For the first time in almost ten years, I visited Southern California.  I had been only once before in 2005 for the Disneyland's 50th Anniversary celebration and only ventured outside of Anaheim for one night when we decided to drive to Hollywood.  I remember being frightened and holding onto my father's hand as Spiderman and other creepy, knock-off characters jumped out at me, attempting to get money for pictures.

However, despite my only experience in Los Angeles being a terrible childhood memory, I for some reason narrowed down my graduate school options down to the Los Angeles area.  I liked two architecture schools in LA, and after studying abroad in Genoa and conquering city life in NYC, I thought that LA might be worth another try.  More importantly, the weather is moderate year round, it's close to the beach, has a cruise terminal.... and is less than an hour away from Disneyland!!!  So at the end of March, my father and I flew to LA to see if this city could be in my future.

We had no plans except to visit UCLA's open house and tour SCI-Arc.  So we found ourselves the first evening having not eaten anything except McDonald's breakfast that morning and a $7.99 cheese platter on the plane and unsure of what to do.  Luckily, Dad was a bit more familiar with the area than I was and sought out the Santa Monica Pier which we decided would be just fine for dinner.































For dinner, we ate at Bubba Gump's.  Because we are tourists like that.





My handsome date.