California Vacation

Last Friday I flew to LA to visit my older brother in Hollywood.  He’s a songwriter and a composer for a music production company.  My parents flew in for part of the week as well and it was so great to see all of them!!  My boyfriend came along as well and my brother’s girlfriend is a California native so we all got to be together.  We did pretty much everything there was to do in Southern California (that I know of so far):  We celebrated my boyfriend’s birthday in Malibu, went to Santa Monica, Simi Valley, Hollywood, and Hermosa Beach.  While in Hollywood we did a tour of the Warner Bros. Studio, Universal City Walk, and saw the movies “1000 words” and “21 Jump Street” (HILARIOUS, by the way). We also went to Beverly Hills and window shopped on Rodeo Drive and went to The Grove one day where I ended up on Extra TV on NBC with Mario Lopez! 

That was so fun! I wound up winning a big basket of Don Francisco’s coffee and mugs. 

 There was no way that could fit in my suitcase---so I gave it to my sweet brother for giving us a place to stay and showing us around LA!  I had never been to LA except for when I had a 10-hour layover at LAX when I was twelve.  Needless to say, this was a better LA visit.

While at The Grove, we bought some skin products that I'll have to review in a video or blog post.  One was a salt scrub and one was a facial serum that is essentially a chemical peel but you don't feel anything.  Both are from the Dead Sea and I have to say---they both exceeded my expectations beyond belief.  The products were from a line called "Seacret."  I'll have to tell you more about it because it really was incredible.

It was so fun and exciting to see all these street signs that I had only seen in movies and heard about in songs like Ventura, Sunset, etc.  Since it was sort of chilly while we were there, we tried to stay as active as possible in spite of the weather which usually meant a lot of walking and doing abs and pushups at my brother's.  We also saw/went in Tracy Anderson's studio and I hope someday I can take a class there with her!

One of the highlights of the vacation was hiking about 6.5 miles to go see the Hollywood sign!  Now, you can't get up close to the sign.  You can get behind it and that's about it.  But it was a great hike that was so beautiful.  You could see all of LA (on both sides of the hills) and I hear that on a clear day, you can see all the way to the ocean!

 We also saw the REAL Bat Cave from the Batman show in the 1960s.  Very cool!

I have to thank Jacey, my Twitter friend who does Tone It Up, for tweeting back and forth with me about where to go there!  She led our confused, tourist butts to great places in Malibu!  One of her suggetions was Huckleberry Cafe, where I treated myself to a soy latte (I drink coffee black) and my oh my it was delicious!  Thanks again, Jacey!

Lastly, we went to Hermosa Beach and played around there for a little bit before hitting up Veggie Grill and Varga.  I had never been to a Veggie Grill and was so excited to finally try it.  I had the "All Hail Kale" salad and my boyfriend had a cheese-free mac n cheese.  

Varga is the cutest store I've been to in my life.  I'll have to do another blog post about their clothes because I just love them.  I think they have the most flattering jeans in the land and a large assortment of beauuutiful shirts and dresses.  I love flowy, "California" tops and got some along with long skirts (a trend I've been afraid of trying).

That's it for now!  

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SUP and Hiking

While in Hawaii, my family went hiking in Kauai and got to see Waimea Canyon followed by an 8 mile hike to the Na Pali Coastline.  4 miles there and back...and all six of us perceived it to be uphill both ways.

(Waimea Canyon)

The picture above is on the way to the trail for the Na Pali Coastline.  Once we got to the trail, we started our uphill trek which, as you might have guessed from before, stayed uphill practically the whole time.  Do not let this discourage you if you get the opportunity to take this hike!  When it seems like you've been walking forever, you get to the edge of the coastline and it is sooo worth it.  The soreness you feel for the next couple days is worth it, too.  We had a great time hiking together and my brother's girlfriend, who was an NCAA athlete in college, even said it was a challenging hike.  That made the rest of us feel a lot better for having completed it :)

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The pictures don't do it justice, but the view is incredible!!!

On our last day there, we went stand up paddle boarding (SUP).  I had been excited to do this since I first heard about it last year.  Then I saw the Tone it Up (TIU) girls, Karena and Katrina, SUP-ing in one of their videos!  I had started doing TIU workouts the week before I left for Hawaii so once I saw the SUP video, I knew I wanted to try! And, it's as fun as it looks and is a great arm workout as well as leg and core workout since you have to balance so much.  TIP: if the wind sweeps you far, far away from the rest of everyone else in the water like it did to me, stop standing!  Keep paddling, but kneel on your knees instead of standing!  You'll have a lot more control over what direction you go :)

Hope you all get to try SUP and get to do this amazing hike!