Dariel came to visit me!
She was flying in last Friday (November 1). I was going to go to the airport straight from work since her flight got in around 4:45pm. Sadly, that morning, a crazy person decided to go on a shooting spree at LAX. Not only was it terribly sad since people were injured and one died, but it also meant that I spent the day wondering if Dariel was even going to be able to make it in. I started following the airport on Twitter, which is where I saw the news about the shooting, and watching the news and texting Dariel. She got on the plane, wasn't delayed, but then was delayed. Yeah, they got all the way on the plane and then were told that there was an hour and a half delay. We were both sure the flight was going to be canceled and she was considering rescheduling for a different weekend if that happened. I really wanted her to come this weekend since I had it all planned out! Well, not really, but I was excited for her to come and really wanted it to happen this weekend! Luckily, her flight was not cancelled and she made it in the air. Roads were still closed into the airport but I left for it anyway. I had No Idea how to find her once I got there, but I went anyway. There were tweets about arriving passengers being bussed to a parking lot somewhere, but I had no idea where the lot was. It took me about an hour to get to the airport since it was rush hour and then when I got close to the airport, I was basically stopped. Not enough for me to just sit there and check the news on my phone but moving at like 1-2 mph. She finally landed and I was able to check my phone in time to see that the roads were opening to the airport! Of course, by this point, I still had no idea where I was or how to get into the airport. I did some driving around and finally got into the airport streets to get her. Considering what all had happened, it really wasn't bad at all. From the time I left my apartment until the time we got to dinner, it was 3 hours. For dinner, we had sushi. There's a good sushi place pretty close to my place. That made me happy. It has take-out too so that makes me happier. Mmm...sushi.
Saturday was awesome. We spent the afternoon in Santa Monica. We went to the 3rd Street Promenade, ate lunch and shopped. There was a Farmer's Market going on, so as we headed to the beach, we bought a small basket of blackberries. I think blackberries are my favorite fruit ever, thanks to West Virginia and picking blackberries with my grandparents. We ate blackberries on the beach, watched the ocean, and took cheesy pictures of course. We were going to Long Beach at night so we had quite a bit of time in the afternoon. We went to the Pier and then went to the restaurant at the end of it for some margaritas and tableside guacemole. YUM. It was a gorgeous day, warmer than I expected. We talked about all kinds of things and had a good afternoon.
Saturday night was AWESOME. We bought tickets to the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor. It's a horror festival that goes through the entire month of October. I think we went on the very last night. There is tons there. There are six mazes, a freak show, food places, and some other stuff I'm sure. The freak show cost extra so we didn't go. There were tons of people. We got there about 7:30 or so. Parking was pretty crazy. We parked on the grass somewhere, but were directed to. There was smoke everywhere, crazy lights, and monsters/zombies walking around everywhere scaring the shit out of people. When we got there, the lines weren't too bad. We went through the first maze. They try to separate people so it's not one big clump of people. I was really worried that it was a dead-end kind of maze and that we would never be able to get out. Thankfully it wasn't, but we were in the front of the group that went through so we got the most scared. It was awesome. The rule is no touching. You can't touch the monsters and they can't touch you. That's very helpful to remember! I think the first maze was probably the best because we were at the front. There were three mazes off the ship and three on. We went through the three mazes on the ship and learned to stay super close to the people in front of us. One of them had some many corners! I dreaded going around any of them because there was someone around almost all of them--not all because that would be predictable, but most. There were two parts of the night that were my favorite. The first was when Dariel and I were watching people leaving the freak show, or maybe a maze. There was a monster on top of the tunnel that the people were coming out of and scaring them. We were laughing at it when a monster came up behind us and scared the crap out of us. We burst out laughing and agreed that it was fair. The guy by us said that he wanted to warn us. I'm sure he did not. The other part was when we were walking to find food. One of the monsters was dressed like a clown. He noticed that I didn't want to look at him and he got right up in my face. Dariel ran away and the clown wouldn't leave me alone. He literally had me walking backwards in circles. I kept thinking "he can't touch me. He can't touch me. He can't touch me. Why won't he go away???" He probably only followed me for like 30 seconds but it felt like forever!! We only did four of the six mazes. At 10:00, we took a food break (ABELSKIVER!!). When we looked at the last two mazes, one had a line of an hour and the other had a line of 2 hours. There was no way we could do both since it ended at 10. We were both exhausted and Dariel's feet were killing her, so we decided to leave before EVERYONE decided to leave and we got stuck in traffic. We drove back home and both passed out quickly. I had crazy dreams because of Dark Harbor on both Saturday and Sunday! I don't remember them anymore, but they were weird and crazy and monster filled.
Sunday, I slept in so Dariel did some research on tourist ideas. When I finally got up, we decided on the La Brea Tar Pits and the Getty Museum. The Tar Pits were really cool. We went to the Page Museum, learned there are no dinosaurs in the tar pits and then laughed because the gift shop is full of dinosaurs. They are still excavating there. It's crazy to think how long they've been doing it and how much they've found. I definitely recommend it. We walked around the park and saw the actual Tar Pits and then walked over to the LACMA and saw their lamp post installation, took more pictures, and ate from food trucks. My tacos were delicious. Dariel's fries were good but she had to wait forever for them.
After lunch, we debated on going to the Getty but neither of us really wanted to go to another museum. We decided instead of just driving the Pacific Coast Highway. The plan was to first go to just Malibu and then just drive a little farther, and then ended up being going to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is about two hours away. The PCH is really cool. Malibu wasn't what I expected. I think I expected to see supernice houses right on the beach. Maybe they were nice from the beachside, but they didn't look that fancy from the roadside. Pepperdine (which I still think is on the East Coast) and the houses in the Hills were gorgeous. We stopped at a little beach area that I had planned on going to about a month ago when I wanted to get out of the city. Then we went to the Wharf in Santa Barbara. We didn't stay long. It ended up being kind of cold and Santa Barbara is expensive, so we came back to LA for dinner. We went to a Thai place that, again, is not very far from my house. I like it when people come to visit and are willing to try new places!
I had to work on Monday, so Dariel got to stay at home. I think she went to In-and-Out and binge-watched the Walking Dead. I got home right after work and we went to the airport. I thought it would take awhile, but it took us under 45 minutes. She was there well over 2 hours before her flight. I was picking Flako up there around 7:30, so I went to the arrivals, found out there is very limited 3G in the arrivals area and so called my mom and talked to her for an hour and a half while I waited. I'm so glad Dariel came. It was so fun to have her here. I love all her lawyer stories and she's just fun to talk to. I'm so glad she came to visit.
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