SoCal in the Spring

For the last few weeks, we've been doing a lot of traveling, but we're home now and finally getting settled. I wanted to share some photos from our recent visit to Southern California. We went to a wedding in Santa Barbara, visited friends and explored Los Angeles and Orange County, then spent a few days with family and friends in San Diego, although we managed not to not take a single photo in SD, despite it's arresting beauty! Oliver thinks it must be because we were having such a great time that we didn't want to stop to take photos. I'll go with that. But, I think we got a lot of great photos from the rest of the trip. Enjoy!

We landed in LA in the afternoon and drove straight to Santa Barbara in our sweet PT Cruiser rental:

There's the traffic we've heard so much about:

Pacific Coast Highway....things are looking up:

We made it to Santa Barbara in time for a pre-wedding picnic. Then headed back to our home for the weekend, Motel 6–the first one ever built! It's one block from the beach and was recently renovated:

Image courtesy Motel 6

Apartment Therapy recently featured our very own Motel 6 in SB in a post called : Design Inspiration from Small Hotel Rooms. Pretty neat!

While it's a little cooler than we expected, Santa Barbara is absolutely stunning. We headed to the beach for a bit in the evening:

The next day, it's wedding time. My dear friend from college married the greatest guy. We were so excited to see them exchange vows at the Sunken Garden of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, which was built in 1926. From the pictures we saw before we left, we knew it would be a beautiful setting, but nothing could have prepared us for how truly dazzling it was:

Oliver looking spiffy:

The happy couple:

The next day, we continued our drive down the coast, stopping for food at Neptune's Net in Malibu for some scrumptious seafood overlooking the water:

We also spent some time in LA checking out the different nabes and all the incredible design shops in West Hollywood:

Peter Dunham's store, Hollywood At Home

Downtown - a favorite source for outstanding furniture and accessories

We went to Griffith Park on a cool day and explored the Observatory:

It looks like this is smog, but it's not; it was just an overcast day. A beautiful overcast day!

We had lunch in Old Pasadena, and loved all the historic buildings:

Then we drove down to Orange County to see some friends from the Bay Area and their adorable little rugrat:

Our friends took us the the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, where we peered at all kinds of exotic sea life:

Thus concludes the photo documentation of our trip! Thanks to all of our hospitable friends and family for letting us stay with you and play with you. We hope to go back soon.