We werent expecting to go on a honeymoon. We had just shelled out thousands of dollars on our wedding and didnt have enough to go on a trip. We had accepted that and planned to do a trip for our one year anniversary. But then, I was blown away by someone's generosity. A friend of my family, Sherry, and her husband Brian, offered us their timeshare to use. As a wedding gift. It was so incredibly nice of them.
We planned to go to Hawaii but after looking into plane tickets, it was still too expensive for us to go. I started looking into California because we could drive there. Luckily for us, the timeshare could be used in Anaheim! It was perfect. We decided to do a trip that was similar to our earlier trip this year to Florida. We wanted to hit up the theme parks in California...except it would be different because it was Halloween! We got everything prepared. Sherry and Brian scheduled us a stay at the Peacock Suites from October 26th - 31st. My parents bought us tickets to Disneyland and California Adventure. And I secured tickets to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. We were going on a honeymoon!
We left at 5 AM on October 26th. We road tripped down to Cali - about 15 hours of driving. We had random fun conversations. We sang obnoxiously loud to all sorts of cds, most memorably Ace of Base, Will Smith, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. We read Cosmo and Cirque Du Freak. We snacked on Cheetos, beef jerky, and Snickers. We talked about the future. Since we left early, we arrived around 8 pm that night. The staff at Peacock Suites were very friendly and helpful. And because they knew we were celebrating our honeymoon, they gave us a room with a hot tub in it!! The hotel was in a great location too. Close to everything. Disneyland was right down the road, the beaches were within 7 miles, and Hollywood was 30 miles away. After checking out the resort hotel amenities (sun deck on the roof, pool, hot tubs, gym, gift shop, breakfast room, business center, etc) we went up to our room and got settled in. It was a very nice room and we settled in comfortably! We ordered pizza from a nearby local favorite, Haus of Pizza, and watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother (our new favorite show that we are Netflixing).
We slept in on the 27th - we needed it after driving for so long! So after getting ready, we headed off for a relaxing day at the beach; Laguna Beach, that is. We went to lunch at Las Brisas, a restaurant right on the ocean. Then we walked up and down the beach, taking it all in. We walked downtown and visited the little shops. There were a lot of gorgeous homes on the hill so we traveled up there and took a look at some of them. The views were amazing! We headed back that evening and hit up The Block At Orange - an outside shopping mall. Wayyyy better than any outlet mall I've ever seen. Tony got a nice sweater from the Puma store and I got this super cute sweatshirt with lace from Hot Topic. We went back to the hotel to watch some more HIMYM :)
On the 28th, we headed down to Hollywood. We were scheduled to go to Halloween Horror Nights that night, so we decided to check out some hot spots in Hollywood before heading over there. We drove down Sunset Boulevard and had lunch at In N Out Burger - my favorite fast food place! Then we went down to Hollywood Boulevard and strolled down the Walk of Fame, finding our favorite stars. We got to see the set up for the premiere of Due Date! They had all the carpets and props out in front of the Chinese Theater, just waiting for stars to walk down and go to the premiere for their movie! It was awesome. I love Robert Downey Jr :) We had to take off late afternoon to head over to Universal Studios so that we got there in time for Halloween Horror Nights. We got there with some time to kill so we walked through City Walk, which has a lot of little shops and places to eat. We visited stores such as The Los Angeles Sock Market and It's Sugar (which has a statue of Marilyn Monroe made entirely out of jelly beans!) and picked up a giant gummy bear for my little sister, Lia. We decided to grab something to eat at Pink's, a Hollywood hot dog stand that's been around since 1939. I got the Betty White hot dog. After that, we made our way to the line that was forming outside of the gates to the theme park. For those of you who dont know what Halloween Horror Nights is, it's where they transform the park into everything scary! They do something different each year and this year they dedicated it to classic horror movies. When we entered, it was awesome. There were scare zones (parts of the park where costumed people would jump out at you and scare you