From place to place

On our trip, we saw even more places than I described so far. We stayed in nine hotels in 13 days and it would be a bit much to describe everything individually, so I will summarize the rest here briefly.

We also went to Monterey, San Simeon, Santa Barbara, and Kingman, among others. Some cities were really beautiful, especially Santa Barbara, and others were not so great, like San Simeon.

When we traveled from one city to the next, we mainly drove along Highway 1. It led directly along the coast, which was really nice. We constantly made stops to enjoy the surroundings and nature.

However, our trip started somewhat amusingly. After we all landed, we wanted to pick up our car. The man looked at all of us and asked how many suitcases we had. We had four big ones and three small ones. He immediately said that we would need a bigger car, which would be a Suburban and cost $30 more per day. We thought about it, should we do it? Dad and I said that we wanted to try it with the other car first. He said, 'After all, we already had all the luggage in the Astra, except for Jana's.' I said, 'I know the Suburban, my host family drives it. It's way too big for us!' So we all went to the car (a Ford Expedition with seven seats). When we arrived, we couldn't believe our eyes. Mom said, 'Is this really ours? It's huge!' Dad pressed the key. Yes, it's ours. I folded down the back row of seats because we didn't need them, and Dad put the suitcases in. Dad said, 'I've never loaded suitcases into a car so easily!' and we drove off in a car that was way too small for us!