Birthday Trip to Cali + Shopping Haul

Hello beautiful people! Welcome back to my blog. I haven’t posted in a while, so I need to catch you guys up. Recently, I took a trip to Los Angeles, CA and I had the time of my life. I marked many things off my bucket list like my first plane ride, first time seeing the ocean, and many others. Yes, I know. I can’t believe it either lol. Keep reading down below for a full rundown of my trip adventures, vacation haul, outfits & more!

1st Day

First Flight EVER

First things first, I've got to give y'all a rundown of my first flight EVER! If you know what a plane ride is like, then I would keep scrolling. I've been given many descriptions describing what a plane ride is like. Now that I've experienced it for myself, I feel as though I was not given a good description lol. I'm here to give all of you who's never ridden an airplane a fair description. You want to make sure you get to the airport at least 1.5-2 hrs early to check in your luggage and receive your boarding pass because those lines get really long, and we almost missed our flight lol. When I say "we", I mean my sister Cassie, best friend Cherelle and myself.

Once we received our boarding passes, it was time for us to go through security. We did have to put our bag on a conveyer belt thingy to be scanned, take off our shoes and walk through a body scanner. Once we made it through security, it was time to board. Okay skipping to take off...Taking off was scary but fun. The airplane backs out of its original boarding spot to head to the runway. Once we got to the runway to take off, you can feel the airplane gearing up, then boom you take off. You go from 0 to 200 mph in 10 seconds. And then you feel the plane leave the ground. I did feel pressure in my ears as we steadily ascended. Swallowing and yawning helped release the pressure. Taking off wasn't as scary as landing. As we descended to land, it felt like we were on a rollercoaster or in a car going over a big hill. The plane did not descend all the way down all at once. It would descend a little and then 5 min later descend a little more. Landing the plane on the ground was always a bit bumpy but nothing to be too worried about. We didn't experience that much turbulence thank goodness.

We made it to Cali!

We landed in Cali Thursday afternoon around noon, so we still had the whole night to turn up. As soon as we landed we picked up our rental car. I wanted to ride in style, so I chose to rent a candy red Mercedes Benz through the TURO app. It was beautiful, and you couldn't tell me anything else lol. I loved renting from this app. It was very convenient and easy. When booking, I was able to choose a pick up and drop off time. Once we landed from our flight, the owner of the vehicle met us at the airport to drop off the car.

We decided to stay in an airbnb for our trip. I did give a tour of our airbnb on my Instagram stories. Head over to my “Travel” IG highlight if you’d like to see the full tour. On our way to the airbnb, we did pick up a few snacks and drinks just to last us while we were there. We were really tired from traveling that morning, so we didn't do much the first day but go to a dispensary & dinner. The dispensary was great. We bought two types of strands: Indica and sativa. They both were great, but dinner was not that great. We decided to go to an Italian spot in Long Beach, CA called Michael's on Naples. The food wasn't seasoned, and it was very expensive for the portion sizes given. The best part were the lemon drops lol. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend this place. See below for my outfit though :)

2nd Day

Shop 'til You Drop!

I knew before our trip that I was going to do some major shopping while we were in Cali, so I decided to devote an entire day to just shopping. Of course we needed our energy to shop, so we stopped by Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles before heading to Rodeo Drive. Now this food spot definitely made up for the food from the previous night. Hands down, the best chicken and waffles EVER! I definitely recommend this place.

Once we were energized, we headed to the infamous Rodeo Drive. Rodeo Drive is exactly how you can imagine it. Luxury cars & shopping boutiques everywhere you look. I promise as we were driving down Rodeo, all we saw were Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Bentley cars. It was crazy! The only reason we went to Rodeo was so I could stop by Coach and get there new "Pillow Tabby" purse. Every Coach store we went to were sold out, so that was a bummer. After we left Rodeo, we headed to the Grove for more shopping. The Grove had more stores in our price range like Top Shop, Nordstrom, Nike outlet, Sephora and more. This is where we did most of our shopping. For a late lunch, we stopped by a place called La Piazza. This was another fancy restaurant, and we didn't want to take a chance like we did the previous night so we only had salads lol. After grabbing food, we headed back to the airbnb, changed clothes and headed to the movies to see A Quiet Place 2. This is a great movie if you haven't seen it! That wraps up Day 2 of our Cali trip. Check out all the items I bought from our shopping day below.

Nike

TopShop

Brandy Melville

QUAY

Forever21

Macy's

3rd Day

Full of Adventures!

The final day of our trip, we tried to fit in as much activity as possible since this was our last day. We started the day off by attending the Long Beach Aquarium. This was fun & relaxing, but the Georgia Aquarium is wayyy better. After the aquarium, we headed across the street to Bubba Gump Shrimp. This place had amazing food, and I definitely recommend. After lunch, we headed to another shopping center so we could visit the official Morphe cosmetics store. I am a makeup artist, and Morphe is a brand that I use a lot. I spent $200 while in store, and it was well worth it! For a rundown of what I bought from Morphe, head over to my Instagram "Travel" story highlight,

After shopping, we headed back to the airbnb to change into our swimsuits so we could head to the beach. We decided to go to Cherry Beach. I had never seen the ocean before, and it was such a beautiful & serene sight to see. I could definitely fall asleep on the beach to the sound of the waves. We left the beach and headed home to get ready for dinner. For the last night, I wanted to go out with a bang. We went to a steakhouse called 555 East Prime Steakhouse. Now this place definitely proves how you’re supposed to dine! This place looked amazing, and the food was also amazing. I had the lamb chops with a baked potato. Every bite tasted devine!

Thank you for visiting CRMstyles! I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and you're able to take something away from this post for your next trip to Cali. If you'd like to see more from my trip to Cali, then visit my Instagram "Travel" story highlight.

Until next time!

XOXO