Road Trip!

To make up for the fact that I was at convention on my 10th anniversary, Dave and I planned a little road trip (sans children!) for this past week.

I left D.C. on Sunday, and flew to SeaTac.  It was so weird to be in my "home" airport, and yet not leave and actually go home!  I had a 2 hour layover, and in that time Dave showed up and we got lunch at Qdoba.  Yum!  We then boarded a flight to L.A. for the first leg of our trip.  Here we are just after arriving in Sunny CALIFORNIA!



Originally, we had planned to spend a day at Disneyland.  But after examining our pocketbook, we decided it might be better to skip Disney in favor of actually eating and having a place to sleep while on the trip.  :)  So we made it into downtown L.A. and just crashed in the hotel.  The first night was just beer and pizza, nothing fantastic, and nothing worth documenting in pictures.

Okay, okay... here's a picture.



Here is the spectacular view from our room at the Westin.  (We did priceline - it rocks!)



After a great night of rest, we got up refreshed and ready to explore!



Our first stop was at a little French knitting shop.  We drove all the way out there, just to discover that it was closed!  ARGH!  We did find a cool antique store though.  Then we had a super yummy lunch at a little Indian Restaurant.



After lunch we had some time, so we looked up another knitting store that sounded promising.  It was in Burbank, which was our next stop on the agenda anyway.  Sadly, it too was closed.  BOOOO!

We did make it here though:



We got tickets to The Tonight Show, so our next stop was at the NBC studios for the recording.  The tickets suggested we arrive before 2:45, and we decided to try and get there by 1:30 (just to be safe).  It's a good thing we did!  We waited in line for over an hour, and we were the last group of people seated for the show! If we'd been any later, we would have missed it.

I don't have any pictures of Leno, or the studio, or anything cool from our time because photography was strictly prohibited, and we didn't want to get kicked out.  But it was an amazing experience - super fun!  Seth Myers (from SNL) was the headlining guest, along with 2 of the guys from "The Deadliest Catch" and a musical guest I'd never heard of (but enjoyed her music).

We spent the rest of our Monday afternoon/evening exploring L.A.   We drove up into the hills and found the Hollywood sign.



Then, we went to Philippe's for dinner.  This is the restaurant where the French Dip sandwich originated.  The food was amazing and the prices great!  Where else in American can you get a $.09 cup of coffee?



For $20 we got a beef sandwich, lamb sandwich, lemonade, coffee, ice tea, fruit cup, pickle, and a slice of apple pie!  It was uber tasty!






Then it was back to the hotel for another well deserved rest.  Tomorrow I'll fill you in on the next leg of our trip.  :)