Wednesday

Long day on Wednesday! I woke up from my long slumber and checked out of the hotel around 11am. After that, I decided to try to find some sports apparel stores in the area to buy some Ducks gear without paying arena prices. The tour guide from my hotel recommended some places, so I was off on my tour of Anaheim to find them!

The first place I went to was in a place called the Block of Orange. It’s basically like an outdoor mall. It was next to a place called the Crystal Cathedral. I’m not a hundred percent sure what it was, but I think it was a daycare center? Perhaps? Maybe I should research it a little. The store I went to didn’t have all that much hockey (much like the east coast!) I did find a few cool Ducks things though, and I had a fun conversation with one of the workers who is a Kings fan (sucker!). After that place, I went up State College Blvd to a dirty little shack that had some old school Mighty Ducks stuff. Really cool (but very dirty…and a little creepy).

After my shopping excursion I headed back to Disneyland. I wanted to go on the Carosel of Progress and the Tomorrowland people mover. Turns out the Carosel is not that anymore, and the people mover was no open (don’t even know if it ever was). So I headed over to California Adventure for a little while. I’m not a ‘rides guy’, so I wasn’t all that impressed, but it was okay. I think having a “Hollywood” section was silly, since the real Hollywood is about a halfhour away.

After a quick bite to eat (chicken nuggets! Yum!!) I went to my car to get my hockey tickets don my jersey. My buddy who was coming to the game with me was stuck in traffic driving from LA, so I went back into Disneyland for a bit.

My buddy finally got to Anaheim and we headed to the game.

I gotta say, a LOT of Ducks jerseys at the game – more than I’ve noticed at other arenas, though maybe it just catches my eye some. I did do a little shopping in the team store, and even weaseled a discount by saying I flew all the way from New York for the game.

After grabbing some Jack Daniels, we headed to our seats. Pretty good for $11 a piece! Looking around I don’t think there is a bad seat in the house. Intermissioins were quiet, which I like – and the fans were quiet during play but erupted with each goal. I was surprised the celebratory song wasn’t louder on the PA, but that foghorn rattles your bones! Awesome.

After the game (A 4-2 Ducks victory, upping my personal Ducks winning streak to 4-in-a-row) I followed my buddy into Hollywood to visit his fiancé on the set of a new ABC show debuting in March. She is also a former co-worker of mine, so it was nice to see her too, if only briefly.

But I had to cut it shorter than I’d like, because I was soooo tired and I still had to drive to Santa Barbara! I rolled into the hotel around 1:45 and was asleep by two. A nice hotel…from what I gathered in the 15 minutes I was awake in it.

More later!