California snorkeling etc

I'm in a race against time! I'm in an airplane and I've bought wifi service for $9.95 but my battery is so low -- d'oh! -- I must cut to the chase.

I've been visiting my daughter Ana in Los Angeles, where we went to the Olympic Korean spa, two great thrift shops, ate at French, Cuban and Italian restaurants and took the Catalina Express to Catalina Island, a place I highly recommend. Here's Ana sitting by one of the two harbors.

With the other one, it is known as Two Harbors, a tiny community on the less populated side of the island. Brian and I first visited the more populated side known as Avalon several years ago and since then Catalina has been one of my favorite destinations.

I've been regaling my Facebook friends with tales of Ana's and my exploits snorkeling there, but if you haven't read about it there, we saw a sea hare, octopus, maybe a leopard shark, a HUGE school of mackerel, which consisted of thousands if not millions of glistening fish swimming around like they were in a ballet (I saw an IMAX film about these huge groups of mackerel to which I would link if I didn't only have 8 percent of my battery power left.), lots of Garabaldi, the California state fish -- and a sea lion swam right up to us and scared us!
Here we are hiking the next day after our underwater adventure. Suffice it to say as my battery power runs down, we got back to Los Angeles no worse for our close encounter with the sea lion and went to the Korean spa, a wonderful tradition I've written about before in which you walk around naked amid lots of saunas and several different kinds of soaking pools; and if you opt for a scrub, a Korean woman in a utilitarian black bikini rubs you very hard with a rough cloth, until your skin feels as soft as putty.

That and some wonderful food and fun in thrift shops were the highlights of my California vacation.

The end.
By Mary Carey