Trip Recap Part 2

Hey friends, welcome to a bonus Monday night post where I’ll continue the trip recap. So, here’s what we had planned for Tuesday, January 8th: we were meeting in the hotel lobby at 6:30 am to make sure we’d get an early start for Universal Studios. We were so excited! Honestly, the anticipation was through the roof. When we stepped outside, the wind hit us hard. A super friendly hotel staff member with the coolest U.S accent asked, “Where are you folks headed?” All seven of us said “Universal Studios!” at the same time.

Then, my ears and brain didn’t quite sync up, and it took me a minute to process what she said next, “Sorry folks, it’s closed today because of the winds.” I honestly think my first thought was, “Wait, what? Could you please ask them to open it because we’ve come all the way from Australia, and we’ve been planning this for two years!”

She told us that overnight the strong winds had blown debris everywhere. Universal needed to check that everything was operational. She also mentioned something about a fire.

My cousins, who organized the trip, are amazing at pivoting and coming up with a Plan B. So after the initial disappointment and shock—wait, a fire? What fire? Oh, maybe the one we spotted from the plane the day before?—We all agreed to grab some breakfast and then call my aunt, who lives in LA, to hang out with them instead.

Originally, we were going to visit Universal Studios on Tuesday and spend Wednesday with our LA family. Switching up the days made sense—after all, once the debris was cleared, Universal Studios would be open. Or so we thought. They say ignorance is bliss, and that day, it sure was.

It was still early, so before heading to my aunt’s house, we stopped at Walmart. I know this sounds crazy, but I think my excitement about stepping inside a Walmart was equal to my excitement for the theme parks. I kid you not!

When we got out of our van, we noticed the smokey sky and thought Hmmm, that looks kind of bad.

Do you know what really stands out about the U.S? The amount of space they have. Space to build huge, stand-alone Walmarts with massive, wide-open car parks. We don’t have that over here because land is expensive, and every bit of space gets used efficiently. You’d never see a Walmart-sized store sitting all on its own with a giant parking lot in Australia! Well, definitely not in Sydney.

Cool Walmart entrance

Then I spotted some of the food items I’d read about on blogs and just about lost my mind. Look, Crescent rolls!!! I couldn’t cook or taste them, but I could hold the package!!

Minute Maid!!!

And eggo’s just like on Stranger Things!

Huge packet of strawberries. We only see these at Costco. Everything is so mini over here 😂

So many varieties of sauces! And look at the huge bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s! I wished we could take one home—Sam goes through the small bottles (the only ones available) so quickly.

Haha! The price signs are in English and Spanish, and so were the store announcements. My cousins were laughing as I tried to translate fast before the announcement came on in English. I should probably explain that Spanish speakers are few and far between over here. Australia has a large Chinese-speaking population, along with communities from Italy, Greece, India, Vietnam, Lebanon, and many other cultures, especially in the suburbs where we live.

After Walmart, we hopped back in the van to go to my aunt’s. We could see some blue skies, and we were pretty certain that those fires that were mentioned were probably all under control.

But then, as we kept driving towards Tujunga, a strange alarm started beeping super loud in the van. At first, we thought the noise was coming from the car, maybe the door wasn’t closed properly. What was that piercing noise? After a minute or so, I realised it was my phone with an alert.

We were confused and totally unaware of the severity of the situation, so we kept driving towards my aunt’s house. When we got there, we met up with some cousins we had caught up with the night before. They had been evacuated to my aunt’s house because their homes were closer to the fire. Oh gosh, I thought, this must be serious. Nah, everyone’s probably just being cautious.

We grabbed my aunt and cousin to go and explore Glendale Mall. All the photos I took are of shops we don’t have back home.

My cousin M loves and plays baseball, so he bought some cool cleats from Dick’s.

They sell alcohol at Target!! No way!!

Okay, before you think we don’t have escalators in Australia, and that’s why I took this photo—don’t worry, we do have them! What we don’t have, and what I’d never seen before, is a trolley escalator. You just place your shopping trolley in between the escalators, and it goes up. Woah!!!

I saw someone doing it, but my jaw dropped, and I fumbled with my phone, missing the shot. I did manage to get a video later, though. Haha!

As we walked around, I was chatting with my aunt, and she said she had never seen the mall so empty. She said it was like a ghost mall.

Afterwards, we walked over to the Americana Mall, and it was so pretty! Some of the Christmas decorations were still up.

What?? A cupcake ATM!!!

Most of the shops were closed.

I don’t know what this shop was but it’s the name of that movie I’ve never seen.

Then it was time to grab something to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings. Something I’ve always wanted to do is go to a sports bar, eat wings, watch sports, and drink beer. Now, here’s the thing: I don’t actually love sports, and I don’t drink beer. But on this trip, I enjoyed both—and I did it multiple times! My family was all like, “Who is this person?!”

I chose the boneless wings, and they weren’t quite what I expected. I’ll share more about all the food we tried in an upcoming post!

After a wonderful day with my aunt and cousin, we dropped them off, and saying goodbye to my aunt was really tough since I knew I wouldn’t see her again before we left. My cousin was coming with us to Disneyland in a few days, so I knew I’d see him one more time, but still—goodbyes are the worst. Even as I type this, I’m feeling all sad.

We drove back to the hotel to get a good rest and sleep so we could go to Universal Studios the next day. Once we were in our hotel room, I think that was the first time that I turned on the news and saw how devastating the fires actually were. My son had messaged me earlier when we were in Glendale, and so had my lovely friend. They were both surprised that we were calm. But honestly, we had no clue.

You know when the stars align, and all your dreams come true? Well, as I’ve mentioned before, this trip was exactly that for all of us, despite the hiccups in the first few days. Not only was I getting to have the trip of a lifetime with my cousins, but I was also seeing more family.

To make things even better, my friends—who live just a suburb away from me here in Australia—were also in LA at the same time, and we had planned to meet up at Universal Studios. But when we found out Universal was closed, we agreed to meet the next day.

However, around 10:30 pm, she texted me saying that Universal was closed again the following day. NOOOO!!! I wanted to cry—I got all choked up, and now I feel terrible about it. Here I was, upset about a theme park being closed while people were losing homes and lives.

My cousins in the next room were still awake when I messaged them with the news, so we all met in the lobby to come up with Plan C. They suggested we go to Disneyland instead and cross our fingers that Universal Studios would open on Saturday. Lovely Sarah from Toronto Sam also messaged me. She was so kind and understanding about how conflicted I felt.

We went to bed very late that night, but we were all so excited about visiting the happiest place on Earth the next day—we didn’t care about being sleep-deprived! That was Day 2. I’ll be back later this week to share all about our two amazing days in Disneyland. Thanks so much for stopping by!

I hope you have an amazing day or night, wherever you are!