I woke the next morning feeling more jetlagged than the crew who had just spent the last 30 or so hours trying to get here from the other side of the globe. The room at the Newport Hyatt was nice, but smallish – especially for four adult sized people. I ended up kipping it up with my little bro Josh, who was for the most part quiet in his deep slumber during the night. My parents however were not nearly as peaceful. Both were snoring terribly, and in my despair I very nearly chose to grab a pillow and any available blanket, and just crash in the bathtub. Yet I chose to ride it out, and paid for it dearly in the morning. Enough.
Anyway, we set off at a reasonable hour, picked up Paul from Huntington, and headed for Laguna. I figured this would be a day of coastal sight-seeing. It was an easy and fun option, and indeed something that I would want to check out during my first expedition on US soil. Chilling down at the beach is always a winner, so we drove through the Laguna township initially, before parking up a few miles south at Monarch Beach. Paul and I had been here a few months earlier, when we were on our seemingly endless search for employment. The place is just breathtaking. We strolled through the undertunnel connecting the parking lot with the beach, encountering a broad park-like area buzzing with people entertained in basketball, baseball, laughing and other general banter as both kids and adults alike dance harmoniously under the rich California sun. At the base of the grassy area some 30 or so feet below lies the beach itself. We took the steep path down, lay down our towels in an orderly fashion and found a reasonably hard wetted section of sand which we thought would be best suited for cricket. We planted the unashamedly bold yellow ‘wickets’ down on the sand as Dad grabbed the ball and I reached for the bat. Ah, the feeling of bat in hand. In New Zealand, cricket is the summer pastime almost as much as baseball is here in the States – and it felt great to be playing again after about a year long hiatus. We laid down a couple of rules to accommodate the terrain and prevent the throngs of people from being blasted with a cricket ball, albeit a soft plastic one, and played for a solid hour before succumbing to the heat and jumping in the wonderfully cool ocean water.
After bathing and sunbathing, we figured we’d better get going and check out Laguna and the surrounding hills before the remaining daylight diminished. We grabbed an epic chipotle-doused Laguna Sub and cruised along the Laguna Beach boardwalk, people watching and snapping shots at every available moment. A brief while later, we figured that we’d try catch the sunset up the top of the Laguna Hills amidst the ritz and glamour of multi-million dollar homes and California dreamin’. Paul and I had randomly stumbled upon a nice viewing point earlier in our adventure, and we saw it as not a bad spot to take my family as they sought to be engrossed in the unique beauty of Southern California. We just missed the sunset, but still grabbed a few family photos while we could before jumping in the rental car and tailing it back to the Newport Hyatt, fresh with a sense of satisfaction and stoke with the success of the first day chilling with the fam in a year. Enough.
Coming up: Part 3: Return to Disneyland. Keep Checkin!
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