California Trip pt. 4

*tap tap*

Is this thing on?

So I've been gone so long I bet you thought I had forgotten and completely abandoned this right?
RIGHT WRONG!
I mean I don't even have an excuse I'm just really really bad at sticking to things.
Anyway I'll make a post later updating on everything that's been going on in the past five months, but for now let's go on to the next portion of my California trip (which happened almost a year ago...)

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So this time we went to Old Sacramento, which is about half an hour from where I was staying.

It's is the absolute most quaint little town thing ever and I loved it.
The entrance was this adorable arch.

It's a little waterside town and it's got wooden walkways and little stores and saloon looking things all along.
There's even horse and buggies trotting around.
We got some ice cream and then wandered around, while I took pictures of completely random things that caught my eye.

Like this staircase. I love staircases and stairs and this apartment was all old fashioned with it's bricks and metal.

Speaking of bricks, look at these.

Old Sacramento was built in around 1849 and a lot of the buildings are still really old ones.

Since it's on the waterfront it was flooded a lot so they actually raised the whole town at one point, which I found fascinating. 

There's still a lot of places where parts of the city weren't raised and you can go down stairs to them. 

There was also a lot of little kind of hideaways, like down here off the side of the main street. 

It's really funny imagining that someone would have been walking up those steps from that house a hundred years ago. 

LOOK AT ALL THIS BRICK AND CONCRETE. 

Now this was really cool, the entire portion of the place that was all wooden. 

We were there as evening set in too so it all looked amazing. 

Sadly I don't have the skills to convey the coolness. 

There was railroad tracks lacing the place too. 

This is the only shot I got of the water, but you can see the buildings extend over it. 

And last but not least, a completely covered wall which I thought was super cool.

Anyhow, that's this leg of my trip covered. 

The next one will be the last. 

My second trip down to San Francisco and getting home. 

Kinda disappointed at the lack of photos I took here, because it's really such a cool place, especially if you're a huge history nerd like me. 

Thanks for dropping by!

California Trip pt.3

hello~

I'm back with another segment of my trip.
The reason I'm doing it in so many segments is because I don't want to be making one huge picture heavy post, and it cuts my trip in to the different things I did.

So here's the first of the two times we went down to San Francisco.

We took the Megabus, which was awesome because it was cheap and exactly what we needed, not to mention a relatively comfortable, medium-length drive.

This huge coke sign was one of the first things I passed as we made our way to the city.
I have no idea how old it is, but it looks lovely and vintage.

Another random pass-by.
An old light up hotel sign, which I was fascinated by.
I can just imagine it lighting up and flickering like in some old film.

I don't know exactly where we went, but it was some large shopping centre with some incredible architecture.

It reminded me a lot of the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney so I got a bit excited, especially with huge windows like that. 

I really like big windows. 

Next we went to the absolutely massive Forever21, which had this awesome roof complete with chandeliers, which reminded me a lot of one of my old houses. 

I love this style of the intricate designs, gold, and chandeliers, slightly french.

Then we moved on, making our way to China Town. 

There were a lot of cable cars passing us, and I got a couple shots of them. 

Another random building shot, because along with signs and windows, I love the metal stairs that a lot of these city buildings had. 

Imagine sitting out on one of those on a cool summer evening. (Life Goals)

And of course, I couldn't pass up the chance to take pictures of flowers.

Another thing we passed several of, were these incredible little "Kiosk Museums"

They're basically exactly what they sound like.

Little Kiosks with Museum artifices and little signs explaining what the items were along with facts pertaining to each of them. 

History is one of my absolute favourite subjects so I found these super cool and interesting. 

Finally we made it to China Town and I wasn't let down with the lanterns decorating the air everywhere you looked. 

We weren't there for too long, and sadly this was the only picture I managed to get. 

We left China Town and found a cute tiny park in the middle of the city, in which we sat down for a while to rest our dying feet. 

I snapped a couple pictures before leaving to make our bus back home. 

Of course, more buildings and stairs.

And this adorable church across the street.
It was very old and charming.

Finally we were on our way home, and closer to the end of the drive, the moon looked absolutely /incredible/

Unfortunately my blurry picture does it no justice, but it was big and golden.

That is true to colour there, but it was about three times bigger in real life. 

I really wanted to get a shot of it between the palm trees as we got closer to Sacramento, but my camera had other ideas. 

That was it for the third leg of my journey.

Next time join me as I explore quite possibly my favourite part of my trip, Old Sacramento!

California Trip pt.2

Hello!

I'm back with the second part of my California adventure.

Let's get right in to it.

My next outing was to the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk.

It took us about 2 - 2 1/2 hours to drive from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, but it was so fun.

Lots of mountainous nature. We don't get much of this in Hawaii, so it was a nice change.

Before we headed to the actual boardwalk, we stopped to grab some lunch at a falafel place in town.
I got the falafel burger, and even though I'm not much one for falafels, I must admit it was pretty good.

And then we arrived.
I was super excited because I absolutely adore amusement parks. (Even after a traumatic experience a couple years back. Aka hot, nauseous, and headache.)

The first thing I saw when we got out of the car was this mini roller coaster thing, and my only thought was "I must ride it."

Of all rides, two things reign, the mega drop type of rides, (which I also went on) and the roller coasters.

