Day Three of California's Paradise

Wow, it must be a sign of how the current school year's gonna go if it's taking me three weeks to finish the blog posts about my trip to California. All in good time, I guess. My main goal with these posts is to get the trip itself documented so I have a physical record of the amazing things that happened on my trip.

So let's jump right into Day Three - Friday.

Friday was the day of the rehearsal for my sister's wedding and a day where we got to spend more time shopping and at the beach. We first drove back into San Diego from Oceanside to drop her at the hair salon for all of that fun stuff and then her fiance took my family and I to one of the coolest outdoor malls I've ever been to (it makes the one in Salt Lake City look like a petting zoo). We spent a couple of hours there, picked Angie up, then headed off to Olive Garden for lunch - how fantastic! Knowing then how long it was going to take with traffic to get to where the rehearsal was taking place, we headed off to Coronado Island, San Diego.

For the record, I did not drive over the bridge - my mom did. There was no way in sweet hell that I was going to drive over that bridge - I could barely keep my eyes open while we drove over it. Anyway, we obviously made it safely over the death trail and headed into Coronado. It's kind of interesting to see the difference in the two cities, because even though Coronado Island is a part of the San Diego urban population center, the culture is completely different and the atmosphere is almost like being in a whole other world. Below is a picture of Coronado, Island.

So anyway, we went to the beach, which is apparently (and I had no idea that this was the case) public property. All beaches in California are public property, which is just super fantastic news. The Hotel Coronado is right in front of the beach itself, but the beach is public domain, so we didn't have to pay to use the beach. This is where my sister set her spot for the wedding, right on Coronado beach. Below is a picture.

So long story short, we met Angie's wedding planner, a delightful man named Jovon (who I'm now friends on Facebook with) and we went through the process of her wedding rehearsal. Then it was back to Oceanside, California for a quick rest before dinner and then a trip to Joe's Crab Shack, a seafood restaurant located on a fisherman's boardwalk. It was one of the coolest places I've ever eaten before in my life and it was totally focused on seafood, shrimp, crab (duh), and a whole variety of wonderful and super yummy dishes. They gave you baby bibs to eat your dinner with, as well as actual tools to cut into the seafood - that's the kind of restaurant this was. Funny story on this: Angie got the shock of her life because a couple of friends of hers had apparently told the waiters and waitresses that she and Jake were getting married the next day, so they showed up at our table, made Jake put on a hula skirt and her put on a weird funky kind of hat, and sang a congratulatory song to her. I almost died laughing on the floor - no doubt about it. She flat out refused to get up and dance with them, which only made me, my mom, and my other sister laugh even harder. Shown below is a picture of the crab shack itself, which was our last stop before the wedding itself :)

The next post in this blog series on my trip to California is going to focus mainly on the wedding itself and what all happened during our last full day in paradise. Stay tuned, friends :)