On one of the days we were just driving around Malibu, enjoying the scenery, and we decided to try to find somewhere to get some wine and food! Kristi found us Malibu Cafe and it was PERFECT. The restaurant is on a ranch in a valley in Malibu and they actually have like 5 wedding venues on the property as well! It felt like I was in Hawaii or something, you could see the lush mountains all around us and the temperature was perfect! I highly highly recommend going if you are visiting Malibu!
Nothing speaks to me quite like a good meat and cheese plate.
Short rib sandwich with fries AND potato salad. Oh yes.
This place was basically like an outdoor Restoration Hardware, which I guess you can do in California because it never rains... :/
My one thing that I HAD to do while I was there was to see the Barbie Dreamhouse. I don't know why it was so important to me but it was and it totally lived up to the hype! This beach house was designed and lived in by the creator of Barbie and it's perfect. It's located right off the main road by the Santa Monica Pier and is a little tricky to get to but well worth it. We just parallel parked and Brenda stayed with the car while we ran to the house!
One of the mornings we went to a coffee shop off Abbott & Kinney St (which is sort of like South Congress in Austin). I felt SO not cool enough to be at this place. They had steps inside of the shop where you sat and literally every single person there was on their Mac. Kind of hilarious, but a fun vibe too!
At the end of our trip we planned to make a trip into LA to see the Griffith Observatory. Unfortunately it ended up being a super cloudy day but it was still a really fun part of the trip! Several of the hiking trails were closed for driving, but we managed to walk up to one good look out point.
Kristi and I decided to climb essentially, a glorified rock pile to get a better view. It was STEEP once we got up there and we were both sort of terrified.
See that person way down there?? That's Brenda waiting for us! It was a narrow climb up to our peak so she stayed behind.
I had a strong selfie game during this trip and I'm not even ashamed.
Result of above selfie:
One of our friends Caleb had actually just moved from Texas to California the same week we were traveling there so we met up with him for a hike in Santa Monica! The hike was supposed to end at a waterfall but it was HOT and dry...sooo, not really worth it :/
An upside to that hike though was the neighborhood we had to walk through to get there. Mansions errrywhere!
After our hike we decided to go back to Point Dume State Beach since it was a sunnier day and we loved it so much the first time! It was so nice going on a sunny day because the water looked SO much more blue!
We saw more whales while we were there, they were literally RIGHT off the beach, right past the white part of the waves. They were clearly eating a bunch of fish because they were just making circles in that area! It was so cool to watch, I didn't even take pictures.
Our last evening we went to dinner and then walked back along the boardwalk as the sun set, it was GORGEOUS. I love a beach and I love a sunset :)
And there you have it! My Cali trip in a nutshell! Basically if you go to this area and do nothing else, you have to go to Point Dume State Beach!
- B
