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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Seattle to Long Beach..

After the show in Tacoma last night we drove to SeaTac airport as we had an early 10:30am flight to Long Beach in the morning. Managed to get a good nights sleep and left the hotel at 8am.

Dropped the rental car off, checked our luggage and went through security. Made our way to the Continental lounge and chilled out for 90 minutes before our flight. It was on time today so we left at 10:30am and arrived in Long beach about 1:30pm.

Silver turd sculpture in SeaTac airport                                                         Airport gate done like a castle!!

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I fell asleep for the first hour and sat and went through my pictures for the second hour. We flew over some great scenery and i tried to take pictures the best i could but they don't do the sight justice at all.

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Arriving at Long Beach we felt the heat hit us like a brick wall! it was an awesome feeling after being in the cold damp rainy weather up north. It was just below 80` at 2pm in the afternoon in the middle of December!!

Flying over our hotel                                                                                   Huntington beach from the plane

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Our plane                                          Long beach Airport                          Luggage carousel

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I love flying into Long Beach its like your abroad in one of the Islands! the luggage carousel is outdoors and everything just so relaxed and small and there's no hustle and bustle.

We picked the next rental car up from just outside the airport and headed up to Huntington Beach, we had liked the Shorebreak hotel so much that we had booked it again for the last 3 nights of the trip.

Our hotel

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After checking in and freshening up we headed out for some food and went back to the cool restaurant on the end of Huntington pier where we had the milkshake last time. I had the clam chowder, Kami had the chilli soup and we split a portion of sweet potato fries. I was looking forward to the milkshake though and had a double choc chip one and Kami had the chocolate turtle one. It was 4:!5 when we came out and we wandered on the pier as the sun was about 5 minutes from setting.

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There were a lot of people out today on the beach, pier and in the ocean due it been a beautiful sunny warm day. This changes every night when the sun goes down and it gets real chilly in the evenings. We headed over to a grassy patch next to the wall that ran along the edge of the beach to sit and watch the sunset. There were 25 or so people all sat on the steps leading down to the beach with all different types of drums and bongos all playing in unison (well sometimes)

Drums!

It was a nice sunset but there wasn't a single cloud in the sky, usually a couple of clouds around make it so much better.

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Sunset

The hotel and the entrance to the pier

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The beach and the volleyball courts after sunset

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The street and the palm trees after sunset

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After sunset we headed back to the room and chilled out and had a sleep for an hour or so before heading out for dinner to Olive Garden, I was still full from my lunch so ate a couple of breadsticks while Kami had the Soup, Salad and breadsticks. I couldn't resist the apple pie and ice cream though however it was nowhere near as good as it looked in the picture and wouldn't have it again!

After driving back to the hotel we went for a walk around the streets of Huntington Beach to walk off the food and then went back to the hotel.

Christmas trees in Huntington Beach

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Again today had been a bit of a travelling day but finished off with a few hours of relaxing by the beach, on the pier and an earlyish night. Tomorrow is the penultimate show and as much as I'm looking forward to it I'm real sad that the trips coming to an end but i knew it would end and am in an odd  way looking forward to going home and going back to work! and sleeping in my own bed for a change and having a quiet Christmas alone for a change.