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Tourin’ Over California – Day 6

It’s time for day 6 in the Tourin’ Over California series! We’re over halfway through at this point but we still have so many fun things to look forward to. Today, we say goodbye to LA and head out to the beach before finally making our way to DISNEYLAND!

DAY 6 – SEPTEMBER 17, 2018

For day 6, we were up bright and early to check out of our LA airbnb and head to the beach! This was Ana’s special thing she wanted to do – like how Sarah chose the baseball game and I chose the Museum of Death, Ana’s special thing was she really wanted to go to a California beach!

We packed up our things and headed out on the road to Ana’s beach of choice, Point Dume. She had chosen this one because it’s actually the filming location used for the Stark Mansion in the Iron Man movies!

We had to trek down some deadly-looking stairs to get there but we made our way to the beach and were met with the most beautiful sight:

It was seriously stunning and there was barely anyone there! We walked over the rocks to get to a flat area and basically had our own private little beach spot. It was beautiful and it was so relaxing to sit by the water and listen to the waves. We brought some snacks down too so we had a very pleasant lunch there by the ocean!

I swear west coast beaches are so much prettier than east coast ones!

There were also a lot of surfers out on the water which was so cool to watch. Not as many dogs on this beach as the one in Monterrey though!

After so many days of go-go-going nonstop, it was so fun to just relax and take photos.

After we had been there a while, gone for a dip and had some lunch, we were discussing our plans for the rest of the day. We originally intended to head to Santa Monica Pier, check out the beach there, have some lunch and then head to check into our Disneyland hotel but not go to the park just yet.

Well.

We had a slight change of plan.

We decided that:

  1. We had already eaten “lunch”, and the main reason we were going to Santa Monica was to eat pier food.
  2. We were having fun relaxing and didn’t really want to get back in the car just to drive to another beach.
  3. We did NOT want to go all the way to Disneyland, check in to our hotel, and be tempted by the parks only to NOT GO IN until the next day.

So for all these reasons we decided to just change plans, skip Santa Monica, and we were going to Disneyland…today!! After checking to ensure that our Super Shuttle pickup time could be made a bit earlier, the decision was made and we were all SO excited!! Sarah excitedly shared this on her instagram story which I screenshotted because I loved it so much haha

We packed up our things and headed back up the death stairs to our car:

And we headed on out to the airport to return our car! The plan was drive to LAX, drop off the car, pick up our Super Shuttle, go to Disneyland!

Everything went pretty smoothly – we dropped off our car quickly, and made our way to the pickup area. Before long we were in our shuttle and on our way to Disneyland! The drive took a little longer than expected due to the driver having to make a few other stops, but soon enough we were at our hotel for the night, which was the Best Western Plus Pavilions. After a quick check in we headed up to our room.

It was really nice! Lots of room and very clean, and it was only our home for one night, so it was perfect. We would be hopping over to Paradise Pier the next morning (we weren’t able to get it for our entire length of stay, but we made do) so it was just fine for our purposes!

By the time we got to the hotel it was getting pretty late, and the park was closing early so we quickly did our makeup and got ready. And FINALLY we were on our way to the park!

Once we got in the park I could not BELIEVE we were actually here! I don’t have a lot of photos because we were so excited and focusing on vlogging it all instead – we head in at about 6:24 in the video!

Walking into Disneyland for the first time is always an emotional experience. It’s weird because even on my first visit when I had never been before, I still got emotional and felt this weird sense of nostalgia. It’s just a really special place and it was made even more so by being their with my best friends for their first time.

We decided our first ride would be an old favorite of ours in Walt Disney World – small world!!

As predicted, we cried. Love small world, love Mary Blair!!

It was already pretty close to park closing so we only had time to do one more ride, and I knew exactly where I wanted us to go next…my favorite ride in Disneyland, Pirates!! I am OBSESSED with Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s just so much better than WDW’s in literally every way and I love it so much. I had been talking it up to my friends for ages up to this point and it was finally time to show them firsthand why it’s so amazing! Again, as predicted, they loved it too!

At this point Disneyland was already closed, but we had time to pop over to California Adventure to catch their nighttime parade, Paint the Night! We didn’t get many good photos here because we were all so into watching it, dancing, and enjoying the moment together.

It was an AMAZING parade and we all loved it so much!

Once it was finished, both parks were closed, and even though we only really got to do/see three things – we were all so happy we had decided to come to the parks a day early. We got to see it for the first time BEFORE going in the next day and having to take it all in while running to Fantasyland for Extra Magic Hours. Plus it would have just been torture to be that close and not be able to go in the next day!

After all of that we realized we were starving, so we headed over to the dinner location we had picked out: Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen Express. It’s a New Orleans themed place – we were interested when we saw they had corn dog nuggets and beignets on the menu!

It was a really cute place and before long we had our food. We all got a combo platter of shrimp and chicken, plus some corn dog nuggets and beignets to share. It was amazing and really hit the spot!

When we finished eating we set out to walk back to our hotel. Unfortunately for us, we hadn’t yet figured out the best route to get back to our hotel – even though it was really close to the parks, google maps wouldn’t allow us to walk through Downtown Disney, so it ended up taking us a SUPER long way to get back. Luckily on future days we figured out it was much faster to cut through the Grand Californian, but needless to say we were EXHAUSTED when we got back to our hotel that night!! We quickly got ready for bed and passed out after all of our excitement. We had to rest up before our first FULL day at the parks the next day and we were so excited for more Disneyland time.

That’s all for this day of our California trip! Going to Disneyland with Sarah and Ana was definitely the highlight of the trip for me and I am so excited to show you how much fun we had together!! I hope you enjoyed this post/video and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel so you don’t miss any more videos! Thanks as always for reading and watching – until next time 🙂

xo,

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