On a trip

This past Christmas, I flew out to California with Álvaro to visit family and friends and introduce him to my beloved home state.

After hanging out around Southern Cali for the first week, we loaded up my Jetta and took her up the Pacific Coast Highway on our way to San Francisco.

We stopped in Goleta to enjoy the sunset and serendipitously wandered onto a semi-private beach that provided us with one the most gorgeous and serene sunsets we had ever seen; well worth the detour. 

After that we drove straight to the Castro District in Frisco to stay with a friend at her boyfriend's pad. When we got there it turned out to be a crazy awesome four-story spaceship-like residence on a hill with a view to die for! We were more than stoked.

My girl's boy, Ryan Allis, is an entrepreneur whose internet businesses and social networking projects have done considerably well. His latest project creates an interactive map of your friends on Facebook based on location, interests, profession and other extremely useful info that helps you sort out your contacts and stay connected on a whole 'nother level. Check it out here and sign up for free! It's pretty great.

Our first morning was spent at Fisherman's Wharf, where we stopped in at the Musée Mécanique -- a privately owned collection of antique arcade games and coin-operated machines; the largest collection in the world.

I love Christmas-time in the Bay.

We swooped up a good friend of mine, Kathleen, on our way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I took advantage of the fact that Kathleen knew how to focus a camera properly (she's actually quite good with one) and had her snap a pic for us...

There's something very special about Sausalito...

On our drive to Stinson Beach...

I'm always chasing sunsets but I find that the most magical photos are created during twilight.

More photos from our Cali and Hawaii vacation coming soon...