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The next adventure was our road trip; this was definitely the part of our trip that we were all looking forward to the most. Between the 10 of us, we hired 3 cars and set off only 2 hours behind schedule from San Francisco and headed south on Highway 1 or the Pacific Coastal Highway. After successfully navigating our way out of San Francisco, we only took one or two wrong turns, we hit the highway and began the journey, until we had to wait for the lost car! It took us a while to all reach the same point, but the three cars all eventually found each other and then we really began the journey. The first stop was Santa Cruz, which was such a lovely little town, whilst there we had a picnic lunch in the park and I met up with my friend Olivia, a Californian girl who I lived with in France. After a short but very sweet visit, we hit the road again and stopped next in Monterey at the Harbour. We didn't stay there for long as it was getting late and we wanted to make sure we got the main parts done during daylight hours. In Monterey, I took over the driving from Aimee for a while. It was the first time I had ever driven an automatic car and on the other side of the road so it took a while for me to adapt into it, but I got the hang of it. We continued south on the road and after about 10 minutes driving we hit the famous coastal cliff section of the drive and the Big Sur. It was honestly spectacular, the views were absolutely breathtaking, I of course managed to get loads of pictures, but the pictures couldn't fully capture how amazing it was. We made a few stops for pictures, and we took some really nice ones at sunset as well. This section of the drive made all the hard work and stress about cars, flights and hostels worthwhile. As night began to fall, Aimee took over the wheel once more and we continued driving, it was quite scary driving on these twisty cliff top roads in the pitch black, but Aimee handled it very well, much better than I would have been able to. We blared out the tunes, including of course the OC theme tune 'California', and we felt so American being on a proper road trip. We reached Santa Barbara at 12.30am, a mere 6 and half hours behind schedule, and checked into our motel and crashed out for the night.
The next morning, our car of Sam, Aimee, Fran and I drove to the pier of Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara was definitely my favourite town we visited, it was so hot and peaceful and of course the views were amazing. I didn't get to see much of Santa Barbara but it had a really laid back, European feel about it, which I really liked. After spending an hour sitting on the pier absorbing the sun and the views, we hit the road once more. The next stop on our drive was Malibu about 2 hours further south. It was so surreal to say I was in Malibu as it somewhere I have always heard lots about as lots of celebs live there and I have seen it on TV programmes (In the OC the views of Newport Beach were actually filmed there). We spent just over an hour on the beach there, which was amazing. It was such a nice sandy beach and I had the chance to have my first dip in the Pacific Ocean. After our short beach session, we headed to Santa Monica, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Whilst there we walked on the pier, which again reminded us all of Ocean City, as it was a boarded floor with an amusement park! We walked a bit into downtown Santa Monica, grabbed some lunch, and then went to join the rest of the group who were by the beach. We walked about 100metres down the beach and we realised we were at the famous Muscle Beach, where there is basically gym-style equipment on the beach. After our long, hard workout/play on the beach, we got back in the cars and went to the Getty Center, taking one wrong turn into Bel Air, I could definitely think of worse places to get lost in. We made it to the Getty Center (having lost the others) and went to the top for our first proper view of Los Angeles. After this, we got back in the cars and drove through Beverly Hills, down Sunset Boulevard to our hostel located just off Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. We then checked in and had to face the thought of dropping off our now much beloved cars. We took them to the drop off point at LAX airport and then headed back to the hostel, much later than anticipated. The road trip was by far my favourite part of the California trip, we had an amazing time and I was so proud of myself for managing to navigate our car all the way to Los Angeles without a sat nav.
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