Los Angeles
The next few days starting tomorrow will see Sandy and myself embarking on a short trip down to LA LA Land. It has been awhile since I have been back to LA. Last night while playing around with a "note" widget in Quicken I briefly jotted down the plans for the trip. If all goes well, Sandy will see a side of LA that will be "all over the map." That is to say we will try to cram 8 years of hustling and flowing in LA to a couple of days.
First the practical matters of car rentals. I quickly fired up Firefox and after some multitabbing was able to side-by-side compare five different such rental places: Thrify, Budget, Hotwire, Fox rentals, Alamo. Fox had the cheapest deals so using that as a stepping ladder I went over to Priceline to use their "name your own price"™ system. After 5 minutes or so of "haggling" I got a full-size car for $15/day—from National. Needless to say I am very satisfied with the Priceline experience.
Fearing that the full-size may be some third world country car I called National in SJC airport to confirm that it wasn't. After some initial misunderstanding a voice off in the distant (really 10 miles away) told me that I had indeed garnered a full-size sedan—a good 'ole USA Chevy Impala. Can you picture it? Driving in LA LA with my Chevy Impala. Bom bom bom Bah Bah bom!
Onward Bound: Los Angeles
Here are some of the places we are thinking of visiting:
+ Westwood/UCLA (Woot!woot!) + Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade + Venice Beach + Getty Center + LACMA + Koreatown/Thaitown/Chinatown/J-town + La Brea/Melrose + Canter's Jewish Deli + AFI (American Film Institute) + Griffith Park + Los Feliz House of Pie + Sunset Blvd -> Hollywood Walk of Fame + Universal Studio City Walk + USC/South Central/Roscoe's (Woot!woot!) + Old Town Pasadena + Alhambra/Montery Park/Garden Grove + Irvine/LBC.
All over the place as promised. It looks ambitious on paper. In any case we are both very blessed and fortunate to be taking residence with Sand's good friend Erica Oh, a familiar face from our travel to NYC.
Good times abound in what promises to be some much needed vis-a-vis between Sands and myself among the palm trees, smogs, and traffic that is Los Angeles. Hasta la vista, baby!
Sup Mike, wow you went all over socal.
yeah. we only went to a few of those places. we did eat at roscoes...haha.