the series of unfortunate events: LA edition

Raise your hand if you ever read A Series of Unfortunate Events books. I'm raising my hand way up in the sky. Through the clouds. Up towards the heavens. That kind of high. In the books you find anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. However, we aren't talking about your average, day-to-day, oh no this went wrong annoyances. We're talking about the most ridiculous, most preposterous, most unbelievable things that go wrong.

And that is exactly how our one day in LA was. 

But let's start at the very beginning. Wi was driving Freddie and me up to LA from San Diego where we would meet my family (who had just flown in to LA) at a TBD location and spend the rest of the day exploring Los Angeles! Sounds like a great plan, right? (Wrong says everyone who likes to plan and realizes that there is, in fact, no plan in that "plan" up there). 

1st unfortunate event: Traffic. The terrible t-word. You'd think that since we're from Atlanta and are used to sitting on our gluteus maximuses for hours in traffic that we would have seen this one coming. Well, we didn't. My family lands in LA, finds each other, gets their bags, rents a car, and we are still miles away from them. Just chillin' in the car. 

Which leads me to...

2nd unfortunate event: No AC in the car. No AC wasn't a big deal until we were stopped on the interstate in the sun. Then it was like oh hey, jeans, glad you love my butt enough to stick to it forever, but... 

I'll do a quick list of the next unfortunates for ya:

Freds has to pee. California exits don't have handy dandy signs that list what is on said exit. We pull off and go to gas station. No bathroom. We go across the street to a Starbucks. No bathroom. We go to restaurant by Starbucks. Closed on Sundays. 

Skip ahead a few steps (read: boys can pee anywhere. Girls cannot. The end) and we were back on the road. The new plan was to drop off Freddie at a bar to meet up with one of his college friends and we would continue on to the Griffith Observatory and meet my family who was already there. 

Already there and becoming best friends with views like this.

Ready for the next list of unfortunate events? Slash or are you already hash tagging firstworldproblems in your head? I know, I know.

Unfortunate #45: The entrance to the observatory had been closed. We assume there was somewhere else to park that didn't involve a huge hike so we continued driving the windy, mountainous roads. Once we were at a spot where we were on the top of mountain A and we could see the observatory on top of mountain B we knew we did something wrong. 

Oops. 

Unfortunate #46: I reached for my phone to call my family and come up with a Plan F. Oh, guess what? No cell service. We drive a little ways down. Still no service. We drive further down. No cell service. We exit the area back to the main road. Cell service! But scratchy. As in all I heard when trying to talk to my family is Ruhigslfaeiwf.jszbdmhjb. I'm a little rusty when it comes to scratchy gibberish, but we somehow managed to communicate to meet back at the entrance.

...the entrance where there are about 5 separate parking lots. 

Let's go back to unfortunate event #something up there. The one where girls can't pee just anywhere. The one where I assumed we would be in LA and close to a bathroom in no time. The one where I was wrong.

The Let's never forget how insane this day was and how sweaty we were selfie. 

Long story short, we found a bathroom. We found my family. And we even fit in some sight-seeing (after getting separated, again, thanks to a crazy motorcycle gang).

If you read all of that then let me know if you think I could get this published as the 14th book in the series.

Wink.

 California palm trees make South Carolina palm trees look like ants. Small, squishable ants.

After the major sights we were done with LA. Done! Hands washed of it! Must get out of here! That kind of done. I would like to go back there someday and give it another chance. And go to the less crowded sights. And just see if maybe, just maybe, LA and I could be friends. Big maybe on that one. We finished the evening in Anaheim, checking into our fabulous hotel, becoming un-sweaty, and eating a late dinner at Downtown Disney. 

The point of this whole post (and the meaning behind life) is that Disney (and food) really do make everything better.

Read all about a very fortunate San Diego day here.