Spring Break 2021 was a blast! We decided to fly out to LA and even surprised the kids saving the details on our destination up until the day we left. Below is the tail end of the game we made them play to spell out "Hollywood" (since our Airbnb was in North Hollywood). Sadly the battery on the phone I was using died so I missed the first half.
We packed our luggage, cleaned the house (who wants to come back to a messy place?) and drove to the airport. We parked in economy parking and made our way through security. The excitement was apparent on their face and luckily the flight was empty enough that they were able to spread out and all sit near a window.
We touched down after dark and made our way to the car rental where we picked out a sweet 2021 Town and Country minivan (basically the same model but 7 years newer than the one we left in KC). From there we made the 30 minute drive North to our home away from home for the next 8 nights. It had a sweet layout with an inground pool, open kitchen floorplan, 2 story playhouse for the girls (with an arcade game in the bottom) and 4 nicely decorated bedrooms.
The first day we went straight for the touristy things including the Hollywood sign, the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was wonderful to see things up close that until then had only been images on a TV/Movie screen for me. They were almost fictional in my mind so walking along reciting the names of all the celebrities was so cool. Sadly most in my family had no idea who most of them were (lol).
California is two hours behind Kansas City so my body was geared to naturally wake up at like 5 AM which I proceeded to do every day we were there. The first couple of days I just killed some time pool side watching videos and reading email but my Tuesday I decided to make the most of it and went geocaching when I woke up. I'd leave a note asking them to wake me up when they were ready to go somewhere and as they are better at the whole relaxing thing this would sometimes not occur till noon. As such I got a trip in more than hour a way for a webcam, did some hiking in Griffith park, walked the length of Hollywood Boulevard, and toured the Chinese theater.
Covid kept a lot of the big name places closed like Disneyland and Universal Studios but we found plenty of outdoorsy things to do and even went down to San Diego for a whale watching tour (of course the whales didn't show!) We all agreed a return visit post Covid was in order and as we've done all the ancillary things we can then focus on those big name places.
We got up at 3:30 AM to drive back to the car rental, make our way through security and be there in time for our red eye flight at 7:00 AM. We made it hope a little after noon (remember 2 hour time loss) and went home to conduct our annual Easter Egg hunt. All in all a memorable way to kickoff spring 2021!
04/06/2021