22-2-2014 // First day in LA

LA is stealing my heart piece by piece. The last two days have been just amazing. Yesterday morning after a very early wake up due to the time difference, we went near the Manhattan Beach for breakfast in a place called Uncle Bill's Pancake House, and oh-my-gosh it was So good. By far the best pancakes I have ever had. And I have had quite a few. I got the plain american pancakes with strawberry and whip and mommy got blueberry buckwheat pancakes. Have to say, the blueberry one was the better one. It was so tasty and delicious. We might need to go there for another pair of pancakes some morning.

Ready for the day!

Just another beach house at Manhattan Beach

For years now, Yelp has been a huge help for me while traveling. Especially with restaurants and cafes its hard find any good places without knowing the area, so you can just check one out from there in the area you want and usually you end up in some cool place. So far almost every place has been very good.

After breakfast we drove up to Santa Barbara and on the way we stopped by at a quiet beach in Malibu, where we saw dolphins(or sharks..)!! We took the Pacific Coast highway and it was so pretty all the way up. In Santa Barbara the humidity had created clouds/mist by the shoreline and it made it even prettier.

In Santa Barbara we first went to see the harbor and enjoyed a nice lunch in a very lively seafood restaurant. I ordered a Mai Tai and I think the bartender poured in a whole bottle of whisky as it was so strong even I couldn't finish it(I even tried making the vodkaface, and it did not work). Of course we had to check out the shopping street, so we headed to the main street, State St.

Our first stop was at a shop called Marshall's and have to say, it was such a weird place to shop at. I guess it was kind of an outlet store for brands. For example there were clothes from Michael Kors for $20 and Ralp Lauren shoes for $30. I don't know if this one was not such a good one, but the stuff seemed to be kind of bad quality, "leftovers". I did find a travel pillow and sport bras. Somehow we ended up using way too much time exploring all the shops and got back to the hotel not until 8pm or something. It was kind of scary to drive in the dark when we had no idea where we should actually go. We rented a car for 9 days and with that we got a Samsung tab for navigating, and it has already honestly saved our lives. With it we also have a hotspot WiFi so thats the reason for my realtime instagramming ;-)

I have so many pics taken already but I won't be able to transfer them on my laptop as I forgot the cable for the camera home. So after our holiday I will probably be posting them and for now, we need to settle for these iPhone photos..