Palo Alto

The drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco was my favorite thing ever! We took Highway 1 along the coast and drove through all these fun little surfing towns. We stopped in Malibu for gas and Mattie's Starbucks fix and I was beyond enthralled with the place. It's a ritzy area where celebrities live and my goodness the flowers!

The weather was perfect outside so somewhere outside of Santa Barbara we pulled over and ate lunch on a hill.

Back at SCAD, there was a sassy girl living three doors down from my lavender scented dorm room. The first thing she ever said to me was somewhat offensive and I decided we would not be friends. Then she hooked on to me, insisting we were good together. To this day, Parvaneh offends Jared and me (and others) on a regular basis but she was right all along, we are quite good together. We went to visit Parv who just recently moved to San Fran for a swanky job with Groupon.

Parv lives outside of the city in Palo Alto. She refers to this place as a great place for young married couples who accidentally had children and are now just waiting around to die. (I told you)
I however, found it to be a most pleasant place and truly considered staying. Parv has this great, light filled house covered in lush greenery and hot pink flowers and to really stick it to me, she has a big healthy lemon tree and some budding apples growing in her driveway. It's my dream home!!

We ventured into downtown San Fran on our first night to meet up with Parv's friends. It was very cold to Mattie and me and we sprinted from the train station to a cab to friend Jess's apartment. We sat huddled together, ate a quick dinner, and had friend Lena drive us home. We woke up the next day to a nice brunch and perfect weather. We had planned to go back into the city to explore but we discovered an International Music Festival just a block from Parv's house so we spent the day wandering, listening to music, and people-watching from the porches of various coffee shops.

I really liked it here. We had pleasant, cool days and chilly nights. I liked that everything you needed was within walking distance and people seemed pretty laid-back for being just outside of a big important city. Parv tried to convince me to come live with her for a "good price" and I seriously considered it. (I still might do it... later)

We stepped into a little pub for some dinner around 6:00 and did not emerge for four hours. We befriended some goobers and had the best time. We met some folks from Portland and New York. I proudly announced my distaste for Yankees before realizing that the token yankee had the best manners of anybody. I retracted my statement and focused my distaste towards a girl with a cleavage tattoo.

This guy...

...was a very proud Canadian who decided that we were soul mates. He became such a clingy nuisance that the bartender had to continuously relocate us gals to put some distance between us. I even hid behind the bar for a quick minute. It was humiliating. The Canadian followed us around all night and gazed lovingly at our faces.

We were all in bed by 11:00 as Parv had to work in the morning. We woke up and said our goodbyes to Parv before walking across the street for fruit smoothies and coffee. We set out on the road by 9:30 and crossed into chilly Oregon.