Hiking from the Sky to the Sea

After living in Amsterdam for nearly 4 years, visiting my home in California gets more special with every trip. But that also means that every time I go there, I realize how lucky I am to have been from such a beautiful place and it gets harder and harder to say goodbye. This last trip, I flew out sans the Dutch boy at the last minute (I bought a ticket on Friday, flew out on Saturday!), mainly to see my family but ultimately to be with my best friends and to support one of them during a difficult time. After two weeks of laughing, hugging and lounging, I left feeling unbelievably happy and fortunate to have friends like these...as if I didn't need a reminder of their sheer awesome-ness. *End sappy-ness here* ;)

One thing I’ve learned while being away is that California has some of the most amazing sunsets and colorful in the world—setting up to watch a good sunset quickly became one of our favorite pastimes (especially at the beach!) during our 10 years as friends. Phrases like ‘let’s go watch the sunset in Laguna’ are commonplace after ‘wanna go to the beach?’ or ‘where are my Rainbows?’ It's no surprise that, together with advice from these best friends of mine, Christian chose a sunset in Laguna as the place to propose last Christmas.

Naturally, we squeezed in some sunset explorations on this trip too. The first led us up a hill with 360 degree views over Orange County—beautiful. The second hike led us to a place we’ve been plenty of times—the beach! Few things can be better than watching a sunset over the Pacific…watching it with best friends is the icing on top of the cake. Even a seal plopped on the rock next to us to enjoy the sunset too!

And these last two pics courtesy of my best friend Ink ;)

...and then 15 minutes later--colors!