Thursday, Day 0:

Thursday Rob headed out of work early so that I wouldn't have to drive up to Solvang in the dark. I don't mind the drive when it's light out. We headed out of the apartment around 2pm. Traffic was clear most of the way, except for a bit of a jam just before Santa Barbara where everyone was slowing down to look at an SUV that overturned on a side road that paralleled the freeway. *sigh* People need to concentrate on the road, not what's happening on some street near it. Grr.

We got to Solvang right before 5pm. We checked into our hotel, The Inn At Peterson Village, and headed up to our room. This was a AAA rated four diamond hotel. It really shouldn't have been. Granted, it's the only hotel in Solvang where there's a Bellhop, and it's pretty posh. However, the staff there was less than spectacular. More on that as I get to it.

After checking in and unpacking we headed over to a Chinese restaurant in town and ate dinner. It's an incredible Chinese restaurant and we have to get food from there at least once when we're in town. Yummy. We then headed back to the hotel room. We ordered up some coffee (things like coffee, tea, ice, and sodas have to be ordered up from the bellhop) and watched Survivor and The Apprentice. We went to Solvang because it was the weekend before my b-day, so my Mom ordered us a gift basket. It was very nice and had wine, cheese spread, crackers, apples, etc. in it. There was no fridge in the room so we had to chill the wine in a bucket full of ice. It worked well enough. We went through the basket and ate most of it and drank the wine. Later that night (and for the rest of the trip) I kept getting ill. Waves of nausea and bad potty problems. Turns out that the cheese spread that they put in the gift basket was supposed to be kept cold. Not only was it in the basket and warm, but I noticed that other baskets down by the front desk were wrapped with the cheese spread in them. Not cool. Our cheese spread went a bit bad and so I got to deal with a mild case of food poisoning for the rest of the trip. *sigh*.

Later that night we went for a walk and to get some air. When we came back to the hotel around 11:30pm, we found ourselves locked out. All of the doors (including the main doors to the hotel) were locked. We finally got in through a door that lead into a subterranian garage. And when we got in we noticed there was no one at the front desk. There seemed to be no one on duty at all. It was the same way during all of our nights there - the place was devoid of all staff after 11pm. The front desk had the lights turned off and everything was locked up. I didn't think hotels ever shut down at night. It was too weird.

Friday, Day 1:

Friday we got up in the late morning and headed out to walk around the town. We're lucky that Rob woke up when he did, because it was an hour after we wanted to get up. Our wake up call never came. We had a nice day of wandering around the town and checking out the shops. Rob got me a little stuffed crow that caws. It's really cute. He also picked up some "fish cookie" mix that came with a fish shaped cookie cutter. I'm getting fish cookies. Woot! We ate lunch at the restaurant by the blue windmill and got one of their amazing sausage platters for two and some ableskivver. I LOVE the food in Solvang. We also stopped into a massage place (the De-Stress Cafe) and got rubs. Rob got a chair massage and I got a reflexology foot rub. So nice. We both needed that.

For dinner we ate at the restaurant at our hotel. It's a restaurant that's free and is for hotel guests only. Well, it's mostly free. You have to pay the bar tab, the tip, and you have to pay a bit more if you want a normal sized steak and not a "petite cut". Or at least, the hotel made it seem like it was mostly free. We found out otherwise at check out. The food was decent and the waiter was annoying. He ignored the hell out of us. After dinner we went out for another walk. We noticed that there was a movie playing in a local park. We stayed for awhile to watch a bit of Poltergeist (how cool is that - they were actually showing a movie outside in a park) and then headed back to the hotel. We were told that coffee service stops at 11pm. So, we bought a bottle of Baily's and ordered up some coffee at 9:45pm. At 10:30pm we called down to let them know that we still hadn't received our coffee. They told us that the kitchen closed and was locked up at 10pm, so they couldn't bring us coffee. We tried to explain to them that we ordered it before the kitchen closed and they didn't seem to give a shit. *sigh* Luckily, Rob found that there was a tankard of coffee down by the front desk, so he made coffee runs so we could have our Bailey's and coffee.