There was two roller coaster like rides there, the small one above, which I went on with my younger cousin, and this big one, which we all went on.

I love the way the flags look up there, and it was windy enough to get an action shot.

I took that while my other cousin and I were on this thing:

A very cool way to get from one side of the walk to the other.
Can you see the lonely chinese man.

I also got a shot of this ride from it, which I'm pretty proud of.

I can't remember if I went on it.
I don't think so.

After all the fun and heat and overly-sugary drinks, it was finally time to be heading home.
We stopped for an early dinner at The Saturn Cafe in Berkeley, which is an entirely vegetarian restaurant, with vegan options for most things.

I think I just got some kind of burger, (as you do), but I took a picture of my cousin's grilled cheese sandwich, and garlic fries. (Which were delicious. Although the garlic was a little bit dangerous.)

After we ate, we wandered around Berkeley a little more, and it is one of the cutest little hipstery places ever.

I took pictures of some flowers growing all around, because I am a bit obsessed with flowers.

Don't the pink fluff balls remind you of something from a Doctor Suess book?
I wish I'd been able to get better pictures but it was getting dark and it was a rather tall tree.

They also had this adorable little old fashioned movie theatre that I would have loved to have seen a movie in.

Last but not least we made the customary stop at starbucks before starting the long drive home.
I just got a hot chocolate, which I did take a picture of, but it did not come out well. :'D

Our car was parked next to a lovely little restaurant, and I had to take a picture of the vines crawling the wall in the ambient lighting.

Does anyone else hear Ratatouille music when they see this? No?

And so we spent three hours driving home, all with a full bladder.
I should have listened to my aunt when she told me to go to the bathroom at starbucks.

And that was all for this leg of my journey!
Come back next time when we go over the first of my two trips down to San Francisco!

Thank you~

California Trip pt.1

hello~

So as promised (although much much after promised) is my California trip!

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My flight left around 1:00 Hawaii Time, so I was at the airport around 11.

After checking in and going through the security checkpoints, I meandered over to my gate where I would be waiting for a couple hours.

Honolulu airport has this adorable little asian garden area for people to walk around.

I was pretty lazy though so I popped down for a little while and then came back up so I could sit at my gate.

After sitting on my phone for an hour or so, it was finally time to board.
It didn't take long for my flight to take off, and I took a few shots of Oahu from the air.

Including the famous Diamond Head Volcano.

Seeing as California is 3 hours ahead of Hawaii, I got to see the sunset from my window.

After a quick five hour flight, I finally saw San Fran lights. 

After being stuck on an island for over two years I was excited to go to a proper city, to say the least.

(Big Bang T.O.P Mask, ebay, $3.75 + shipping. Great for asthmatics/allergy prone people on planes, or even if you just dislike getting dry sinuses.)

I arrived at 10:00pm and we had a 2-3 hour drive back to sacramento (Thanks to my wonderful aunt and cousins that homed me and transported me the two weeks I was there!)

The first day we didn't do much, but we went to Fresh Choice for dinner!
I'd been there the first time I'd gone to California back in 2011 and the idea of buffet style eating was exciting and foreign.

(Bear with me, I haven't perfected the food shots yet.)

The next day I think we went to one of the smaller Sacramento malls.

I beautiful half made face :|

I snapped a shot of this covered wall while we walked along. (As you will see.... I love covered walls.)

I also went to a drive-in cinema with my cousin and a couple of her friends!
I've never been to a drive-in before so it was super fun.
It got really cold but we had blankets and snacks for days.

My attempt at making an arty picture at the drive-in.

At some point that week we also went to Sac's Korean Plaza, which had a huge Korean market, and Nature Republic.

First we went to the market, and all the fresh vegetables had me in love.

There is nothing more beautiful than fresh vegetables.
I also bought some of the famous Choco Pie.

I've been wanting to try these ever since Minho of SHINee specifically brought one to England in SHINee's One Fine Day for his football player idol.
They were a little stale from being shipped from Korea to California.

On to Nature Republic!

The first thing you will notice is that the entire storefront is plastered in Exo posters.
I screamed.
I also wanted to peel off every poster and take them home.
But I didn't.

A closer look at the posters, and the little stand they had outside the door.

I bought a few things, some lip colour, soap and lotion, nail polish, a couple masks, and various other things, which are now scattered though out my makeup collections.

But, they had a promotion where if you spent x amount of money, you got a free little plastic poster thing, and if you spent xx amount, you get a paper poster like on their walls, or if you spent xxx amount, you get a calendar.

Now funny story this.
My cousin and I spent xx amount, (it was something like $60+ for the paper poster.) and the woman was super nice and talking about Exo and stuff, so she gave us BOTH a poster, and THEN.
The cash register was not working.
(at first I panicked because I thought there was something wrong with my credit card)
But it turned out there was something wrong with their system, so she walked us over to another shop to do the transaction there, and gave us the Exo calendars as compensation for our time and trouble.

Honestly it hadn't been a problem but I wasn't about to say no to the $100 value calendar.
I don't have a picture of it on hand, but I'll be sure to pull it out some time.
However, here's a picture of me and the poster.

*cough* can you tell who my current bias is.

Anyway, this post is already drowning in the pictures, so I'll leave the rest of my pictures for other posts!
Be sure to check back and see the rest of my cali adventure.

Thank you!