Back in LA resting for 2 days, we started our 2 weeks car journey along California up to San Francisco.
Our 1st stop – Santa Barbara. This is the shortest journey among all as the rest of our journey are at least 4 hours drive. Although this was just a 2 hours journey, it took us close to 7 hours to arrive the destination, as we discovered a premium outlet on the way and spent most of our day there!
The little shopper posing at the Premium outlet
We arrived late at Santa Barbara just in time for late dinner. The next morning the kids woke up pretty early, so we took this opportunity to walk around the beautiful bay and they even have a chance to have a nice morning dip in the pool.
at Santa Barbara – MIssion Santa. Esrene saw the big cross, said “Jesus helps me!!”. She associated the cross with the craft lesson she learned from Sunday School.
2nd stop – Monterey Bay
Beautiful blue turquoise bay, the highlight its Aquarium – lots to see, lots to do there, including activities for kids as small as Rennice! and lots of free tasting food too! This is the best aquarium we have been so far.
3rd stop – Yosemite Park
Beautiful serenity national park. This is the 2nd visit for Ida. We made a very last minute decision to stop there before our next trip so that we can break down the long travelling. The consequences is we have to a dear price for the only available hotel – Wahalla Heritage Hotel. The most expensive hotel room we ever stayed and the most unimpressive one. However, we enjoyed our time at this beautiful park.
4th stop – Lake Tahoe
Beautiful saltwater lake which is one of the famous ski resort. It was the end of Spring when we were there, but it’s still pretty cold and the snows at the top of the mountains were still not fully melted. Thus we have the beautiful scenery surrounded the lake. We had picnic at the lake for the first day.
Esrene was very disappointed that she was not able to take the cable car as it is only operate during summer. We were 2 weeks too early there.
5th stop – San Francisco
This is our last destination for the holiday. We spent a week in this neighbourhood like city. Our hotel was situated at the top of the hill at Pacific Height with a very nice scenery and beautiful neighbourhood.
our daily exercise walking up and down the slope from the hotel to the bus station nearby. However, we get to see the beautiful neighbourhood when walking around.
To encourage Esrene to walk the slope by herself instead of asking to “bao bao” (carry) mummy had to make the walk interesting by reading the street number of each house with her.
We enjoyed great food, nice scenery. good shopping and great family time together. Daddy is in love with In-N-Out burger after being introduced by mummy.
Flying back to Melbourne, we were very blessed to have some empty seats around. Thus, Selwyn & Rennice had 2 seats by themselves (but of course daddy become the best mattress for Rennice), while Ida & Esrene enjoyed our original 3 seats. They slept through the journey from LA to Auckland.
Traveling with kids mean that we have to forgo a lot of things that we can do eg. watch Broadway show in NY, enjoy the night scene and city night life etc. However, we enjoyed our trip in a different way…the joy of togetherness in one family. There was frustration and tiredness but its all worthy to spend the lovely holiday with our lovely girls, create the wonderful memory together. After all we think, when they grow older, they might not even want to travel with the two old folks anymore 
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