Chicago Loveshoot

 I feel that I must interrupt the regular reminiscing of our USA Trip to fast forward to the last city we visited, Chicago - the Windy City (although we thought San Fransisco windier!!) and these stunning images captured by our dear friends Jeff and Jess of Jeff Loves Jessica Photography. I met Jess (5!!) years ago through blogging and we have emailed, facebooked, thrown blog parties and sent sweet packages back and forth ever since. Jess wasn't able to come to our meet up last time I was in the States and so I knew we had to meet properly this time. We were so thankful and excited when they agreed to drive down to Chicago (where we were visiting family) to meet up and explore this fun city with us! We were also super blessed by our meetup as we got to be models for this amazing photography team as they tried out their new film camera.

Although I will be putting a post up of our time in Chicago with snapshots of our time with these dear friends, I was anxious to show off these beautifully sweet photos that already grace the walls of our home (the FIRST and ONLY items to ever have been put on our wall since we moved in nearly three years ago!)
 

 Oh how we love each and every one of these images!

Thanks Jeff and Jess!! We adore these photos and will treasure them for many many years to come! Also we can't wait for you to come to Australia one day to play tour guide for you, laugh and chat some more and maybe have another photo shoot or two ;) Also I really Miss G and need to meet Miss V!!!!
Seriously - thank you beautiful friends!!!

pssst. Jess is so wonderfully talented and creative and has a sweet personal blog here where she shows snippets of her day to day life and crafts. It's such a swell spot. Check her out here.

The Ayling USA Trip - Part III

 Saturday 15th June. 

- Saturday morning we drove back to Santa Monica for some early morning retail therapy on the Promenade ... Urban Outfitters, Forever21, anthropology etc. Morgan may have had to come in and 'rescue' me (or the credit card) after quite awhile!
 - Then we walked down to the pier to ride ferris wheel. The view from the top was so pretty and the sand and water really reminded me of the beaches at home.
- Then we decided to drive towards Hollywood and explore along the way and I must say that M handled the busy traffic on the highway like a pro!
- During our exploring we accidentally stumbled on Rodeo Drive and took a drive down it. We felt like we fitted right in in our hired Mercedes, even though we were too scared to get out and shop! Such a pretty street though!
- Then we drove around Beverly Hills looking at all the crazy houses and mansions. It was so pretty but I couldn't help but feel sad for the stark contrast between these properties and the homelessness we had seen around the LA area. The amount of homeless was a little bit of a shock to our system as you don't see as much of it here in Australia, it made us really sad!
- We had our first Starbucks of the trip. Oh man I miss my Starbucks - especially those Vanilla Frappacinos they sell in the little glass bottles. I used to buy one everymorning at the grocery on the corner of our street in New York.
- Then we headed back into Hollywood walked around, checking out the pavement stars and sights. We also signed up for one of those real cheesy tours on the topless tour buses. Which actually turned out to be really fun (and cold). Our tour guide pointed out all the houses of famous people (or so he said) - Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, Steve Carrell, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, David and Victoria Beckham, Lucielle Ball, Steven Spielberg's house on the top of the hill where they filmed the scene in Charlie's Angels where Drew Barrymore gets shot out of the window etc My favourite houses were the witches house from Hocas Pocus and Dr Seuss' house (both shown below), which was designed for him inspired by the drawings in his books. The whole house has no corners and is all curved!

a car just like my brother's! which you might remember as our wedding getaway car!

Sunday 16th June.

