Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Old Friends and "Sweden Invades California"


The Memorial Day Weekend, summoning the unofficial start of Summer, was a quiet but pleasant one for us.

It began on Saturday evening with a drive to Laurie's old stomping grounds, La Crescenta. . .

St. Francis H.S.
Class of 1965

In this picture I am next to Tom Nuccio, the pride of bella Italia's Piedmont region, and Terry Terrazone. They are two of the good guys and we all graduated from St. Francis together a very long time ago.

We gathered at Terry and his wife Elin's home to celebrate the engagement and impending wedding next February in Miami, Florida of their son Nathan to the lovely Isa Pozo.

Isa is very outgoing, probably in part due to her Cuban and Puerto Rican roots. She is a nice young lady and they make a stunning couple.

Good luck to the two of them!

On Monday, Memorial Day, we got the chance to share fika with friends visiting the USA from Sweden.

Laurie, Sarah and Johanna
at Casa Contreras

Sarah is that special someone in Hässleholm Hurricane Lucas Grip's life. She works for a Swedish travel company that arranges group tours and from time to time her company sends her and her co-worker Johanna to sites around the world to get first hand knowledge of what potential buyers will be getting themselves into.

Last Spring, Sarah and Johanna were sent to Cuba for a week. This year they are touring sights in the Dakotas, Yellowstone, Monterey-Carmel, Los Angeles and Dallas.

On Memorial Day they stopped in Camarillo, first at the huge Outlet Mall and then at our home for that most Swedish tradition, afternoon fika.

To review, fika is simply friends meeting for conversation, coffee and a dessert of some kind. Laurie opted for a delicious chocolate cake with thick, rich chocolate frosting.

I liked it.

We spent about an hour discussing the folly of ever visiting the Camarillo Outlet Mall on any weekend much less a Holiday Weekend, places to visit and eat in Los Angeles and the scenic Highway 1/Pacific Coast Highway route from Camarillo to Santa Monica via Malibu on their way to their hotel in tony Beverly Hills.

They were excited by the things they had seen so far in their first trip to the western United States and anxious to see a movie star or two in La-La Land.

Sarah and Johanna

Good people, fun times,
GREAT friends

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