The 2023 Alabama football season started off so badly that we were surprised in a good way when Alabama beat Georgia in the SEC championship game and was selected to play in the playoff game at the Rose Bowl over unbeaten FSU. I told Travis (halfway joking) that if we could get some tickets, we should go to the game since we’d seen Alabama’s most recent game out there in 2010 during our senior season of college. Rae Rae asked her friend, Sarah, who is a Tide Pride member with a lot of points, to put in for 2 tickets for us, and she did since she wasn’t planning to go. Sure enough, we got the tickets, and she was nice enough to sell them to us for face value!
We are not very spontaneous people, so this was completely unlike us to plan a trip out of the blue to SoCal without even looking at flight or hotel costs. We managed to snag direct flights from BHM to LAX for a reasonable cost before the price went through the roof, and the flight times were good. We felt like we got lucky! We didn’t consider how expensive hotels would be over NYE weekend in SoCal, so we ended up booking an AirBnb in Culver City, which is about 15-20 minutes from the airport.
So early on December 30th, we drove down to Birmingham with the girls to meet Paw and Rae Rae at the airport. They offered to keep the girls for us while we were out of town, which was a huge help. Our flight went smoothly and landed around 1:30 in LA (Pacific Time). Our flight seemed to be majority Bama fans, which wasn’t surprising. I think they added the flight specifically because of the game. We even saw Wesley and Katie Britt and their kids on our flight (they were on our return flight too). Wesley was on the Alabama football team in 2005 when we were freshmen, and Katie is currently a US senator for our state. Pretty cool! He is 6’8”…not sure I’ve ever seen someone so tall up close. He can’t even stand up straight in the plane.
Our main hiccup of the day came when we landed and got our suitcase and went out to catch a shuttle bus to the rental car facility. We just missed the shuttle and had to wait a while for the next one to come. The shuttle took us a to a remote car rental lot, where we had to wait for a van to take us to Midway Car Rental. LAX is so big that getting in and out of there takes forever!! When we got to Midway, we found a line of people so long that they were snaked out the door. We probably waited in line 1-1.5 hours just to fill out forms and sign for our rental car. Travis managed to get a really good deal on it (only $54 for the entire trip!!), so I guess it was worth waiting for 😉 We hadn’t had lunch yet though, and they didn’t offer us snacks on the flight, so I was starving by the time we got to the rental car place.
We finally picked up our Corolla and were able to drive to the AirBnb. So thankful for Travis who doesn’t mind driving in big cities. Overall, the traffic really wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (on our last trip, we did public transportation instead of renting a car, so we really didn’t experience LA traffic). I feel like Atlanta traffic and drivers are way worse overall. We were surprised at how slow many drivers in LA went! It does take a while to get from place to place, but if you plan for enough time, it’s not a problem.
We made it to our AirBnb, which was a little studio “cottage” that was in the backyard of a small house. It was on a quiet street that seemed safe. The studio was pretty tiny…all it had was a queen bed, small desk and chair, “kitchenette area” with mini fridge and microwave, and a bathroom, but it worked out fine for the short time we were in town.
We unloaded our suitcase and backpacks and decided to drive over to Santa Monica to see the pier. We tried to hurry and were able to walk up at the tail end of sunset, which was really pretty. The pier was neat to see with the Ferris wheel and other carnival-type rides, even a rollercoaster. If it hadn’t been so chilly, we might have ridden the Ferris wheel. It had a pretty long line though. I didn’t realize how old the pier is…over 100 years old! It is also the end of historic Route 66, which runs all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica. Pretty neat!
After we walked to the end of the pier and back, we decided to eat at a steak restaurant called Meat on Ocean (on Ocean Blvd) within walking distance of the pier. It was not cheap, but the food was delicious. We especially loved the rolls they served and the mashed potatoes. We considered this our anniversary dinner since we didn’t celebrate on the actual day 😉 We got back to our cottage and crashed for the night after that. It was a good first day out there.
Rae Rae and Paw get the gold star because Savannah woke up early on December 31 around 5:30 am with a stomach bug. She had diarrhea and threw up a lot for the next 10 or 11 hours, including all over Rae Rae and Paw’s bed. We felt terrible!! (They are also dealing with giving Brooklyn an oral antibiotic twice a day and antibiotic eye drops 3x/day for an eye infection she developed a few days before our trip). This might be the last time they ever agree to babysit for us. Thankfully the other girls didn’t get sick (at least not until after we got home). I felt really bad, but there wasn’t much we could do being 1800 miles away.
We went to church that morning at the Culver City senior center…only about a 3 minute drive from our cottage, which was so nice! The church that met there was small, but it was funny to see several other Bama fans in attendance. One of the ladies there told me that we represented at church better than the Auburn fans did a few years ago when they played at the Rose Bowl…haha. I enjoy visiting other churches when we are out of town…it’s encouraging to meet people in other places that care about the Lord and serving him.