Saturday, Day 2:

Saturday morning our wake up call didn't go off again. However, we did get woken up by the maid pounding on our door. What the hell? We had a "privacy please" sign out there. We were told that if the "service please" sign is up, the maid will just come in. If there is no sign, she'll knock and ask. If there's the privacy sign, she will come back later and not bother the guests. In theory, that's a good plan. Except the maid ignored our privacy sign and knocked anyway. I guess that was good though because she was able to wake us up AFTER our wake up call was supposed to.

We spent the day wandering town again. We ate lunch at a place called The Little Mermaid (yummy) and checked out some more shops. We picked up a bottle of wine and some cheese for later that night. We also made another stop in the De-Stress Cafe. This time Rob got a table massage and I got a chair massage and a reflexology foot massage. God, I love that place. I only wish we had one near us. Rob needs the rubs for his bad back, and I need them for stress relief. Speaking of which - you're all right about the eye twitch I've been having being from stress. I didn't have any eye twitches up there except for when there was a screaming baby near me. But, once we got back to LA they started up again.

We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant again. Our waitress rocked and the food was excellent. We then went for a little walk and headed back to the room for the night. We tried ordering two carafes of coffee (regular for Rob and decaf for me), but the bellhop only brought two cups up. We just dealt with it. We have to tip him every time he comes up and we didn't want to deal with it anymore. When we were ready for our wine and cheese we called down to see if we could get wine glasses (we bought a corkscrew because we had issues getting one for the wine in our gift basket). They said no. So, we grabbed the little glasses they put in your room near the ice bucket. They were sticky and dirty. We called down and asked if we could get clean ones and they said that everything was already locked up. So, we cleaned them in the bathroom sink. Eventually, we were able to have our wine and cheese.

Sunday, Day 3

Sunday morning I felt like complete ass. I was violently nauseous and on the toilet constantly. We packed up and checked out of the hotel after we got ready. When we got the hotel bill, we were surprised to find out that the "free" dinners, really weren't. The price of the dinner was included in the hotel bill. But what they didn't tell us was that if you don't eat at their restaurant, then you get $60 off of your room rate. We found this out because we didn't use the restaurant on the first night we were there. I wish they would have told us that. We would have preferred to eat the local cuisine. The only reason we did eat in that restaurant was because we didn't want to waste a free meal. We checked out and headed out of there.

We were going to do the belgian waffle place for lunch, but my stomach was not up for that. So, we grabbed a light lunch at a place that donates ALL of the money they get to a children's hospital. We also wanted to get another massage before leaving, but had to skip because I really wasn't feeling good at all. We left around 2pm.

The drive back home was fine. We stopped at the Camarillo outlet mall briefly. I need a bathroom. I also checked out the Coach outlet store there (but didn't buy anything). Rob got some undies at Jockey and two new belts at Perry Ellis. When we got home the cats were all over us. It seemed they missed us. We snuggled them for a bit and then headed across the street to check out the tattoo place. Now I know where I WON'T be getting my tattoo done. The guys there were stoned and had no idea what they were talking about. Even after showing them the problem with my fish tattoo they said I would be fine getting blue ink. They also didn't know what an allergist was. Sorry, but I'm not getting my tat done by a bunch of stoned retards. We called Sunset Strip Tattoo and the guy there was knowledgeable and said it was probably a reaction to the cobalt in the blue ink and that I should be good as long as I stay away from blue, but that they need to see it to make sure. So, looks like I'll be getting my next tat done at Sunset Strip Tattoo. Which is where I found Chester originally. The circle comes around. Rob and I headed to the Olive Garden in Burbank for dinner and then came home and unpacked.

Today is my last day of being in my twenties. Today is the last day I'm "twentysomething". Tomorrow I become "thirtysomething". Thirty and still unemployed. I'm not okay with that.

Your boobs are Mighty Melons!

Experienced some back problems lately? Carrying those melons around is sure to cause some of that. But hey, keep your head high and walk proud -- who wouldn't dream of having boobs like yours? Tasty and big -- but psst, they tend to sag over time.

What Fruit Do Your Boobs Resemble?
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