okra: Kathy's Bus Adventure

Hey! Here's a really long commentary about my bus trip...

We got back from our bus trip late Monday night. It was a lot of fun! My boyfriend's parents got us the tickets, which was really nice. They read about the tour in the Chinese newspaper. It was funny though; being a very European looking blonde person, I really stood out on a bus of about 50 Chinese people. And I also don't speak Cantonese, so I didn't get to talk to many people. The tour guide also thought my name was Kathy Chan. She was checking everyone in on her clipboard list, and she started shouting, "Kathy? Kathy!". Since that isn't my name, I didn't answer. But, when we pointed out who we were on the list, she said, "Oh, Kathy!". So I was Kathy from then on.

The first stop on the tour was a "Danish" town called Solvang. It was pretty surreal, emerging from the bus, surrounded by Chinese tourists and windmills. I purchased some cheese-tastic postcards. There were a lot of tourist trap shops. Every store we passed had faded "sale!" signs in their windows. One store was right to the point and called itself "75% off Candles". Hahaha. As suspected, the store was full of candles with $30.00 price tags scratched out to say $7.50. And they had an entire section devoted to glow in the dark candles. After about two hours of confused wandering in Solvang, we all piled back on the bus and drove to Hearst Castle, the once home of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. I have to say that I'm fascinated with Hearst Castle. I've been there before, but I was still entertained. The bf was a little confused when we got there; he thought we were going to the Winchester Mansion. Bwahahah. And that was pretty much all for day one.

Whoooohooo! 75% off candles!!! And also: Windmills.

I snapped a quick shot of Hearst Castle. On the second day of the trip, we suddenly stopped at this tourist trap fruit stand. They had a lot of colorful fruit. And strange "country" nicknacks.

Day two began with a visit to Yosemite. It was very beautiful. While on the bus, we saw a large brown bear. It looked like it was digging up something. No one else on the bus seemed to notice. Once out of the bus, we saw a lot of tiny squirrels grazing on grass. They were really cute. We finally got to San Francisco, where we left the tour and wandered around to find a BART station. We finally found one and got on the train to Oakland to visit my boyfriend's former college roommates. They were really nice and we had a lot of fun together. My boyfriend and I walked around Berkeley, looking at the campus and the little shops downtown. He bought some comics and I got some shoes at the Goodwill. Then we met back up the the roommates and went to get something to eat and they were super nice and drove us to the hotel the tour was staying at.

Yay! Yosemite! Yay! Tiny adorable squirrels!

The last day was mostly just driving. The bf and I made our own set of auto bingo cards. We put stuff on them like "faux classical statuary", "obvious tourist trap", and "something that looks like it would be really stinky". He won with two bingos. We also played, like, 50 rounds of rock paper scissors.

Here's a picture of San Francisco featuring the TransAmerica building. And this is a shot of a tree on the Berkeley campus that I particularly liked.