SoCal Sister Sleepover - Day 1

Today was my first full day of my 3-day SoCal sister adventure with Wilson. We had reservations for the ferry out to Catalina Island at 10:00 a.m. for a full day of walking and shopping. It's a 65 minute ride out to Catalina where you dock in their little marina that reminded me a lot of Victoria.

It was beautiful weather - sunny but breezy. We walked around awhile, checking out the sidewalk shops before stopping for some lunch at the Lobster Trap where I was eyeballing some clam chowder.

We split of bowl of really, really good chowder and also each got salads which neither of us could finish because the chowder was so filling. After lunch we decided to hike north to the Wrigley's Memorial and Botanical Gardens which, on the map, looked completely within walking distance. 10 miles later, and entirely uphill, we finally got there and discovered that by "botanical gardens" they meant ode to cactus.

At the top of the uphill gardens was the Wrigley memorial for William Wrigley Jr. (Wrigley Field and Wrigley's gum fame).

The walk back to civilization was much easier, mainly because it was all downhill. After a nice rest, some iced coffee, and a gluten free pecan chocolate chip cookie we were ready to continue to explore the downtown which included a walk down the marina to the Casino which, though it's name would imply, is not an actual casino but currently functions as a movie theater and museum.

We did the museum tour there where we learned that Wrigley built the Casino in the 30's as a large dance hall and a movie theater that could play both silent and talking movies.

By the time dinner came rolling around neither of us were hungry yet from our big lunch so we did the next best thing - had cocktails instead.

Then we still had to kill another hour or so until the ferry departed which turned out to be harder than we thought since pretty much everything except the restaurants closed down at 5:00 p.m. So we just ended up getting some hot coffee and sitting on the pier behind the ferry dock and chatting until 7:00 p.m. when the boarding line started to form.

We made sure to snag window seats on the ride back to Long Beach so we could enjoy the city lights when we arrived. After a "quick" 1+ hour ride back home we're ready to rest up for another big day tomorrow - the Getty Villa and California Science Center along with a lunch date to what Wilson assures me is a delicious Thai restaurant.