with chainsaws), mazes (basically, haunted houses), and rides transformed into total scariness. The scare zones we went through were Klownz, Lunaticz, Pigz, La Llorona, and Freakz. The mazes were Saw, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses (which was a 3D haunted house!), and House of Horrors - Vampyre: Castle of the Undead. The rides were The Simpson's, The Mummy, Jurassic Park, King Kong 360 3D, and the Terror Tram with Chucky. There was also a show playing called Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure and it was the funniest thing ever! Tony and I were in tears we were laughing so hard =D It's the one things HHN brings back each year because it is so highly demanded. Oh, and it was also the 50th anniversary of Psycho so they had a maze dedicated to that as well! We were there from 7 PM until 2 AM and we had such a blast. Clearly the BEST haunted houses we have ever been to. I honestly got scared at some parts! It succeeded! :)
Even though we were up until late, we woke up the next morning fairly early to go to Hollywood. I was excited. I had never been there before (surprisingly) and I was stoked to get moving! We had a lot lined up for the day. We had gotten City Passes, which basically allows you to experience 4 attractions for a very low price. We got ours for $50 each. The first thing we did was a Starline Tour, which was a bus that took us around Hollywood and Beverly Hills and pointed out many celebrity homes and famous spots and why they're famous. We also went down Rodeo Drive (the most expensive street in the world) and saw the Hollywood Sign on this tour too. Some of the celebrities whose homes we saw were: Simon Cowell, Lauren Conrad, Madonna, Orlando Bloom, Larry King, Dr Phil, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson (his last home and where he died), and Lucille Ball's former house, among many others. Some of the cool spots we saw were The Whiskey A Go Go, The Roxy, The Laugh Factory, The Viper Room (a club that Johnny Depp owned and River Phoenix died in front of on the street), Ketchup (a restaurant that was opened by Ashton Kutcher and features a tomato in a glass box in the middle of each table, and The Standard (a hotel co-owned by Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake). After the 2 hour tour was over, we went on a tour of the Kodak Theatre, which is where the Academy Awards (Oscars) have been held at since 2004. They are so strict about NO photography whatsoever inside the theater. The stars cant even take pictures. In fact, before the awards, they all have to go through security and no cameras or even phones are allowed in there. And they all have to have identification. *Random fact: George Clooney forgot his ID one time and had to wait an hour and a half until someone brought it to him before he could enter! Anyway, they do give tours so we went on one. It was absolutely gorgeous inside! I also learned something interesting: Not everyone gets to go to the awards. There are only 3,200 seats in the theater and there are over 6,000 people in the Academy. The people that get to go are nominated stars, producers, and directors, and the governors of the guild. The leftover people get put into a lottery and then whoever is picked gets to go. That's why you may not have seen Brad Pitt last year - he wasn't nominated for anything and his name wasn't drawn. Interesting, huh? At the end of the tour, we got a postcard of the inside of the theater, which isn't even sold to the public - you only get it if you go on the tour, which once again shows how secretive it all is. We then took a break to eat at the Hollywood Mongolian Grill and the Hollywood Pizzeria. After getting our tummies full, we went on the Redline Tour, which was a 75 minute walking tour. We all got headsets so we could hear our guide as we walked through the busy streets. We learned all about certain stars on the walk of fame. *Random fact: Jennifer Aniston does not have a star because she didn't want one and Muhammad Ali has his on the wall - the ONLY one on the wall - because of his religion. We passed the El Capitan Theater, which is where the Disney premieres are held. They were currently showing The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D. We learned interesting tidbits about the cement blocks in front of the Chinese Theater (Sid Grauman, the founder, came up with the idea to have the stars put their hand prints and foot prints into cement blocks to be placed in front of the theater. They can only do this though if they have their movie premiere there). There are so many stars out there such as Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, Shirley Temple (1935), Marilyn