164-172 - June 13th-21st, 2018: CA + 2.
Journal
It’s been an interesting week + two days!Day 1 (6/13) — Rapid City, Denver, Santa Barbara, Solvang
Our day started off very early, and even despite our best efforts to get up and get out of the house early, we ended up in a minor rush to the gate. The worst part of Basic Economy was honestly the lack of consideration for TSA Precheck, which would’ve been nice, but not having to gate-check luggage and being last on the plane wasn’t bad. Our layover in Denver was similarly rushed - thankfully, the gate for the flights were moved closer so we didn’t have to cover much distance, but 40 minutes meant that boarding started almost immediately after we got there. We arrived in Santa Barbara quite early in the day, at 9:17 AM. (As a sidenote, the Santa Barbara airport is quite a nice building, built in the same style as the other buildings in the area. It’s a nice deviation from the modern glass and metal of most other airports.)From the airport we went straight to the beach (which is directly adjacent to the airport) to burn time before lunch, which was had at a Chinese restaurant with my cousin, who in her four years at UCSB had apparently tried a significant amount of restaurants with other Chinese friends and settled on this one as the best.
From there we went directly to Solvang, where we were staying for the first day. Solvang is a small Danish town, the busy part of which primarily consists of two somewhat parallel streets filled with aesthetic buildings - hotels, restaurants, and book stores, mostly. After a brief nap at the hotel, we walked up and down the main street before picking a place to have dinner which was quite nice, and returning to our hotel.
Day 2 — Solvang, Santa Barbara
We went to the Spanish mission in Solvang in the morning, and walked around the town a bit more, stopping at a Danish bakery for brunch. We returned to Santa Barbara slowly via some scenic backroads, arriving for actual lunch at about 1:30. (this was at an In-N-Out Burger, which I mention only because they are a region-specific phenomena.) We then went to the Airbnb, which was a nice 3-bedroom house (although I still had safety concerns because I’m paranoid like that). We rested for a bit (mostly to charge our devices), went to buy some food, and ended up having a dinner consisting entirely of noodles and noodle-adjacent (this one soup with chunks of the same material as noodles) foods at another Chinese restaurant, which was a nice, light meal. Finally, we went to the beach during sunset, although since Santa Barbara is in a weird curvy bit of the California coast, the sun did not set into the ocean. We walked the length of the beach, got some photos, and returned to our accommodations, where we greeted our relatives from China who would spend the rest of the week with us.Day 3 — Santa Barbara
We spent most of the day tourist-ing, starting with Mission Santa Barbara, which was significantly bigger than the Solvang mission, with quite a lot more interesting information. It was also really pretty, although trying to capture the associated intensity/profundity in words is kind of pointless. Two small notes, however: one, they had tour maps in Mandarin, which was kind of amusing, and two, they had sponsored chalk-like drawings on the asphalt in front of the mission, my favorites of which were a separate church (which was even more ironic given that the mission is still active) and a local theater company, which had drawings of different musicals. (I recognized 7 or 8 of the 9). From there, we went to the County Courthouse, which, like the airport, was also very architecturally fitting. (I don’t understand how people do actual work in there; there are tourists everywhere, and the building and the stuff outside is beautiful.) After wandering aimlessly around the courthouse for a while and taking a bunch of photos, we returned to the Airbnb, regrouped with my cousin and a couple stragglers who stayed behind to watch World Cup games, and went out to brunch.Following brunch, we stopped by UCSB for some administrative tasks, before heading back out to Solvang for two of the relatives who had never been to the US before (but also spoke decent English, somehow. I think one of them might’ve been an English teacher? I honestly don’t know for sure, since they’re my uncle’s in-laws, so they’re reasonably distant family.).
Returning to Santa Barbara, we walked around downtown for a bit, looking around the shops and such. The highlight was ice cream, which consisted of a variety of interesting flavors (coffee, lemon+boysenberry, etc.), followed an hour later with dinner at an Italian restaurant, where I ate quite a bit, although I don’t really remember what I ate. (The food was good, but not memorable.) After some interesting navigation shenanigans (negotiating highway exits and Google Maps), we arrived back at the Airbnb.
Day 4 — Santa Barbara, LA
We left the Airbnb just before the checkout time of 11AM after consuming assorted foods for breakfast. (I mainly focused on the fruit.) We went to UCSB by way of a flower shop, and arrived at the main reason we were here. (the math, physical, life sciences graduation #2, or something like that.) The graduation was mainly uneventful–one of the professor’s speeches was quite funny, the commencement speaker was quite boring, and the student speaker was inspiring, if drawn out. Our collective group got many, many photos together (I got a lei!), as is standard, following which we walked off of campus to a small food area, where we got burgers. (I ate two, mainly because we ordered too many, but also because it was late and I was hungry.) After that, we left for LA–I just slept during the car ride. Parking was…difficult, but following that…experience we put our stuff in our Airbnb, walked to a pho restaurant in Thai Town, ate, walked back, bought some stuff at a 7-11, and slept in preparation for our trip to Universal.Day 5 — Los Angeles
Most of this day was Universal Studios, which was actually really fun, despite my general fear of any amusement part ride or anything even slightly scary, and my tendency to get slightly motion-sick. We started in the Harry Potter part of the park, where my sister and my dad got chosen at Ollivander’s, which was pretty exciting. We bought the two interactive wands, and continued on to the Studio Tour. The studio tour was pretty awesome–seeing the sort of mildly behind-the-scenes stuff of movies was really interesting, especially when mixed with a bit of fun/action, and honestly it was probably the best part of the whole experience for me. Following that, it was the Despicable Me ride, lunch (at an American diner type because I had the map and wasn’t feeling experimental due to a churning stomach), the big Harry Potter ride (which was pretty exciting and fun, despite the fact that my eyes were closed 40% of the time. also, the single-rider line was actually quite short, thankfully.). We then went to the SFX show, which was also really interesting (and made the movie industry slightly more enticing as a possible career for VFX/animation/CG, although it’s probably not what I want to do).During this time, we also got our RSI counselor groups! I am in an AWESOME group, with the counselor that I was kinda hoping for, plus two people who are really active in the group chat that I’ve made friends with, and someone who I’ve also vaguely befriended from LA. (15 in a group, so I got pretty lucky.) There were only two people who I really wanted to be in a group with but didn’t get to be, but statistically getting everything I wanted was highly unlikely, so I am very satisfied with where I am situated. I’m also quite excited to meet and bond with my counselor group, so !!! (Sidenote: the announcement came via really poorly Photoshopped movie/TV posters, which was quite funny. Our group was the Avengers.) This occupied some of my time at Universal, so not all of it was just aimless wandering/photo taking.
