Disneyland Run-cation - Part 3

Disneyland = DL
Walt Disney World = WDW

Saturday morning, we were up at 0400 to get our 10k on.  The benefit to running at DL instead of WDW is that you don't have to get up at last call to get ready, catch a bus, ride to the start zone, walk to the corrals, then run.  We were able to walk for 15 minutes to the start zone, notice there was nothing going on there, then we walked another 5-10 minutes to our corrals.  So much extra sleeps!

The dalmatians had to get photos with other puppies!

3 of 101!
We saw several other dalmatians and even a few Cruellas during the runs.
Not sure if there were 101 of us total, but maybe close!

We didn't wait very long once we got to our corral.  I felt like we waited forever at WDW.  This was a nice change.  Also, it wasn't 40°F outside either, that helped.  The only disappointing thing about the pre-race was that there was no characters to get photos with before the race and there were NO starting fireworks.  I was crushed about this for irrational reasoning.

Around 0545, we were off!  Just like in the parks, we made sure to get in the frame of almost every photographer we passed.

FYI: The theme of the 10k was famous Duos with Genie and Aladdin as the primary characters.  We knew we'd need something with 3 characters and we were trying for simple costumes since we knew we'd have to deal with luggage restrictions since we were flying.

Mr. Incredible(S)

Ice Man had to move his scooter and I got the perfect shot.

#bahlalala

3 Dalmatians w/ Jasmine

Gepetto and the spotted dogs.

Those ducks were making a poor life choice...

I informed my litter that we'd be back here on Sunday to get photos with #ALLTHEMEDALS

Pooh and Piglet

FINISH LINE!

Medals

Awww, definitely one of my fave photos.

Silliness post race.

Aladdin and Genie at the finish line!
Sadly, they weren't there when we came through.

I saved this one special to show you.
That look on my face, lol.

After our race, we headed back to the hotel for showers and naps.  Unlike at WDW, there were no characters out for photos post-race.  Oh well, it just meant that we got to our activities sooner than we anticipated.

We woke up from our naps around 11, which was originally the time I had wanted to leave our room and get our travels started.  Instead, we headed out around 1130ish and we walked down the street to an italian place that the bus driver the night before had suggested.  I also checked it out on Yelp and it had some pretty impressive reviews, so we were all game.  It was a good life choice.

Teh MD-AR's chicken parmesan sandwich and homemade chips (which were amazing)

Teh German's sausage tortellini 

My chicken picatta

We got to go boxes for half of the sandwich and at least half of my food and even some of Teh German's, but we never got to eat it, which we figured would happen, but we had it if we wanted.  While Teh MD-AR ran the food up to the room and grabbed something she forgot, Teh German and I fetched the rental car and picked her up.

Our adventures had been planned for a bit and we were all pretty excited about it.  See the Hollywood sign and go to Venice Beach.  We had originally planned on eating dinner at Venice Beach, but I mixed up our schedule some.  We went to the beach first since the traffic to the Hollywood sign was getting worse and worse and from research, traffic from the beach to the sign wasn't as bad.

The drive wasn't bad.  I honestly expected way worse from LA traffic/roads.  The only driving issue I had was when Teh German told me to signal when I was getting on the freeway on Thursday as we were on our way to In-N-Out, right before I could.  I set him straight right then and said, "Look, this is LA.  These people drive different than what I'm used to and I know you don't love my driving but right now, you just need to trust me.  I need you to tell me where to go, not how to drive.  I'm more worried about not hitting someone than I am signaling, but we both know I signal, so just trust me."

He didn't like hearing any of that, but I know from experience that when people in the car try to direct me or freak out, it makes me stress out more than I already am.  This makes my driving even worse for my passengers because I'm driving more aggressively.  He didn't say anything else about my driving after that, only some cringing because I was following too closely.  It's funny to me how my passengers don't realize that I drive very similar to them because I'm usually their passenger.  This applies to almost any guy I've ever dated and Teh Dad.  Mostly because they are the ones who would freak out about my driving and I had to point out that I drive like they do because I ride with them most often!  Lesson: Don't try to logic a pissed off passenger when you've just cut someone off going 80mph and you're tailgating because you are also getting tailgated.

GPS took up into Venice Beach without complications.  We found some overpriced beach parking and let the valet take the car.  We walked to the beach and right up to Muscle Beach Club, which is what Teh German had wanted to see the most, meat heads working out on the beach.

We also saw some cops and there were selfies taken, but I'm not sure where they went.  We noticed basketball games and various other sports taking place.  We saw bicycles and runners and walkers on the path as we walked to the beach for our Pacific Ocean selfies.  It was as eclectic as we had expected it to be.

As we walked down the beach, Teh German noticed a skateboard park, which we went to check out.  We watched for a bit and then headed down the street to people watch and check out the shops.

