Aussie Invasion - Part 2

as i type this, my aussie friend, anna, is on a plane back to sydney. she has been on a 7-week epic adventure around the world. and after bouncing from india, to germany (and around europe), up to ireland, and over to russia, she decided to make southern california her grand finale.

anna did her best to cram as much of the sydney experience into my short visit with her down under, before i started my contiki tour, so i was excited to return the "host" favor. i had her here for a week, so we went mega-tourist style!

i picked her up on tuesday afternoon, and after a quick run by the apartment to drop her luggage, we headed straight down to newport to begin her proper introduction to the OC. she is a huge fan of the television show, so we ran by the newport beach visitor's bureau to check out the cast's handprints...of course, we then had to detour to newport dunes, because they had moved them. the handprints were a bit of a let down, but we headed to laguna after that and the sunset there more than made up for it.

uninterested in wasting time on sleep, anna was up bright and early wednesday morning and i took her up to the citadel so she could shop for a few hours while i was at work. apparently she had seen it on a tv show about the american outlet shopping craze. i'm glad she did, because i ended up getting some awesome deals there as well. we finished the day off with dinner at felix's and got to bed early in preparation for our visit to the san diego wild animal park.

thursday we hit the road early, just in case we ran into traffic. we had booked a photo caravan safari tour for 10 am, and we didn't want to be late. we got to hand-feed rhinos!!! it was an awesome day!

friday, it was up to valencia for a visit to magic mountain, and we finished off the day at souplantation, because i simply couldn't let her leave america without experiencing as many buffet opportunities as possible. apparently we took no photos this day. having too much fun, i guess.

which leads me to our next stop... VEGAS! the land of buffets! we flew in saturday morning and met up with another friend from the greece tour, tanya. the buffet at our hotel was our first stop. big shock there. that night we started at club tangerine in our hotel (TI), and then ventured over to pure (in caesars) where we had a random celeb spotting when mariah carey left the club at the same time we did.

the next night we saw the new cirque du soleil show, LOVE. it was awesome and certainly lived up to the outstanding cirque reputation! a few twists with this one: a 360 degree stage, there were no bad seats! also, no intermission. the show ran straight through. less circus style acts, more dancing and theatrical elements. AND... a giant bar/concession stand. (check out the huge cocktails we enjoyed during the show.)

we finished up our visit in vegas on monday and got home just in time to hit the sack... which was good, because we had to be up at 5 am the next day.

tuesday, we headed to burbank to catch a taping of the ellen show. we had a big break in between the morning ticket distribution and the afternoon line up, that we had time to catch the warner bros studio tour. it turned out to be a huge bonus for us, because a lot of the tour visited filming location for gilmore girls, and we are both big fans! back in line at the ellen show, we met scott, from the last season of the amazing race. he was hilarious! and although we walked away from the taping sans-free-stuff, it was definitely worth all the effort to be a part of the audience.

her plane wasn't due to leave until late last night, so we made the most of her last day here and did it disney style. my fab friend connie was nice enough to sign us in so we got to hit up disneyland and DCA for free! thanks connie! the park was decked for halloween and it looked great!

what a week! i'm definitely caught up on the whole tourist side of so cal! and although i am already missing my anna deeply, i'm a bit relieved to get back to a "normal" routine. grandma lara needs a nap! zzzZZZZZZZZZ

(ps - you'll notice an obscene amount of links on this post. i mostly did that so anna would have an easy way to revisit the places we hit during her time here. no, i didn't just feel like getting crazy with the link button.)