After church, we went home to change and then grabbed breakfast burritos at a Mexican restaurant called Cerveteca. It was walk-up ordering with outdoor tables, and the burritos were really good. I also got agua frescas with pineapple and cucumber, which was delicious. It was definitely more authentic than the Mexican food we have back home!
Shocker, but we didn’t really have our activities planned out on this trip at all other than the game. Completely goes against my planner nature, but it worked out fine for this trip. It’s good to go with the flow every once in a while 😉 I did do a little reading ahead of time and read that the Griffith Observatory was a “must-do” while we were in town because of the incredible views of the city. Based on the number of people that were there, I think everyone else who visits LA has the same idea…
We parked near the Greek theater and walked almost a mile uphill to get to the top. It was a cloudy day, but the views were still really amazing. It definitely gives you a sense of how big the city is….it stretches in every direction as far as you can see (except for the mountain side). We also had a good view of the famous Hollywood sign, which I was hoping to see. I don’t really care anything about Hollywood or celebrities, but I still thought it would be neat to see the sign. It’s hard to get a great picture of it without a zoom lens, but our view in person was better than it appears in pictures. It was neat to be able to walk around the building and even on the upper roof area to see the views from all sides. We went inside the observatory and there is a museum area with all kinds of facts and history of astronomy, especially as it relates to the Cali area. My favorite thing was seeing the pendulum that moves based on the earth’s rotation. There was also a sundial outside and an astronomers monument.
After walking around for a while and taking plenty of pictures, we headed back to the car (much easier walking downhill!) and decided to drive around Hollywood and Beverly Hills to see some of the famous streets we’d heard of. We drove down Sunset Blvd, Hollywood Blvd, Santa Monica Blvd, and Rodeo Drive. We also drove through Beverly Hills and found a random neighborhood to drive through just to see what we could see. The answer is…you can’t see much because all of those mega mansions are blocked by privacy hedges and gated at the front. Later on Zillow, we looked at home prices in the area and found some for sale for $40 million and even one for $70 million. Absolutely insane. Even the tiniest houses in LA are worth at least $1 million. It was neat seeing Rodeo Drive still decorated for Christmas and all the crazy expensive stores that I would never dream of stepping foot in. There were lots of people walking up and down the sidewalks too. Hollywood Blvd was packed with people, especially around the Chinese Theater. We saw the stars in the Walk of Fame, but didn’t get out to see them up close. We were content just seeing everything from the car. Now we have a better understanding of what Hollywood is like after driving through it! Definitely a totally different way of life.
Once we were done with our sightseeing tour, it was getting dark by this point. It was beautiful driving through downtown and seeing all of the skyscrapers lit up. Something about LA’s skyscrapers is so mesmerizing to me…they are much prettier than other downtowns I’ve been to. We went back to our cottage, and then Travis went to grab us takeout at Ms Chi Cafe. There are so many people from other countries in LA that we felt like minorities most of the time. It made sense to try ethnic foods like Mexican and Chinese while we were there since they were likely going to be way better than what we had at home. We weren’t disappointed! One nice thing about being in LA on NYE is that the ball drops on TV at 9 pm. Perfect for us since we aren’t as young as we once were…haha. I think I could definitely get used to living on Pacific Time!
1/1/24 – GAME DAY! The Rose Parade was at 8 am in Pasadena. If we’d been staying in Pasadena, it might have been more tempting to try to see it, but we didn’t feel strongly enough about it to want to get up that early and fight traffic across town to get there in time. We did watch some of it on TV though (not sure I’ve ever done that before). I loved all the roses and other flowers on the floats…I think this parade would be more my vibe than the Macy’s Day parade in NYC. The girls would have enjoyed it too, I think! We left our cottage around 9:30 am to try to get to the stadium around 10 am. The traffic wasn’t too bad until we got close. We made a mistake by pre-paying for a parking pass on the golf course beside the stadium, so we had to wait in a long line of cars to get parked. Our parking spot ended up being on the complete opposite side of the stadium from our seats, and it would have been cheaper and easier to get in and out if we had just found a spot somewhere that morning and walked in from about a mile or two out. Oh well. Live and learn! We didn’t let the parking mess ruin our day though 😉
Once we finally got parked, we walked around the stadium just to check out all the sights. They had things set up differently this time from 2010 with security and ticket scanning outside of the FanFare tailgate area instead of the actual stadium itself. Once you entered the FanFare area, you couldn’t go back out though. We went inside there and got in line for some food at a concession stand. We split a big ½ pound overpriced hotdog, but it tasted good at least. A talkative Michigan fan struck up a conversation with us while we were in line. Most Michigan fans we met were nice and friendly, including the ones that ended up sitting right beside us and in front of us at the game.
