Today is actually a year to the day of our return from our Great LA Vacation that was that was the week of November 11-16th of last year. What a trip! It was truly a vacation, not quick long weekend, or vacation/work trip. REAL vacation. We were gone a week. We relaxed, ignored emails, explored and had adventures, ate excellent food to our hearts content, and just enjoyed being together. Nothing like Facebook memories popping up to kick me in to gear to finally finish writing about our trip! This is Day 4 of our trip. Check out Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 here.
For our entire trip we stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. I talked a lot about that in the previous posts for Days 1-3. I've never stayed in anything like it. I've stayed in some nice places, don't get me wrong, but the Waldorf lived up to and exceeded all my expectations!
We started out with room service for breakfast. We had $50 credit each day to use or lose it, some days we used for breakfast, some days for dessert, never let it got to waste!
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| breakfast power smoothie and yogurt smoothie bowl |
After breakfast, off we went to downtown for the day! First stop Grand Central Market, it's a food hall that has been in continuous operation since 1917.
Eggslut is the hottest place at the market, and downtown in general for good breakfast/brunch food. We arrived to quite the long line! It was worth the wait. Time for 2nd Breakfast! It was already after 11am, so perhaps this is 1st Lunch instead....
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| Gotta have some coffee! Cold Brew it is. |
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| The Fairfax sandwich. cage free soft scrambled eggs, chives, caramelized onions, cheddar cheese and sriracha mayo on a brioche bun. Yum! |
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| The Slut: cage free coddled egg on top of smooth potato puree , cooked in a glass jar, topped with gray salt and chives, baguette on the side. |
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| having fun in Grand Central Market |
Next stop is the Sari Sari Store, a Filipino joint with lots of hype. We ordered the Pinoy BBQ Ribs and Buko pie (coconut pie). This pie, my gosh, it's hard to describe. It has layers of coconut pastry cream and coconut meat, with the most flaky perfect crust. It's perfectly sweet but not too sweet. I would pay a lot of money to have this pie shipped to me from Los Angeles. Or maybe just another reason to go back!
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| Pinoy BBQ Ribs rice bowl |
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| Buko Pie |
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| Sari Sari's Buko Pie = May be the best pie I've ever had in my life. |
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| Can't you tell how happy I was to just eat that pie?? |
I'm now going to deviate from blogging in chronological order of our trip. We went to the Japanese American Museum next, which is located very near the Grand Central Market in Little Tokyo. I am planning to do a separate post about that. I'm 1/4 Japanese, my Japanese family emigrated to the US after the turn of the last century, and settled in Los Angeles in the 1920s. I have family history there, and part of this trip was my traveling to see places with family ties; to learn and appreciate more about my family heritage. Mission accomplished, I feel very lucky to have done this. Our country's history with Japanese Americans is rough. I wasn't prepared at all for what I saw at the Japanese-American museum, but am glad I went. More on that later.
After spending a couple hours at the museum, we explored around downtown, Chinatown, and ended up back near the Staples Center to watch the LA Lakers play that evening. This was Lebron James first season with the Lakers, and the atmosphere was electric!
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| Los Angeles City Hall |
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| Chinatown |
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| Chinatown |
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| View of City Hall again from across Grand Park |
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| The IMPRESSIVE Walt Disney Concert Hall |
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| Me and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (I was impressed) |
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| Random cool tall building |
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| Another cool random tall building |
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| LA Live entertainment area adjacent to the Staples Center |
It was VERY crowded around the Staples center ahead of the Lakers game. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant Rosa Mexicano, had not heard of it and not pre-planned, but a good meal! We both go an assortment of street tacos. The side dish of corn something was quite good. It was the white cheese that made it.
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| Shrimp Ceviche' |
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| We got there early so we had time to explore |
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| We had box seats! |
Let the game begin! The crowd was so into it, and tons of fun. Looked for Jack Nicholson sitting next to the court but wasn't never certain we spotted him. It was extra fun since the Lakers won, and Lebron totally dominated. King James ended up with 44 points, 10 rebounds, and 9 assists. Apparently, if he were to get 10 rebounds and 10 assists in one game, that is a big deal. So towards the end all the suspense was if he'd get that last assist or not. He didn't, but I don't think anyone should be disappointed by that!
And that's the end of Day 4 my friends. One more fun filled day and a half to go!!! Stay tuned for tales of crabs the size of my head, Jimmy Kimmel live, In-and-Out burger, and impressive city views!
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