Hermosa Beach

In my pre-baby, pre-grad school life I worked for a product software company, and now and then I would have to travel for work.  The company made software for financial institutions, so I always traveled to big cities like New York, Houston, Paris, Tokyo and Seoul.  I love traveling, so I always tried to make it a point to stay the weekend and see a bit of the city I was in.
Once I quit work, of course, all that travel went out the window.  My travel schedule was never frequent enough to become a bother, so I was sad to give up all that jetsetting (and all those miles!).  Fast forward to over a decade later, and I find myself once again visiting new places thanks to "work".  Please note the accompanying quotes, because I've never really looked at blogging as "work", and blogging events are just too much fun to be called work!

My latest destination was beautiful Hermosa beach.  I was flown there courtesy of Toyota, who hosted an event for their TWIN (Toyota Women's Influencer Network) bloggers.  Hermosa (which means "beautiful" in Spanish) couldn't be a more fitting name for this place; it's just surf, sea, sand and sun as far as the eye could see.  Toyota put me up in a gorgeous beachfront hotel, so even though it was the briefest of trips I got the chance to walk around and soak up the atmosphere.

Love the volleyball culture!

This is a scene straight out of Baywatch (if you don't know what Baywatch is, you are definitely from a younger generation!).

I could have stayed all day and listened to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

The Hermosa Beach Pier has a lively cafe and bar scene.

It was a hot day, so I ducked into a store for some shaved ice!

Business travel can be brutal, but hey, someone's got to do it :)