Trip to LA - First Day

Wow !! What a weekend it was... both fun and tiresome at the same time -- is that even possible ?

What am I talking about ? The long weekend trip to Los Angeles (LA) with my close friend A. We went on a guided tour to Solvang, Disneyland and Universal Studios over the Thanksgiving weekend on a Chinese bus with a Chinese bus driver and a Chinese tour guide. I guess we might have picked up a few Mandarin Chinese words here and there, since we had a bi-lingual guide who explained everything in English first and then in Mandarin.

We were all excited during the trip and made all preparations the previous night by syncing our clocks n everything, b'coz we were supposed to board the bus at different pickup points. I could hardly sleep the night before since we had an early pickup and when I finally drifted off to sleep around 11.30 in the night, I get a disturbing call in the middle of the night at 12.30 - YEA, 12.30 am - from an UNKNOWN Number.

Bleary-eyed, I pick up the call, all the time not trusting the unknown number signal on my cell phone display. It was the lady at the booking office. I think - oh, its only her trying to confirm our bookings, but I had a WONDERFUL surprise in store - and I say that sarcastically - b'coz she had called to let us know that we both were supposed to be waiting at the same place for the pickup and cannot be picked up at different places.... I was so angry that I wanted to cancel the ticket. Imagine calling up at 12.30 in the night and having the audacity to change our pre-approved pickup place for just the next morning !!

Anyways, so finally I agree since the trip to Disneyland sounded more alluring than my sleep at the moment. After dropping the call with the booking lady, with burning eyes and all - I decided to call my friend and let her know about the problem, since it was her who had to come to the new pickup point. She picked up on the 3rd attempt and was as angry (if not more than me) to hear about this new problem. Nevertheless, we just ignored the problem and decided to let the matter go. However, both of our sleep was lost and neither of us could sleep until 3 am. Finally it was time to wake up, get ready and board the bus.

The first day of the trip, we started for LA and our first stopover was going to be Solvang.We stopped over for a snack and a break time around noon at Burger King and then started off for Solvang again. On the way to Solvang, we saw a couple of beaches and beautiful apartment complexes, which I think had a mixture of European and American style architectures. We also saw an Ostrich farm, where a few ostriches were grazing - should I say ?? Never thought I would see an ostrich in my lifetime. But the farm whizzed past even before I could reach my camera to take a shot. Anyways, finally we reached Solvang... seemed like a quick trip.

Solvang is a pretty Danish town on the way to LA. It has a lot of European style houses and the sweet little Danish town is full of bakeries, chocolatiers and fudge makers. Some houses and buildings had a windmill shaped tall structure at one corner. The tour guide told us not to miss the Danish baked goodies - especially the cake and the cookies. What with it being Thanksgiving and all, all the shops closed early and when we reached Solvang, there was only one bakery open. We thought it would be open for a while and wandered around for a bit before coming back to buy cake and guess what… yea, exactly, the last open bakery had also closed its doors on us.

Feeling very dejected and cursing ourselves on missing the cake, we entered into a nearby restaurant, where they had something sweet on display to satisfy our craving for cake. But it was a pleasant surprise. We had a dish called "Aebleskiver" - Oh, it was so so yummy that after finishing the dish, we regretted not buying another. For my Konkani friends, its like 'God Appo', but made from pancake batter (I guess). And it was topped with strawberry preserves and some powdered sugar. Just the right amount of sweetness and not too rich. I fell in love with the dish and I need to find a recipe of that soon !! If anyone out there knows of a good recipe for this dish, please send it to me. Thanks !!

Anyways, we just had a couple of hours at this place and had to run to the bus to get going to LA. Our next stop was our hotel where we were to stay for the night. The excitement of the trip and the stopover at Solvang took our mind off things and the first day was not very tiresome. Once we reached the hotel, which we did pretty early thanks to the not so bad holiday traffic, we decided to watch some movies or just walk around the place and do some window shopping if we could, but there was hardly anything to see.

However there was a fast food place nearby - Denny's, where I decided to try a dish called "Pancake Puppies" feeling quite sure that it would taste similar to the Aebleskiver, since it looked similar, but it turned out to be a different dish with deep-fried sweet pancake batter. It was not as good as the aebleskiver, but I loved it nonetheless. Finally, after dinner and a movie, we fell off to sleep without the slightest inclination that the next day was going to be a super tiresome day !!

Keep waiting for more…
- So