I woke up at 4:30am on Friday morning, and got all ready for my adventure. I would call it a vacation, but the first day was definitely more of an adventure than anything. Chris was going to stay home with the kids for the weekend while I "relaxed" with two of my good friends from high school, Christy and Lily. Christy lives in Santa Barbara, California now so Lily and I thought it would be a good idea to fly out there and visit her. Lily planned to stay for a week and I planned to fly home on Monday, but we both flew out there together on Friday.
I got to the airport 90 minutes before my flight and was shocked at what I saw. Not only was the check-in line HUGE, but the security line was even bigger. Now, I'm no airport-dummy. I worked there for years and pretty much feel like I know the place inside and out. However, things have changed a bit. For example, every other time I've flown, I've used e-check-in at the little kiosks and have had no trouble checking my bags at that time, too. This time, a Delta employee told me that I could not do that because all of the kiosks that I've used in the past are now for carry-on only. Geez!! She told me to stand in a very very long line to check-in at a different area and I was so frustrated. Luckily, the people behind me let Lily "bud" in line when she got there so we could complain together at how slow the line was moving. Once through security, we had to RUN to our gate, because, of course, we had one of the farthest gates from security. I even wondered if I should go to a security gate on the other side of the airport, but couldn't guarantee that it was open or not, and there was no time to find out. Ugh!!!
Our first flight to Los Angeles, California (LAX) was uneventful, thank goodness. Although I have flown a gazillion times, lately, I've had a lot of anxiety before getting on the planes. Luckily, with Lily there, she was able to distract me from my anxiety and home-sickness. Once we got to LAX, however, both of us were about ready to hop a plane back to MN rather than continue our trip. Because of some Delta employees who acted like we were "so dumb" for not knowing where anything is (LAX has practically NO SIGNAGE and also NO ONE TO ASK FOR DIRECTIONS!!), we ended up missing our flight to Santa Barbara. Thankfully, there was a nice employee who agreed with us that the signage was awful and got us on the right track (on a shuttle through the tarmac---scary!---to a completely different and remote terminal.) Once on the next flight to Santa Barbara (90 minutes after our original one left), we finally made it to our destination.
Both Lily and myself were so exhausted and frustrated by that point, but we were still up for a little hike to the local beach. Christy lead us through a really neat area to a beach that most people don't swim in, due to natural oils in the water. (It was about 70 degrees and very windy so we didn't want to swim anyways.)
Here is Lily and Christy standing on the land over the beach:
We then walked down a very steep incline to get down to the sand:
That evening, we all got cleaned up and went to a really delicious restaurant in downtown Santa Barbara, called Opal. It's a small little place but it's SO good. I'd recommend it to anyone!
All dressed up with places to go....
Needless to say, we were ready for some major shut-eye after dinner. What a day!
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