Monroe, the cast of Harry Potter, and most recently, Robert Downey Jr (because of his movie Due Date). As we were walking, we saw Taylor Swift. She came by on top of her bus and sang a few songs for the crowd. We ended the tour at the Egyptian Theater, which was also founded by Grauman, The Egyptian shows older films and tends to show double and triple features. Stars will randomly show up to talk about their films!! $11 to see one, two, or three films and possibly see a star! Last month, the mom from Back to the Future showed up and talked through all 3 films! Leonardo DiCaprio is scheduled to show up next month to talk about his film The Departed. The last attraction on our City Pass was Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. I was excited to see this although I'm not too fond of wax museums in general. To be honest, they scare me. But I've always heard about this one so I wanted to see it. I'm glad we did - it was awesome! They were so realistic, it was creepy. They were to the exact measurements and height, right down to the size of feet and freckle placement of the stars. Tony was a little nervous getting up close to take a picture with some of them because they looked like they were going to move any second! After exploring around there, we went and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. We had just missed Melissa Etheridge, who had been singing there on their stage for breast cancer awareness month. After we ate, we ended up going to see Saw 3D at the Chinese Theater. It was a once in a lifetime experience so we wanted to do that. Inside the theater was beautiful. Cherry blossoms and sparrows everywhere. Just gorgeous. A premiere movie theater for sure. A fun day in Hollywood behind us, we went back to the hotel and watched Tower of Terror to prepare for the next day :)
On the 30th, we got up early to catch the shuttle to Disneyland! It was Halloween Time at Disneyland so everything was decked out with pumpkins and everything Halloween - related. We went on a ton of rides, some of which were transformed just for Halloween (for example: Space Mountain turned into Ghost Galaxy). I got a hot dog at Pluto's Dog House. Tony got some chicken strips at the Stage Coach and they found out we were on our honeymoon, so they gave us Cinderella "Just Married" buttons! We put those on and received "congratulations" from everybody for the rest of the day :) My favorite part of the day was The Haunted Mansion. It was totally decked out in The Nightmare Before Christmas! Everything was completely changed and it was just awesome. We ended up getting some limited edition NBC drumsticks for my little brother, Josh. Tony and I also went back to being kids and got some mouse ears - I got a bride one: white velvet with rhinestones on the ears and a veil; and Tony got a NBC one; a Jack Skellington face with spiderweb glow in the dark ears. And of course, we got each of our names stitched onto the backs :) After we did everything we wanted to at DL, we ran across the street to California Adventure. We had an elevator to catch.... The Tower of Terror is one of our favorite rides. We walked through the whole park at night so everything was lit up like crazy. It was so cool. We ended up getting a couple things for ourselves too: a NBC oven mitt, hat, and car decal =] We had a long day so we picked up a BBQ chicken pizza from California Pizza Kitchen and headed back to the hotel to watch Clue.
We woke up on Halloween, all packed and ready to head back on the long drive home. We checked out of the hotel (thanks again, Brian & Sherry!!) and headed out. But.....I wanted to go back to Hollywood. So we did. I love the vibe there!! We went back and found the homes of Jennifer Aniston and Johnny Depp. I just had to - they are my favorite actress and actor, after all. It was awesome. We also picked up lunch at In N Out one more time and then REALLY headed out on the road. We drove until 11 PM and then stopped over in Ashland for the night, too tired to go on.
We woke up the next morning and I showed Tony the town and the college I went to (Southern Oregon University). I showed him where the Shakespeare Festival was held and my favorite cemetery in the world (so far, at least). And THEN, we drove home. Picked up our puppy from my grandparent's house and went home to relax and unwind.
We had such an amazing time and we really bonded with each other and had fun. I'm so glad we got to do this because I feel a honeymoon of some sort is very important. I mean, you SHOULD celebrate the fact that you just got married!! It wouldn't have felt the same a year from now. But....we are currently planning a trip to Italy for our one year ;)