Following the SFX show/counselor group announcements, we went down to the lower lot, where I got photos of my sister and my dad splashing down on the Jurassic Park ride. We watched the SFX show again (this time with my dad and sister), and then called it a day. I got myself a small stuffed minion, we got some photos with the big globe out front, and then we went to dinner. (This time in Koreatown for, as the name suggests, Korean food.) Dinner was good, and the food was similar enough to Chinese food that all of us were very happy, and we returned to the Airbnb.
Day 6 — LA, Carpinteria
We checked out in the morning and said our goodbyes to our relatives, who are going on a trip across the country (-ish). (they’re visiting southern california, flying out to the east coast, and visiting NYC and DC, before returning home via Korea). We then went to an 85°C bakery/cafĂ© for breakfast.A brief sidebar about 85°C. 85°C is my favorite breakfast chain in the world–it provided me the best breakfast of my life in Wuxi, China, with a croissant, this chocolate roll thing, and a cup of milk tea. It’s a Taiwanese company, so it’s not very common in the US, but LA has a few. My LA counselor group friend recommended the brioche, so I got that this time, along with boba milk tea, which is also my favorite - all in all, pretty great. I was very happy about it.
We walked around the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a bit, stopping by the TCL Chinese Theater, and mostly reading out random stars that we knew. (George Gershwin was one of them, which resulted in me having Rhapsody in Blue stuck in my head for a bit.) There was a brief period when we lost someone, and we also got a parking ticket, but besides that all was good. It was not my favorite place, but it was interesting enough. Following that, we drove down to Malibu, where we got McDonalds (tbh, i didn’t expect it either) - I got a happy meal because I was still overly full from breakfast - and then went to the Getty Villa.
The Getty Villa is this massive house for the eponymous Getty’s art collection - it focus on ancient art (Greco-Roman-esque stuff), and is built in this sort of neoclassical style inspired by ancient Roman cities, primarily Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were preserved by the volcano explosion. The art was interesting, but honestly I didn’t find any of it that meaningful, except as an expression of history, which really can only be tangentially be expressed by the art at hand. (Probably my modernist tendencies showing.) It was cool though, from a historical perspective, and also absolutely enormous, which was simultaneously inspiring and also almost distastefully opulent. I had and continue to have mixed feelings about it.
Following the villa, we went to Carpinteria (a small town ten or so miles from Santa Barbara by the beach) where we rested briefly before walking to a Mexican restaurant. I was very hungry, given my light lunch, and ate quite a bit, and all-in-all it was a nice meal. (Mexican cuisine is also, at times, curiously similar to Chinese cuisine, in weird ways.) Sleep at the hotel followed.
Day 7 — Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, Denver, Rapid City
We stayed in bed until fairly late, watching the Senegal/Poland game, with a very dodgy (to use a Briticism) substitution call resulting in a goal. Breakfast/brunch was consumed at a pre-conversion ihop (although we did see a converted ihob in LA), and then we walked around the beach for a long while, collecting seashells and getting photos and such. We proceeded to Santa Barbara, where we bought two croissants for lunch at the airport, and then arrived at the airport an hour or two before our flight, checked in, and waited. The plane left the ground at around 3:40 PDT, but the flight was not without a hitch. There were some fairly big thunderstorms surrounding Denver, so we were left in a holding pattern for some while because the arrival corridor was closed. There was some talk of diverting to Colorado Springs if we ran out of fuel, but eventually our pilots rushed us into the airport (seemingly to prevent the arrival corridor from closing on us again) through some very turbulent air, and we arrived just a few minutes delayed.Leaving Denver, however, was a different story. We had originally anticipated a 3 hour layover, so we had dinner and waited around, but our incoming flight was delayed, and so our flight was also delayed from its initial planned leaving time of 10:20 PM. There was a brief period of twenty minutes or so where nobody had any new information from anywhere, and that was quite concerning, but eventually we were let onto the plane and into the air (unlike the Nashville flight next to us, who’s crew was stuck in Colo Springs and eventually timed out due to work restrictions by the airlines and/or FAA). Interestingly enough, we had the same crew as with the Santa Barbara flight, and we arrived home around 12:15 AM, picked up our luggage (which was first off the plane, somehow), and returned home.
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