4 reasons I’m Psyched to be Going Back To California.

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It’s been 272 days since I’ve last visited southern California, but hey who’s counting. Just about the time this post goes live today , we will be sleeping off our jet lag in San Diego, where most of our time will be spent visiting mom in Temecula. However, we will also be heading up to Los Angeles to speak at American Society of Travel Agents‘ TheTravelBloggerShow (Sept. 8 and 9), which is part of ASTA’s Travel Retailing & Destination Expo (I’ll talk more about this later in the post).

Beth and I love San Diego! It’s played a huge role in our lives (if you didn’t know, we fell in love there and then found the other love of our lives in San Diego, Chachy, our lil’ hound. Anytime, we get a chance to visit, we are always excited. However, this time is going to be even more special than usually and has me more excited than ever, so in true travel blogging style I’m put my thoughts in to a list. So, without further ado, here are the four reasons (in no particular order) that I’m stoked about this California visit.

1. Beth’s best friend Lauren, or as I affectionately call her, L-Dogg, just had her first little girl last week! This has been one of Lauren’s dream, and Beth and I couldn’t be happier for her. Lauren is an amazing person and great friend. In fact, when we were living illegally on our sailboat, she let us crash on her couch, enabling us to save money for our first trip to Europe in 2010.

2. My mom’s birthday is on September 17, so we’re are going to take her out to dinner for an early birthday celebration. Not sure where we are going yet (even if I did, I could say because I’m pretty sure she’s one of our regular readers), but I’ve got a few options I’m playing around with.

3. It’s been more than six months since my last California burrito and I’m going through withdraws. Alright, some people wouldn’t consider a burrito something to get excited about; however, that’s probably because they’ve never had a California Burrito (carne asada, sour cream, salsa fresca and french fries) from a San Diego taco stand.

4. We are speaking at ASTA’s The Travel Blogger Show about Pinterest. This will be our first speaking engagement together and we are both really excited about having the opportunity to share our knowledge about the social network in our presentation, Is Your Blog Pinteresting? With the explosion of Pinterest over the last year, Beth and I have spent a lot of time using it, and have found that it can be a fantastic way to drive traffic to your site, especially for folks in travel, including bloggers and travel agents.

Additionally, Beth and I will also be participating in a panel moderated by our good friend Matt Long of Landlopers titled Blogging: Your Passport to the World, which will provider insider insights and tips from bloggers, destination experts and PR executives about marketing yourself and your blog. In addition to Matt, we are really jazzed about sharing the stage with Ben Reed of Adventures with Ben, Carol Martinez of LA Inc.–The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau–and Jamie Foley of MBooth.

ASTA has done a fantastic job of putting together an expo that brings together some of the world’s top travel professionals and companies into a conference that blends education, networking and fun (attendees of The Travel Blogger Show get complimentary sightseeing throughout LA on Sunday. If you are going to be in or near LA this weekend and you are interested in the business of travel, then I highly recommend checking out the ASTA Expo at the LA Convention Center. You can find more information about the event at TheTradeShow.org.

It’s going to be an exciting week! We’ll posting live updates on our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages during our trip, and would love it if you followed along with us on our trip.

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*Please remember all photos on this website, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted and property of Beers and Beans Travel Website, Nariko’ s Nest Weddings & Bethany Salvon. Please do not use them without my permission. If you do want to use one of them please contact me first because I do love to share and I would be flattered. Thanks!