Last weekend, Dennis and I didn't have anything planned for Sunday so I suggested that we take a day trip to the island and see those Botanical Gardens we didn't make it to the last time we were in Avalon.
Remember that trip? The Great Drunken Disaster of 2008?
So anyways, I spent Saturday at work and then afterwards we went to a lovely birthday party for my nephew. My brother and his wife throw the best parties. Honestly, I can only hope to aspire to someday throwing parties as well as they do. I have no idea how they manage to pull of the shindigs they do, all the while wrangling children and mingling with guests. But they do, and it looks effortless. Amazing.
But back to Catalina...
On Sunday we had planned to hop on the 10:30 boat out of The Landing to Avalon which we would have been able to do without a problem, if there had in fact been a 10:30 boat! Turns out it was a 10:00 boat and by the time we got there at 10:10, it had already left. But no problem, we just got handed plenty of time to enjoy breakfast at the deli Dennis is always raving about. And he was right! Breakfast was delicious!
Fast forward a couple of hours...
The boat ride was wonderful. We saw a bunch of dolphins and even a couple of whales. Neat! Dennis got me some hot chocolate (since coffee is the Nectar of Satan™, according to my bladder lately) and we arrived on the island before we knew it.
We consulted our map to determine the way to the Gardens and set off. I'd walked it before in my younger days and did not recall the road being so long. Long it was though, miles even! Still, it was a lovely hike and there were nice things to look at along the way like The Nature Center at Avalon Canyon where we got to take a little rest and learn a little bit about The Catalina Island Conservancy's conservation efforts and native flora and fauna.
So after a long walk, we finally reached the Gardens, only to find out that they only take cash for admissions and alas, we had no cash! Only a debit card. D'oh! But the trolly bus guy who arrived not long after we did was kind enough to take us on a ride down to front street where we could use an ATM and procure our admission fee. He then took us back up to the Garden so we could get back to the business of visiting it, at long last.
It was beautiful. Even more so than I remembered when I'd first visited it previously. Of course, the day was colored by love.
We took a number of pictures, mostly of us in various places because hello! Vain like that!
After spending a terriffic afternoon walking about, we decided to get some dinner before boarding the boat back home. After careful consideration of the few places open for business (it is Winter, you know. Totally off-season!) we decided upon Topless Tacos where I think I had the best shrimp tacos EVER.
We then made our way back to the dock and boarded our boat back home. We even got to sit up in the Captain's Lounge as no one had booked it which was The Awesome since neither one of us was all that keen on watching to Superbowl and that was what was being watched on all of the other televisions on board.
We watched CSI: New York, I had more hot chocolate (damn evil bladder! Grrr!) and we got back to Long Beach in a flash. We then hopped on a bus and made our way back to our car over at The Queen Mary (free parking over there, yay!).
All in all, it was a lovely day with my sweetie. One of future thousands though, I am quite sure. ♥
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