Oh, but Californiafeatured

by Nicole on November 8, 2014

At the end of July, my best friend and I hopped on an airplane headed west.

San Francisco for the first half of the week, Los Angeles for the second.

We share Broadway in Chicago season tickets and are avid musical theater fans. When it was announced that Hair was going to be performed at the Hollywood Bowl, we knew we had to go. It’s one of our favorite shows. And a trip fit. She’d just finished graduate school and wanted to celebrate. I needed some perspective and peace, and I know no greater place to find it than on a bench at Chrissy Field, so adding San Francisco to the itinerary was an easy choice.

So on a clear, balmy July evening, we hopped on an airplane heading west.

We sat at Chrissy Field for what felt like forever and went jumping on trampolines. We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge. We ate…everything from In-n-Out to a multi-course organic meal at one of San Francisco’s best restaurants. We shopped on Haight Ashbury and took a million pictures of everything everywhere. And the best part of the trip of all: I got to catch up and spend a few days with another one of my most adored friends, one who opens up her couch to me anytime I need some time away and inspires me with words of wisdom over bottles of wine in Napa.

And then we hopped on a Megabus headed south. We went to Beverly Hills and visited the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We took a two hour bus ride to Disneyland and rode on It’s A Small World more times than I could count. We took a two hour bus ride back to Los Angeles. I broke a sandal strap getting off a bus between Hollywood and Beverly Hills and waited in a Starbucks while my best friend went to Walgreens to get me some new flip flops, and I got some of the best people watching in that I’ve ever had. We saw an inspiring performance of an incredibly powerful show.

Words can’t describe the incredible peace I get in California. The full sensory experience of driving through the Presidio with the windows down, cool air whipping around you as the smell of the eucalyptus trees overwhelms your mind. The feeling of the cool air sticking to your skin as the sun sets over the Hollywood Hills. I can’t describe it. The contradiction in the constraint of words to describe the most freeing of experiences is almost comical.

California inspires me. And where words fail me, I let the inspiration guide my camera.