The Great Debate...

Ahh, it's time for the great debate. Of our trip that is.

I promise this is the last travel related post for a while. I wanted to at least briefly go over it because I've gotten many many many emails asking which area I would recommend traveling to in California more. I think those who live in California would say they are too different to compare (and I agree to an extent), but for the sake of today's post, I'm going to take a stab at it and see if I can make a personal decision.

So, which do we like better....

Northern?

or Southern?

If you forced me to pick, I would have to say ((drum roll please)), Northern.

Here's a look inside our thought process:

To travel:

Me-Northern

Billy-Northern

To live:

Me-Northern

Billy-Southern

....obviously we differ on our opinions of the state if you are looking to live in either area. I fell head over heels in love with San Francisco, so if I had to move to California, it would probably be here. I don't think I would ever get bored living there. Plus, I would be close my other love nearby: Lake Tahoe. Billy thinks it would be better to live in Southern, but we both agreed we liked traveling to the northern area more. 

>>Why? 
Both are absolutely wonderful, don't get me wrong, and obviously this varies person to person but northern was more of an adventure for us. It left it's mark on us more {how could wine country not leave it's mark? c'mon}, you could say. If you have never been to California but want to do a road trip (and if you don't mind a little bit of cooler weather), I would recommend going northern. The culture, the mountain views, wine tasting, the diversity, the food...they all won us over. Like big cities? San Francisco is your place. In that same breath, if you are planning a northern trip, you must add Lake Tahoe as a stop along the way (assuming you have a car). You will be glad you did, trust me on this (or you can read my recap of it: here). If you are looking for more of a laid back, beach trip then I would recommend southern. Want nicer weather and to spend time in the water? Southern. It's definitely more "glam" too, but doesn't have the culture that San Francisco does. To me, if I'm wanting a beach vacation I'm going to go to Florida or somewhere tropical and just plant my butt on the beach everyday all day, but I feel like there are SO many awesome things to do in California that I didn't want to just sit on the beach. I wanted to be out and about seeing everything.

Also, I have to say, on both trips we figured we would get stuck in traffic for hours. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as we expected, in fact we hardly hit any traffic where we were actually at a dead stop in either area (gotta time it right and it moves pretty fast!). I would recommend going in late August-October as there are generally less tourists around these times and the weather is still good.

If anyone is interested in the order of our stops for both trips, they went like this:

Northern: flew into Reno, visited Lake Tahoe first, then Napa/Sonoma, then San Francisco, then ended in Carmel. You can read my recaps for this trip starting here. Southern: flew in San Diego, visited San Diego first, then Orange County area, then ended in LA and Malibu. You can read my recaps for this trip starting here.
 

If you have traveled to both of these areas, I would love your opinion, which did you like more? 

*I got some inquires about why I decided to remove google friend connect from my sidebar. I really want to focus on my content here on this blog, versus numbers. I believe if I'm providing good content (which I hope in the future I do!), then the readers will be there. 

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