By: Samie

Travel Dates: June 1st-4th, 2022

Day 1

(Flying in to LAX, Lunch at Tocaya, Santa Monica Beach & Pier)

Travel back in time with me if you will to 2022. The COVID pandemic, while still prevalent, was waning and travel was once again possible. My beautiful sister Alyssa had gotten engaged to her wonderful boyfriend, now fiancé, during Christmas of 2020. After patiently planning their wedding through uncertain times, a date was set for September of 2022. Despite the wedding being set back in South Dakota, the happy couple currently resided in Los Angeles. This meant that, as matron of honor, if I was going to throw my sister a proper bridal shower, I would need to make my way to her. So that is exactly what we did in June of 2022!

We had originally been able to book an extremely affordable flight through Allegiant out Sioux Falls, which would have been a nice and easy 3 hour drive to a smaller airport with much lower parking costs. Unfortunately, we were notified in early April that our flight had been cancelled. We frantically began to search for alternative ways to get to LA because the other option was hosting my sister’s bridal shower virtually from home and not being able to share this special moment with her in person. While it was about twice the cost and just under twice the driving distance, we were able to find a flight out of Minneapolis.

We had some amazing and generous friends in the area that not only allowed us to keep our vehicle parked at their place for the duration of our trip to avoid the steep parking costs at the Minneapolis airport but also offered to drop us off at the airport in the morning after allowing us to spend the night at their place so that we were able to get to Minneapolis the night before instead of having to leave home at 2am the morning of (huge shoutout to Blake and Lauren)!

Up to this point, Luke and I were extremely well-versed in travel via roadtrips, but we had yet to attempt air travel independently of our families. Coincidentally, we both had separate trips to Disneyland with our families back in 2016, our early years of dating and had flown a time or two for school trips before we knew each other, so we weren’t completely green to flying. However, this was the first time we had ever independently booked a flight and flown out of an airport. Because of this, we were definitely a little anxious and made sure to arrive at the airport almost 2 hours early, around 7:00am for our 9:30am flight. Fortunately, getting through security and finding our gate was surprisingly smooth and easy, and we were seated at our gate with coffees in hand before 8:00 for boarding at 8:45!

It was about a 4 hour flight, but we gained 2 hours on the way there because of the time zone, so despite departing Minneapolis at 9:30 and being in the air for 4 hours, we still managed to touch down in LA around 11:30. Our next job was to find our way to the ground transportation pickup from our terminal where Alyssa and Evan were planning to meet us. We tried following signs, but LAX was undergoing construction, so the permanent signs weren’t accurate, and we were relying on temporary posted signs and TSA agents to guide us where we needed to be. Part of that was being herded onto a shuttle and driven to another area of the airport. It also should be noted that masks were still required within the LAX airport, so the huffing and puffing was a little extra strenuous. However, phones are an excellent communication tool, and we were able to find each other and meet up with our happy little helpers where we loaded our luggage and quickly piled into their car!

After fighting our way through airport and LA traffic, it took us about an hour to get over to the area of the city where Alyssa and Evan lived, putting us there at around 1:00pm. We made a pit stop at their apartment to drop off luggage since it was too early to check into our Airbnb. It was right around lunch in their time zone, which meant it was well past lunch for us, so we were ready for some food! We walked over to a place that was close by called Tocaya Modern Mexican.

We made ourselves comfortable in the outdoor seating, where QR codes were placed on the table so that we could order right from our table! I went with a street corn en fuego bowl with a mandarin Jorritos. This included chipotle dusted street corn, jalapeño cabbage, cilantro lime rice, avocado, and arbol salsa. Luke ordered one of their current specials; 2 tacos with a side of street corn and a Modelo. For his two tacos, he got one barrio taco and one Baja taco. The barrio taco came with roasted tomato salsa, avocado, diced red onion, and cilantro. The Baja taco came with shaved cabbage, sweet chipotle sauce, cilantro, and vegan chipotle crema.

Everything was absolutely delicious and filling! While we were still enjoying our meal, Evan had to head back to the apartment to get ready for work. His job was also within walking distance, so he fortunately didn’t have to rush, but he did have to leave us a little early. We also learned during our time relaxing outside that the LA sun rays are much stronger than back home, so I was immediately sunburnt, and Luke was instantly more tan.

Since Evan was busy that evening, it was just the 3 of us for the rest of the night. We decided this would be a great chance to spend some time at the well-known Santa Monica beach and pier! We started by making our way back to the apartment to change into our swimsuits, properly apply some sunscreen, and fill some water bottles (and spend some time with their sweet cat Artie).

It is about a 30 minute to an hour drive to Santa Monica from LA, depending on traffic. Finding a place to park is also a challenge, but we were able to find a spot in a parking garage a short distance away. It was an easy enough walk to the beach, and there were plenty of pathways there. As we got closer, we got to take some pictures approaching the beautiful beach and made some friends with some adorable little prairie dogs occupying the dirt ridges along the pathways.

Something we learned about Santa Monica was that it’s consistently about 10 degrees cooler than LA, and the ocean water is even chillier. Due to these facts, we had no plans on swimming and instead intended on spending the entire time soaking up the sun on the beach! We found an ideal spot to lay our towels out and relax with some Cactus Cooler sodas (only available in certain areas of the country). We cheerfully chatted and caught up with one another while relaxing to the sounds of the crashing waves and the warmth of the beaming late afternoon sun.

However, after a while, we decided it wouldn’t hurt to dip our toes in and wade through the shallows a little bit since we had driven all the way here. Unsurprisingly, after a while, as we warmed up, we made our way a little deeper, then warmed up and waded deeper, and before long, we were splashing about, swimming, and playing among the waves! The water didn’t feel cold at all since we had eased our way into it, and although I’m not usually a large fan of swimming, we had a delightful time.

Once our sense of water of adventure was fully fulfilled, we made our way back to the beach to dry off before making our way over the pier to walk through and check it out. We didn’t have an interest in hopping on any of the rides, but we did some souvenir shopping and were able to find a beautiful mug and Santa Monica magnet. We made our way through the rest of the pier, watching folks fishing off the end of the dock, listening to the joyful screams and shouts of people on the rides, and seeing the golden sun slide down slowly below the horizon.

We got back to the apartment to change into some dry clothes and grab our luggage because we were now in the clear to check into our Airbnb. When we had booked it, we had simply looked for something cozy and affordable, but we serendipitously had a place that was fairly easy to get to from Alyssa and Evan’s apartment.

It was a very pleasant first day in LA, and we wanted to get lots of rest because I was extremely excited for what we had planned the next day, but you will have to stay tuned to find out what we did for Day 2 of our Los Angeles adventure!