full playhouse

Ahoy,

Because I am less and less likely to remember the things I do unless there was a photo attached, I will proceed to "brain dump" the adventures of our time together.

Day  1
Poor S showed up in LA having pulled an all nighter. I've only ever gotten close to pulling an all-nighter, and never thought it was a good idea to stay up all night for school or any other reason. Real smart cookie, S is (he isn't even in school anymore). We walked through downtown and picked up stuff at the farmer's market. N bought 8 pounds of oranges (she actually wanted 25, but couldn't muscle that). One day I will get a red radio flyer wagon and buy all the things I want at the farmer's market. We stopped for happy hour at PS 310, a place I mention too often. We tucked in early because S was fading fast and the next day was going to be serious.

Day 2

LA Metro took us downtown. We walked to the museum at FIDM, but it was closed and the park there was closed. So exciting this beginning is. N and I tortured S as we browsed some clothes and bought nothing. We sallied forth to the farmer's market at Pershing Square, Angel's Flight and Grand Central Market. I got  32 oz horchata all to myself.  We ate lunch in Pershing Square where they told us not to suffocate the grass with our picnic blanket. The Last Bookstore is half art gallery, half book museum, but all fun! I got a dog book for K, against my mom's wishes. Is anything worth doing if it's not against your mom's wishes? We continued through Little Tokyo and City Hall. They all had a great time splashing around Grand Park. I've only ever been up to the Metro stop portion, but that isn't even half of it, so it was cool to see the other parts of it. I broke down and cooked a whole chicken for dinner; Martin Yan is still beating me by a lot. E joined the party tonight.

Day 3
We went to get the rental car, a sleek, hot black. We started the day off at Venice Beach and looked at the water and skateboarders. We messed around on exercise equipment at Muscle Beach because we have so many muscles. Lunch was at Sunny Blue for omusubi. It was great. Rice is always great. S ate an unimpressive 2, N ate an impressive 4. Next up was the Pacific Palisades because everyone was not tired enough. I made them go uphill on a slope to a waterfall. Then because they still weren't tired enough, I made them keep going up for an unspecified distance. It was a great adventure. There were lots of good views of rich peoples' houses. We crawled through traffic to get back to Culver City for dinner at Wildcraft.

Day 4
UCLA was today's first stop. I wanted a doughnut from Stan's, and the boys got shaved ice at Diddy Riese. I showed them what I knew of the campus, which is the garden, rock wall, and engineering because that's all that the RRS goes. So we picked up food and drove out to Griffith Park. This time, we didn't take the sketchy non-path down, and drove to the parking lot at the Observatory. It was easy. We spent the next couple hours pretending to laugh at Jimmy Kimmel (not) Live. It was a unique experience. And then we were lazy waiting for O to arrive. Dinner was at BCD Tofu House. N ate an impressive entire dinner #2. So impressive.

Day 5

This is me at art museums. 

This day we slept in and moseyed to brunch at Wildcraft again, because I just can't get enough. RRS and I were both incredibly pleased with our brunch selections. We then moseyed to the Getty because I just love art museums the most. I tried my best to stay outside and delay the art viewing. The real adventure was leaving the Getty and crawling/walking/running through the woods/bushes/side of highway. Extreme measure to beat traffic, but the folks in the cars were the suckers. Dinner was at the Boiling Crab, where we waited an exorbitantly many number of minutes like suckers. The shrimp was good, like my mom makes it, but with different sauces. Seafood is just not something I crave, but the messy eating was fun. The night wasn't complete without boba, so we went far away to the San Gabriel Valley for that.

Day 6
Climbing day! Tramway is the per usual go-to because it's relatively close, scenic, and has quality problems. We stopped at Lee's Sandwiches for Vietnamese coffee (because you can never have too much coffee) and banh mi. We got back to the city around 8, and went for sushi. While waiting for our table we ventured to Grand Park, when we got the call they had a table for us. We booked it back to the Komasa just as the guy was about to give away our table. Fresh from climbing, and now running - we must have looked like such a ragtag group of animals.

Day 7
Today's plan was Cafe Surfas sandwiches and a hike up Baldwin Hills. We ate at the top as those more physically ambitious trudged by drooling and panting. It was scenic, delicious, sunny - everything you would expect of California. I also had to show them Coolhaus. After E left, S and I spent the rest of the day watching tv, until it was time to go climbing at Hangar 18. S thinks I'm trying to kill him at this point.

Day 8
So many days! S and I went to Santa Monica for a long day of shopping. We got to stop at Sunny Blue again, where S was more impressive this time. Also impressive was how long we were shopping. Dinner was at Mitsuwa, where S and the RRS gushed over noodles.

Day 9
This day was fairly uneventful aside from a last minute souvenir hunt and more television. And so the sun sets on this extremely long and crowded adventure. There were so many people sleeping everywhere. It was a symphony of sleeping sounds.

crowdedly sourced,
jt