Tag: 2018

Universal CityWalk

This is just bizarre. I’m worrying about how to make a post on the Universal CityWalk when it’s basically just a mall attached to the Universal Studios Theme Park. There’s no real history and it’s about as handicap-accessible as any open-air mall (which means that if your handicap is things like asthma or cutaneous porphyria you’ll have the usual exposure to outdoor allergens/sunlight problems that you’d have anywhere). It’s a very nice mall with lots of themed eateries, plenty of street perfomers, and one of those dancing water fountains that’s fun to watch.

Traditionally, we eat at the Hard Rock Cafe when we’re there. I’m not 100% certain why my friend group decided that would be where we would eat, but we ate there in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and now it’s not a trip to California without a meal there.

Hard Rock Cafe Guitar
The Hard Rock Cafe guitar, 2018

There’s an outdoor stage right there, as well, and when Alex and I were there, Kirstin Maldonado of Pentatonix was performing songs from her solo album. I watched her while we ate, figuring that if she ended up being the next Madonna or Pink or whomever, I could say that I saw her at the mall. It doesn’t look like she’s going to, though, since I had to do some digging to jog my memory as to who she even was. Oh, what the heck. I need to monetize this thing, so here’s the Amazon Associates link to the album she was promoting: Love. I’m sure there’s a way to make those Amazon links come out Amazon Orange, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. When I do, though, watch out.

Universal citywalk globe 2018
The Universal Globe, 2018

Apparently there are some actual regular clothing-type stores at the CityWalk, but you can’t prove that by me. I usually just notice things like the big Universal globe at the entrance, and the aforementioned dancing fountain, which I took a bunch of pictures of, and the Voodoo Donut Shop (which we didn’t go into, but I noticed it!).

And now here we are, 300+ words later, and I guess I’ve actually managed to make an actual post on the CityWalk. I intended to make this just sort of a general mall post (since I’ve been getting my pedometer steps in at our local enclosed malls lately) and it turns out I didn’t need to. Who knew?

2018 Travel Ideas

I have an elderly dog and an elderly cat and now they’re cutting hours at work (my boss is doing a great job giving me as many hours as he can, but my paycheck has still gone down by multiple tens of dollars per pay period), so I’m not sure how much traveling I can do in 2018. I still have a fair amount of my backlogged travel savings, but I don’t think it’ll pay for us to fly to Seattle, rent a car, and pay for a hotel room.

This might end up being the year we finally do the Wild Earth Llama Adventures overnight llama trip. Alex and I heard about it a couple of years ago and have wanted to go ever since. It’s in New Mexico, so we could drive there, and we could make Capulin Volcano National Monument our biennial volcano. The original plan was for our biennial volcano to be Mt. Hood or Mt. Rainier. But all three places will probably still be there in 2019 or 2020.

Also, apparently Capulin Volcano is pretty close to Taos, as well, so that’s good.

Since we’ve been taking shorter trips in August, we could continue that tradition and go to Louisiana for a long weekend. We could drive to Baton Rouge, stay overnight there for one night, then go on to New Orleans for another night or two, then drive back in one shot. We probably should go to New Orleans in one shot, then drive to Baton Rouge and back to San Antonio, but I think we should do the more exciting destination last.

Back in the 1990s, Thomas* and I drove to Louisiana just to get out of Texas for a while. We drove to near Lake Charles and then drove south from there. We then took a ferry across a bayou and drove back up. I made several failed attempts to photograph an alligator (if I recall correctly, we saw about eight of them that day), but I cannot find the pictures at all from that trip or from our stop in New Orleans when we went there on the way back from my mom’s funeral ten years ago. So this would give me a chance to take new pictures.

I’m going to start acting as though this is the plan, and then hope that I can get more work hours (or a new job (or that I can find a way to monetize this to earn some travel money)). Then, of course, once I can go back to the plan to go to Seattle, I’ll be disappointed that I cannot take the New Mexico trip. Maybe in that case, I’ll bump New Mexico up to long weekend trip.

*Notice my now-ex’s new pseudonym. I set up a spreadsheet to choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then chose the name from his birth year that had that rank. So Thomas it is.