I found a super cute shop that had $18 clothes.  I ended up finding 2 dresses and a shirt that I bought.  I consider those my CA souvenirs.  Other than t-shirt shops, dispensaries, and places that served food that might give you food poisoning, there wasn't much interesting in the way of shops.  There was one of those "see deformed people here" shops that we walked past as quickly as possible.  There were street vendors on one side of the street selling different types of art and various goods.  There was a guy dressed in full on Indian (feather, not dot) garb charging $2 for a picture.  We did stop and watch some street performers do some break dancing type stuff.  We finally walked away when they were taking way too long to set up for a grand event.

We turned back and headed back to the car, right at the 2 hour mark, which was perfect since that's how long we'd paid for parking.  I needed caffeine, so we navigated to a Starbucks, because peppermint syrup was my requirement.  It was pretty close and we had the clown car from the rental company, so we squeezed in front of a short car and a fire zone.  Teh German stayed in the car while Teh MD-AR and I went in to use the bathroom and order coffee.

Some drunk dude came up to the bathroom line as I was waiting and he kept hitting his friend.  I finally told the friend that he was way nicer than me becuase I would have hit him back by now.  At which point the guy was like, do it.  Wrong thing to say to me buddy.  I was like, you're not hitting me, I don't need to hit you.  At which point, this fool lightly hit me in the arm.  And before I could even register "don't assault strangers in public places", I was already punching him in the chest.  It took him back for half a second then he repeated his actions and of course, I was already reacting before I could stop myself and punched him again in the chest.  At this point, the men's bathroom opened and a lady walked out (because we'd gotten tired of waiting so long on the women's bathroom when there were no men) and the drunk guy was distracted by the wrong gender coming out of the bathroom.

His friend took this as his opporutnity to escape, like a pansy.  The guy was still being silly but had wised up and stopped hitting me, he did admit to drinking several pitchers of mimosas at the brunch he had just came from, which was like my own personal lightbulb.  When Teh MD-AR came up to me, she saw a very weird situation: this giant dude was rubbing his back all over my shoulder/arm as I said to him, "What are you trying to do?  Rub your scent off on me?"  About this time, the women's restroom opened and I jetted inside.

When I came out, the dude must have been in the bathroom and I laughed about it with Teh MD-AR as we headed back to the car, which hadn't been ticketed or towed, thankfully.  Instead of heading straight to the Hollywood sign, I wanted to drive up highway 1 for a bit and check out the scenery since it's supposed to be the best view in CA.  Newsflash: It didn't disappoint.  No photos since I was driving.

Eventually, Teh MD-AR announced that we should take the next turn to head towards the sign, otherwise we'd run out of options to make an easy cut across.  I turned and we got to take some super curvy roads that were a lot of fun to drive a clown car on.  I'm sure Teh German was thinking how fun it would be to ride Suzi down those curvy roads.  After about 35 minutes, we had almost made it to the Griffith Observatory, where we'd be viewing the Hollywood sign from.

Originally, I had thought we'd actually go TO the sign, but after some research showed that we'd walk about 3 miles from anywhere to actually get to the sign, I said kthxnope to the idea for several reasons: 1- we'd ran a 10k that more (that's 6.2 miles for you imperialists), 2- we were running a 1/2 marathon the following day (that's 13.1 miles for those of you sane enough not to know the distance), 3- my toe was still jacked up.  4- hiking is not usually high on my agenda, but definitely not in the evening in a place I've never been when it could get dark and fuck that.

It took about 20 minutes to get up the hill to find parking.  It was a 2 lane road with cars parked on both sides.  It was complete grid lock for most of that time.  I ended up parking when we were about 3/4 of the way up the hill and we walked the rest of the way up to the Observatory so we didn't have to sit and wait on traffic.

The view from the hike up the hill.
Observatory on the left and LA/surroundings on the right.

"Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don't; but keep on dreamin'."
^^Name that movie.

Griffith Observatory

The Observatory is an operational astronomy place.  It was actually a museum type thing on the inside, which was pretty awesome.  2 sites for the price of 1, kthx!

There is a pendulum in the entrance hall that tells the time.
It's complicated but cool and this is the ceiling.

Sppppacccceeeeeeeeee!
Saturn has always been my fave.

There was also a sundial that we discovered on our exploration of the yard.

Once we were done walking around the Observatory and we'd gotten enough selfies with the Hollywood sign (which was way less cool than the Observatory honestly, maybe it would have been more cool up close and personal), we decided to head back to the car.  We were getting hungry but we weren't really sure a good place to eat.  We ended up getting almost to the freeway and then using Yelp to see what was around.

We ended up at a sandwich place that was with a Baskin Robbins.  After sandwiches, Teh MD-AR and I shared a small cup of an ice cream with Oreos, Butterfingers, and Baby Ruths in it.  It was a good life choice.

After dinner, we headed back to Anaheim to our hotel.  Teh MD-AR and I again prepped costumes, this time with some help from Teh German, and then we all crashed so we could wake up on Sunday morning at 0400 once again.

Disney Run-cation Recaps:

Part 1: Arrival, expo, and Disneyland

Part 2: California Adventure

Part 3: 10k and touring around LA

Part 4: 1/2 marathon, Disneyland, and departure