Monday 3/19
Drove down with the fishes and had dinner at Chung King.
Tuesday 3/20
Went to the AT&T store to get SC an iPhone 4S, stir-fried some vegetables into Chung King leftovers for lunch and dinner.
Saw this guy at the ponds again:
Wednesday 3/21
Back to AT&T store to transfer remaining contacts from old phone.
Decided we wanted kites. According to the Internet, there is a kite shop on the pier at Redondo Beach, so we went there.
We didn't end up buying a kite, but we did see lots of diving pelicans:
Afterwards, we had dinner at Moodaepo II, an all-you-can eat Korean BBQ place. So much food!
Thursday 3/22
Made garlic naan and fish-shaped pastries (note that the Wikipedia article also has a picture of a fish for comparison). We made our own red bean paste for the pastries.
Friday 3/23
Went to Shin-sen-gumi (Hakata ramen) for lunch, and it was awesome as always.
Saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi, which was okay, not terribly exciting but still interesting insofar as it showed us something we would not have otherwise seen. We bought some fish at Mitsuwa (salmon and black cod, the only fish they had that were cleared by the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch) and made sushi at home.
Saturday 3/24
Spent most of the day making kites and flew them briefly at Granada Park in Alhambra (recommended by the Internet). The wind was really light, and our box kite flew very well, which was a bit of a surprise because it was pretty heavy and the construction felt very flimsy.
The diamond kite, on the other hand, was completely unstable.
Dinner at SC's aunt's house.
Sunday 3/25
Made bread and pork ribs for dinner. Had an adventure finding lead-free Balsamic vinegar, and eventually settled on a white Balsamic vinegar (which sounds like an oxymoron) made by O Olive Oil which they claim meets the Prop 65 levels.
Monday 3/26
Flew the kites again at Point Dume State Beach in Malibu. This time added some dihedral angle and a tail to the diamond kite. This still didn't work, but then it crashed and developed a rip (which SC had been advocating for all along), and was suddenly extremely stable.
We watched water birds splashing about in a freshwater pond.
This colorful pelican did a couple slow banked approaches:
Saw elegant terns, which are some very funny-looking birds:
Also walked up the cliffs to Point Dume, which is where Tony Stark's house in Iron Man is fictitiously located.
Had some bread (I'm pretty excited that SC lets me have Balsamic vinegar again), then pho at Pho Super Bowl. Watched Let the Right One In.
Tuesday 3/27
Day trip to San Diego with some Caltech friends. Visited UCSD, the seals at La Jolla Cove, Seaport Village, Balboa Park (briefly, didn't see any of the museums or the zoo), and had dinner at Phil's BBQ, which had a huge line but very reasonable prices for lots and lots of food (primarily ribs).
Two seals in a slap-fight! We thought this was hilarious. I used iMovie's video stabilization tool on this clip; it introduced some pretty weird zoom artifacts. Pretty disappointed with iMovie in general...will need to try it with a real video editor sometime.
Seaport village:
Balboa Park:
Wednesday 3/28
Dinner at Technique, a student-run restaurant affiliated with the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. We had to make reservations a week in advance, but it was pretty good and the prices were quite cheap.
Thursday 3/29
Started driving up along the 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway. Stopped at Gaviota State Park, which was very pretty, and at a couple other vista points along the way until we reached Hearst Castle.
Unfortunately we got there too late to see the castle, and the earliest tours the next day were still a bit too late for our taste.
We continued driving north on highway 1 to our campsite at Kirk Creek. It was a pretty surreal landscape to be driving in: windy roads, hills to our right, ocean to our left, going in and out of clouds/fog. Stopped at one vista point with a beach full of elephant seals and a parking lot with tourists very clearly ignoring the signs to not feed the animals.
At the campsite, we got really lucky - there was only one open site when we arrived. We got even luckier when someone in a better spot left (allowing us to take their spot). The spot we vacated got occupied a few minutes later. I didn't know demand would be so high!
We built our campfire using a starter and 3 sticks of firewood, which was sufficient for us to heat up our pre-cooked sausages and make all of our clothes smell like smoke. We brought blankets and slept in the car, which worked out all right. The blankets were a huge improvement over the last time we did this, but I still found the seats pretty uncomfortable. They don't lie flat, and they're not long enough to stretch out your legs. Not quite as comfortable as sleeping in a tent (if you ignore the fact that it was really cold that time we slept in a tent).
Friday 3/30
Highway 1 was closed north of us due to a rock slide, so we drove through Fort Hunter Liggett to get back on the 101 to go to Monterey.
Had lunch (clam chowder from Old Fisherman's Grotto) on the pier, which drew this guy's attention:
We renewed our membership at the aquarium so we could see their new jellyfish exhibit, which was of particular interest because we just got done watching/reading an anime/manga about jellyfish...
They had new cuttlefish! A lot of little guys. We missed the feeding (around 3:30) by a few minutes.
Also, there was this bird:
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