Rerouting: A California Blog

To say I love vacation would be an understatement. When I was growing up, each dinner conversation about daily activities, friends, and homework was put on pause as I practically yelled from excitement, “Where are we going on our vacation?!” We usually only traveled in the summer, and I would ask beginning in the fall, so my family had many dinner conversations of this to endure. Traveling has been a passion of mine for many reasons, ranging from not having to go to work to the delicious waffles you can prepare for yourself at continental breakfasts. Traveling is also enjoyable to me because you get to learn things about a place that you may not learn by a simple Google search. For Fall Break, Tyler and I went to Los Angeles, which I hadn’t visited in years, so I compiled a list of things I learned there.

The fact that the traffic is not deemed a national emergency is shocking to me. I would say traffic is terrible, but the word “terrible” is too positive to describe it. I had been told traffic would be bad, so my expectations were low. Once we got to LA, however, I realized how optimistic I had been. How do people get places there? I spent the majority of our trip trying to figure out how many celebrities live there. How are you on time to your movies you are filming? Do you have some sort of elite celebrity underground freeway system? How does every Hollywood red carpet interview not start off with a celebrity desperately trying to fan the sweat off their face from having to run the last 19 miles in their formal wear? (I know there are a lot of A-list celebrities that read my blog, so please either comment or drop a pin for me so I can find said celebrity freeway.)

The witches and wizards of Harry Potter are apparently all children of Jeff Bezos. On our first day of adventuring through Los Angeles, Tyler and I went to Universal Studios. As we are both Harry Potter fans, we reread the books last summer and decided we needed to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Perhaps it was written in magical invisible ink in the margins of one of the first chapters of the series, but somewhere it must mention that the wizards and witches attending Hogwarts are secret billionaires. Why do I say this? Because when we stopped in to the Three Broomsticks to order lunch and some butterbeer, the cost of our meal came to the same price as OUR GROCERY BILL FOR THE WEEK. FOR ONE MEAL. WITH NO LEFTOVERS. I remember watching The Sorcerer’s Stone and being in awe of the scene where Hagrid takes Harry to Gringotts to find that his parents left him stacks and stacks of gold. I thought they must have left him millions, but turns out they left him just enough to buy one butterbeer, but certainly not enough to get that butterbeer in a collector’s item cup. 

Warner Brother’s Need to Invest in Plastic Mugs: Anther fun stop we made was to the Warner Brother’s Studio Tour. We got to see sets for TV shows, props for movies, and drive past a lot of people I thought were celebrities until I realized that the celebrities were probably all enjoying their underground freeway. Unfortunately I am not allowed to disclose much of the information I learned on this tour as it may spoil shows that are not out yet, but all I will say is that when you see the bookshelf that is in the revamp of Lizzie McGuire, you will all go *CRAZY*. We also got to sit in the set of Friends, where an employee kindly took our picture. She was telling us how to pose and told us to clink the ceramic mugs together. As the good people are, we obliged, and as the good but apparently oblivious people we are, we practically smashed the mugs together, almost breaking them. We quickly thanked the employee and hurried away before they made us pay for damages in butterbeer. 

California Needs More Music About Itself. (Yes, this is another traffic rant): There are a lot of songs dedicated to California. We found a playlist to listen to while we were driving from place to place, and it was great!...for the first portion of the trip. Sadly, not enough songs about California exist that we could listen to en route to the beach unless we listened to “It Never Rains in Southern California” 78 times on repeat. One night, we decided to go to the Griffith Observatory, which is in the movie La La Land. Obviously we had to listen to the soundtrack on the way there. It was less than five miles away, but we listened to the whole soundtrack, from start to finish, BEFORE WE EVEN GOT OFF SUNSET BOULEVARD. Not only is the traffic bad, but using Google Maps there is like being part of a weird, intense game of telephone. I would put a location in Maps, it would give us the directions, and we would be on our way. Once we got on the freeway, Maps would very quickly reroute us, claiming it had a faster route for us. I would go from telling Tyler he was fine to get in the far left lane to 13 seconds later panicking, “You have to get off this exit in 7 feet!!!” Once Tyler had maneuvered around the cars and safely gotten us of the exit, we would go on the new route for no more than 4 minutes before the phone chirped again, “REROUTING!” By the 819th reroute, we decided we would not be moving to California anytime soon. 

All in all, it was a great trip that gave me a greater appreciation for the warriors who work in the California division of Google Maps.