- We left Venice on Sunday morning and continued along the PCH towards San Simeon, our halfway pit stop on our drive to San Fransisco.
- This was my first drive of the trip and oh wow it felt so weird to be driving on the wrong side of the road! It took a little while to feel comfortable behind the wheel!
- I really love road trips with my love though. Just driving and chatting and singing along to fun car songs while munching on yummy travel snacks. It's the best kind of 'together!' We also enjoyed some beautiful scenery along the coast up through Malibu and other coastal towns.  
- We stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch on the wharf and enjoyed taking pictures of our fun surroundings and looking in the little shops along the pier. I also loved the slight Spanish touches on the houses and street signs and the street trolleys. Seriously, what a charming place. I'd love to explore more someday!  
- We found scary lollies filled with insects - WHAT THE!!! We didn't buy any...
- The crosses lined on the beach and people petitioning against the war on Afghanistan really hit home to me that this war is real. Although our own soliders are actively serving along our US allies we don't see any war propergander at home and it's so easy to even forget it's happening! It made me really think about the families who are affected by it both American (and their allies) and Afghans!
- We filled up car for first time and M couldnt work out how to do it (we don't pre-pay here at home!)
- After we checked in to our hotel in San Simeon we went down to Cambria where we bought a picnic dinner (which ended up being quite a comical meal of two minute noodles, stale bread, mooshy tomatoes and too hard avocados!) We sat in car by beach watching the sunset over west coat and then topped of the night with a few episodes of Duck Dynasty and Trader Joes Kettle Corn!

The Ayling USA Trip 2013 - Part II

Friday 14th June.

We left those dear P's early Friday morning. It was time for our road trip, where we hired a car and drove up the coast along Highway One from the LA area to San Fransisco. We gave ourselves 5 days to make the drive with a few nights in Venice Beach and San Simeon along the way. Leslie dropped us off at a Hertz car rental where we had hired the cheapest 'compact car' on their list and then proceeded to pinch ourselves all the way to San Fransisco as we drove away in a very sleek black 2013 Mercedes C250!!! We felt so very blessed by this upgrade which was given to us because the car we had hired didn't have a GPS like we requested.

Mr A, my fearless warrior, was the first to tackle driving on wrong side of the road. And oh man did it feel strange! It's hard to describe the feeling to anyone who hasn't experienced it. We kept looking the wrong way for our revision mirror (M's brain finally convincing himself that he just didn't have one) and bashing our hand into the door each time we stopped and tried to put it into park. At the start, I felt like one of those bobble heads people put on their car dash, as I wasn't sure which way to look - where my controls were or what was around me! We found that following traffic was actually the easiest and I, in particular, found empty roads or carparks the hardest as I really had to think about which way I was turning and what side of the road I was veering towards. Making perhaps one wrong turn onto the highway (luckily deserted late at night in San Simeon and quickly corrected by Morgan) - ooops! It was such a fun part of our trip, even though our very first turn onto the highway we went the wrong way and started heading south instead of north :)!

Leslie and Nick live inland a little bit so we drove up and over the windy mountain and across to Laguna Beach area where we Stopped for Coffee and morning tea. We strolled along the beach, peeked into the cute shops and watched the crazy expensive cars driving past (feeling like we fit right in in our Mercedes!) We headed along the coast through Laguna, Newport, Huntington, Long Beach and to Venice Beach where we had hired this cute place a few streets back from the beach. We booked all our accommodation except one night in San Simeon through airbnb and I would recommend it in a heartbeat. It was so fun to stay like locals in some of the most amazing cities in the world exploring small parts that most tourists don't and there are some really amazing properties available for hire!

Once we arrived in Venice we went for a walk along the boardwalk picking up fresh cold juices,  stopping to look at the stalls of handmade goodies and artwork, looking in the shops and watching the interesting people in costumes busking and walking by. If you love to people watch, I would recommend Venice in a heartbeat. I feel like you could sit there all day long just watching the people go by and not grow bored at all. What a weird and fascinating place! With just a few 'funky' smells!

For dinner we headed to our local whole foods (we LOVE this place!!) and picked up a few breakfast and road trip snack supplies. We also both came away with a pair of Toms which I have been wanting forever but the shipping to Aus was too expensive. Those shoes are some of the comfiest I own and were perfect to wear for all our touristy wandering around each city.

That night, we drove back to the Venice sign to snap some pictures of it in all it's illuminated glory, then we drove into Santa Monica to explore and had delicious thai for dinner. After dinner we walked down to the pier (which I explored back in 2010 with my cousin Sarah.) It was so much fun to show Morgan a place I had been and loved before). We loved the late night carnival feel of the place, M taking some great shots of the park lit up at night and stopping for a little fun in one of their photo booths. I think we arrived back at our place around midnight after a long and fun filled day.