San Diego Day Trip

Monday I headed down to San Diego for the day to visit a few friends. I was hoping to "accidentally" run into my friend Whitney (from London) at the Mormon Battalion Historic site where she serves part of her mission, but unfortunately we did not cross paths so I will have to try again another time. I did manage to meet up with Amanda again, and we toured the Mormon Battalion site together.

I also grabbed breakfast and did a little shopping with Alyssa in the OC on my way down, which was great because she's heading back up to BYU on Friday :(

Tyler was working in the OC on Monday and I gave him and his colleague a ride down in the morning and thus needed to spend the entire day in San Diego. I ended up killing time by touring the first California Mission, Mission San Diego de Alcala, and wandering around Balboa Park admiring the architecture.

Here are a few pics from the day-

Irvine Spectrum Center:

The Irvine Spectrum Center is a huge outdoor mall where Alyssa and I met up for breakfast at 8:30am. Because it was so early the place was completely deserted and it was soo beautiful. I usually don't like malls, although outdoor ones aren't too bad, but I couldn't help but love the mall when no one was there. It was surprisingly peaceful :)

Mormon Battalion site:

Mission San Diego de Alcala:

Balboa Park:

Tyler

Last nite Tyler and I went out to dinner and while he waited for me to finish getting ready, I found him 'riding' my bike in the front room. He was looking around at the map and the room while humming and ringing the bell like he was out on a real ride. I thought he was pretty cute, and I'm glad he knows how to entertain himself :)

3 Happy Years

Tyler and I celebrated our three year anniversary yesterday!! Of course, Tyler had to work, but since I'm still unemployed I lived it up by getting a massage after a nice long morning run and then I settled down to watch one of my favorite movies, "While You Were Sleeping," in the afternoon. Tyler had a big, beautiful bouquet of flowers for me when I came to get him (that he sent one of the new analysts to go pick up for him since he was so slammed at work....nice) and after we put them in some water we headed out to dinner.

A couple of months ago I was driving around near the airport and came across The Proud Bird restaurant. We decided to eat there for our anniversary because they have a small collection of old aircraft on the property you can walk around and look at and, best of all, it's located right next to one of LAX's major runways so airplanes are landing right next to you all nite. We saw everything from those tiny United propeller planes to the big British Airways and Virgin Atlantic 747's. If you know anything about Tyler and I then you will know we LOVE airplanes so it was awesome. As we were leaving the restaurant we found out that the tables next to the window have a headset that you can put on and listen to air traffic control during dinner too. Pretty cool, but we'll have to do that next time.

After dinner we headed over to Cold Stone for dessert. We thought about being crazy and running out for a late movie after that, but Tyler hadn't been feeling very well all day, so we just called it a nite.

Tyler asked me on our way home from dinner if it felt like it had really been three years or if it seemed like less time. I told him I felt like we had been married for at least seven or eight years, probably because we had done so much in just three years. We tried to figure out what the three best things we've done over the past three years were and, other than our wedding day itself, we both loved our trip to Boston and our trip to Paris. I also loved our time in Chicago (and would move back in a second :), but Tyler said a favorite moment for him was riding the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland together. But really, I've loved it all because I love him!! So, Happy Anniversary to us!

Me and my pretty flowers. Our waitress was not a good photographer and Tyler wasn't looking so hot cause he was feeling sick, so we don't have a good photo of us together to share, but we'll work on it :)

Wrap-up

Bonaventure Cemetery

Alright, it has been almost a month since Tyler and I got back from vacation so I think it's time I finally wrap things up. There were a couple of other things we did that didn't really fit into the other posts. We saw the Yorktown aircraft carrier, visited Charles Towne Landing (where the first settlers actually settled), Bonaventure Cemetery, and several of Savannah's historic town squares.

We also ate a LOT. I wanted to try every Southern dish I could, but unfortunately I never had gator sausage, fried green tomatoes, or catfish. I've decided to save those for some future trip to New Orleans, along with jambalaya and gumbo. We (mostly I) did have hushpuppies (yum!), local shrimp and mussels, okra, grits, fried chicken, sweet potato pie (several different kinds), pecan pie, boiled peanuts (so sick!), and cornbread.

We found some really good places to eat and few....not so good places. Here's the rundown just so you know:

• Hyman's Seafood (Charleston)- Sooooo good! And at each table they have a marker of which celebrities have sat at that table. Tyler and I ate here twice and sat where Barbra Streisand and Mel Gibson sat :)
• Hominy Grill (Charleston)- Yuck, yuck, and yuck.
• Toast (Charleston)- Good and cute little breakfast place. I really liked the sweet grits here.
• Kilwins (Charleston+)- Best. Ice cream. Ever. They have several locations around the U.S., but they're mostly in the East/South and the closest one to us is Fort Collins, CO :( But if you get a chance to go you HAVE to try the raspberry sherbet and the Mud ice cream. They also have really good homemade fudge and caramel apples! I'm not even sure how many times we went here, but it was a lot!
• The Lady & Sons (Savannah)- This is Paula Deen and her sons' restaurant. The food was fine, but nothing special. Tyler and I both think the food wasn't worth the price, so we say skip it.

Here are a few more photos for you to browse. I really liked Bonaventure cemetery cause it was sooooo pretty. It isn't super big, but it is old and overgrown and I'm positive it's been used in a thousand movies.

I also saw another one of those Indian carvings. I think I've seen four now.... so only like 46 more to go :)

Bonaventure Cemetery

Bonaventure Cemetery

Yorktown- I couldn't get the whole ship in one shot and I'm not sure why, but all these pictures turned out very blue :/

Front of the Yorktown

Gazebo and small clearing surrounded by oak trees at the Charles Towne settlement. It looked like a beautiful place to have a wedding reception.

Coastal trader ship replica at Charles Towne Landing

Colonial bowling in action

Peter "Wolf" Toth's South Carolina Indian carving at Charles Towne Landing

A pretty sunflower in the Charles Towne settlement (FYI: They had some palisade walls around the settlement which would have looked like those constructed for the original settlement, and somehow I didn't take any pictures of it. I'm kind of bummed, because they did look very cool. Very Pocahontas-esque :)

Fountain in one of Savannah's historic squares

Historic square in Savannah

Savannah church

Historic square in Savannah