After we ate our hot dog, we decided to go ahead and go in the stadium and watch the pregame warm ups. This was at about 12:30 pm, and I think kickoff started at 2:10 or 2:15, so we had a while to wait. It was good to get in there early though so that we could find our seats and get to them more easily. It was a beautiful sunny day with temps in the mid 60s…couldn’t get much better! One of my favorite things from the day was seeing the messages in the sky that were spelled out by jets….I’m sure we missed some, but I got pictures of “Where Legends Are Made” and “Roll Tide Roll”. This time, our seats were in the opposite end zone from 2010. I think I preferred the end zone this time because we had a beautiful view of the mountains in the background. It was really cool to see the B-2 stealth bomber fly over the stadium before the game started!
2010 vs. 2024 :)
The game itself didn’t go our way, but it sure was exciting. Michigan outplayed our team in many ways, and we had a number of mental errors and mishaps that definitely affected the outcome. We played much better in the 2nd half, and I thought for sure we were going to win when we were leading with only a few minutes to go in the 4th quarter, but things just didn’t go our way there at the end of regulation and in OT. One of my favorite memories during the game was when they played Dixieland Delight in between the 3rd and 4th quarters, and all of the Alabama fans were singing their hearts out. We had all the momentum at that point, but unfortunately we just couldn’t hold on.
We knew going in that we couldn’t base the success of our trip solely around the outcome of the game though. If we won, it would have just been icing on the cake. We made memories and felt really lucky to have been able to go to the Rose Bowl twice in our lifetimes. We stuck around for a few minutes to see the drone show that we’d heard they were going to do after the game. The drones made a picture of the championship trophy in the sky which was neat and also a rose after that. Not sure if they did anything else because we didn’t stick around for the whole ceremony.
Getting back to our car was a zoo because they had barricades up and no signs directing people where to go to get to the golf course. They also had the bathrooms blocked off, which I thought was extremely odd, so you couldn’t use the bathroom after the game unless you wanted to find a portapotty somewhere. We got back to the car and then it took a long time to get out of the maze of cars and onto an actual street where we could get moving. It gave us time to call Rae Rae and Paw and the girls though. It was good to hear that Savannah had managed to keep down some food today even though her tummy still hurt and the other girls weren’t sick (as of Monday night). Savannah had a meltdown about the time the game started though, saying she wanted to go home. I know it’s hard being sick away from home. After we got back to Culver City, we stopped at Shake Shack for a late dinner. Everything, including the milkshake we shared, tasted delicious after not eating much for most of the day. We watched what was left of the Texas-Washington game on TV before going to bed.
Our flight on January 2nd was scheduled to depart at 11:20 am, but we had been told to plan to drop off our rental car 3 hours early because of how big and crazy LAX is. That was definitely a good call. So we got up at 6 am and left the cottage around 7:30 to give us time to fill up the car with gas before dropping it off. The hotel next door to the rental car place had a shuttle we could ride to the airport, and the van driver was super nice and friendly. Really, most people in LA we encountered at restaurants and businesses were pretty friendly. I was surprised by that. It took a long time riding the shuttle to get to Terminal 7 where we needed to be dropped off. Everything takes so long because of the heavy traffic. Once we got inside and printed our luggage tag, we waited in a crazy long line just to check our suitcase. It had to have been several hundred people long. Another reason to get to LAX with plenty of time to spare. One thing that does move quickly at a big airport like that is security. They were faster than anything I’ve seen before. We managed to get to our gate with a good hour to spare….I was glad that we didn’t cut it close because that would have been really stressful at such a big airport. The flight was pretty close to on time and was again full of Bama fans, including the Britts and probably a lot of the same fans from Saturday’s flight. We sat next to a Bama college student who is a senior and came out to the game with a group of friends. Brought back good memories from 14 years ago!! The flight went smoothly and interestingly enough, as we got close to landing, two guys sitting right behind us started talking…one was a doctor and the other was a former member of the UA Board of Trustees (John England, Jr). He was on the board for 23 years, and it was really interesting to hear his perspective on the many coaching changes and things that went on while he was involved. The doctor wasn’t shy about asking him questions, and the board member shared pretty candidly! I was surprised at some of the things he disclosed. It was hard not to listen since they were talking pretty loudly. Made for an interesting last few minutes on the plane! We got our suitcase, and the girls were really happy to see us. We drove over to Firehouse Subs in Fultondale and ate supper with Paw, Rae Rae, and the girls before driving back home that night.
It was a short but wonderful trip, and we were really thankful for the opportunity and memories we made together! We were even more grateful we’d taken the trip when we found out a few days later that Nick Saban had decided to retire. It was the end of an era! He became Alabama’s coach when we were in college, so it was weird and sad to think about him not being the coach anymore. We saw his first game AND his last game as Alabama’s coach. Pretty cool!
