This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I was soooo exhausted last night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow here at the hostel in San Francisco. So today there will be two posts.

Yesterday was really long. We picked up the car at 7:30 am in Carlsbad and started our roadtrip to San Francisco. My feet were still super swollen so we drove to a CVS to ask a pharmacist what to do. She redirected us to another CVS where they had a Minute Clinic, but it hadn’t opened yet so we decided to go for it anyway. Mom drove the whole way and I can’t believe she did it. But I am very thankful that she managed to do it because my feet were way better after 15 hours of elevation.

We did a lot of stops, the first one in Santa Barbara where we had brunch at IHOP. We drove through Malibu but we didn’t see any fancy houses and didn’t want to pay like $15 to see the beach for maybe 5 minutes.  But we did see a film crew along the road. No celebrities though.

We also took a tiny detour in San Luis Obispo to take a quick look at my maybe-future University CalPoly. I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to do it anymore, but after seeing it, confirming it was real I now again want to do it. I will start with the application soon enough and then we’ll see if my grades are good enough for Chalmers exchange program. I will be fine with whatever happens and that feels really good!

We stopped at a Vista Point in Point Piedras Blancas because on the sign it said Elephant seal viewing point. I’ve never seen that animal before and neither had mom. We stayed for a while just looking at the huge seals throwing sands on themselves. It was really cool!

The most beautiful part of the Hwy 1 was the part between SLO and Monterey. The last part of that zig-zagging road in the mountains right by the coast was in the sunset, and oh my god it was beautiful! At the end we did a lot of pullovers to take pretty pictures. We didn’t have luck with the weather at all. Cloudy the whole way…

We had plans on stopping in Monterey too but it was too dark and foggy (when we drove out of the Pfeiffer Big State Park it was very foggy!) so maybe on the way back on Thursday.

We arrived in San Francisco at 11pm and the first thing we noticed when we got out of the car was the smell of urine. Eeeww! I think this area of City Center is the worst part since the receptionist at the hostel gave us a map and marked this area as an unsecure neighborhood.

We got to bed directly waking up the two other in the room. The bed was very comfy and I slept like a baby the whole night through!