University of California, San Diego alumni, so they were happy to show us around their old stomping grounds. We started with breakfast at Pipes (www.pipescafe.com) where you can get a heap of tasty breakfast delight for cheap. The portions are so big that we had to share and were still full. We also had our first mexican mochas, which are mochas with some bonus spices in them--tasty! Then we hiked around on the cliffs that afforded some of the best views in San Diego. Somebody had apparently written me a message. They also showed us around to several other sites/sights including Balboa Park, a wall that need climbing, and this place where the seals like to sun themselves:









Santa Barbara (April 25)
We had big plans for this trip. We thought we would start off at the Botanical Gardens then go to the Mission and finish up at the Art Museum. Oh yeah, and have a nice seafood dinner on the pier. Well we got to the Botanical Garden and decided we wanted to spend the day there. It was beautiful. It had a small redwood grove that smelled heavenly, a stream, meadows of wildflowers, strange and interesting cacti, among many other natural, flowery type treasures. Living in the dense city this kind of place seems so mythical and far away, so different than our daily reality. We eventually made it down to the pier and enjoyed a cornicopia of seafood while enjoying our oceanview.













Dana Point: Capistrano Surfside Inn May 1-3
Don and Connie blessed us again with the opportunity to spend the weekend in their timeshare since they were only staying during the week. We were right across the street from the ocean. There happened to be a convenient walk over right in front of our place, so we didn't even have to fight traffic to get to the beach. On saturday we borrowed the Inn's bikes and tooled around the wharf in Dana Point. I'm pretty sure that was Brandon's favorite part. I enjoyed it too, but I also loved reading beachside. It was so good to relax together before the end of school craziness began. Sunday we took PCH up the coast and had lunch at one of our favorite places the Beachcomber. After that it was on to our friend Ali's birthday party at Huntington Beach. I don't know if you were counting, but that was three beaches in one day: Capistrano, Crystal Cove, and Huntington. This is one of the really cool part about living in SoCal.