Cheerfully Charming: California Here We Come

Over the summer, my family and I took two trips. One to Half Moon Bay in Northern California and the other to Santa Barbara. Half Moon Bay is a small town with only one high school. It is the type of town where you can walk everywhere and everybody knows everybody. My great aunt & uncle's house and my cousin's house is located walking distance to the beach. Apparently, the weather there is always cloudy, but when we visited it was perfect sunshine all day. I guess we brought the Arizona sunshine with us! Half Moon Bay is located about 45 minutes outside San Francisco so we took 2 day trips into San Francisco. I loved the hustle and bustle of the city. It truly is the New York of the West coast. We went to China Town, Pier 39, Ghirardelli Chocolate Store, the Aquarium and USF. I was also fascinated by the street performers, specifically the "tree man" who would hide behind a branch and scare people. We also visited Stanford (where my brother was playing baseball at a camp there). Our next trip was to Santa Barbara. It is the most charming town. I love the small town feel of the city and the cute shops and stores. We had so much fun walking around Santa Barbara, visiting the Santa Barbara Mission and touring UCSB (Isla Vista looks like one big party)! We then drove to Malibu and toured Pepperdine. We continued our way into Los Angeles (my first time going) and toured USC, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount. It was a wonderful summer filled with many exciting and new adventures!