Saying goodbye to the holiday

We've been back a few days now, and I'm still waking up thinking I'm in LA. It's hard to say goodbye to a holiday, especially one that's been a new adventure seen through the eyes of my toddler. Everything was familiar, and yet seemed fresh, new, and exciting.

Our last two days in LA was mainly centered around catchups and goodbyes, but I knew it was not for long. I certainly have ambitious travel plans for the next couple of years!

We had brunch at Luna Park on South La Brea with my childhood friend.

It happens that Anna's dad was visiting from NZ too.

If I didn't require all my mental faculties for negotiating LA freeways I certainly would have gone for the bottomless mimosa Luna Park is renowned for. Is that an irresponsible notion?

We went back to her place to hang out for a little bit. Anna lives in a cool vintage apartment on a street that overlooks the Hollywood sign.

Anna and Kien shooting the breeze on the front porch.

I admired the high rises from the freeway running through downtown during our drive back to Lynette and Jeff's.

We crawled at snails pace for a stretch - typical LA traffic at any hour of the day. It's astounding that residents of LA are resigned to the fact that to get anywhere around the city one has to budget significant traffic time. It's also typical to travel 1 ½ hours each way to and from work! You know the kicker?

The roads are not maintained so well, and there are lumps and bumps and grooves and broken streets galore. Just an interesting observation.

On Sunday morning we went to Yum Cha with Lynette's parents. When we were choosing the restaurant to go to Lynette's mum asked me, "do you want to go to a real Chinese place that's loud and dirty, or do you want sophisticated and clean?". I've eaten genuine street food in Hong Kong and Vietnam, and worked (and eaten) in India, but when I'm in a first world country there is just something about "dirty food" I can't do. Besides, on the scale of adventurous eating I would rate maybe a 3 out of 10 by Asian standards. Chicken feet, boiled duck tongue, gizzard, offal, pig ears etc etc REALLY doesn't float my boat. Just sayin'. (I'm not a banana though.) So of course we went for the latter choice.

First world, sophisticated, clean.

They boys were throwing things that go bang on the road, and having a field day.

It turns out they were throwing little bundles of gun powder.

Land of the free, home of the brave!

Speaking of brave, we braved the (in)famous Krispy Kreme doughnut joint for mass consumption of the fried and glazed stuff.

I'm not a doughnut eater (usually), so the gourmet-ness was lost on me. The doughnut connoisseurs with us rated these things highly.

So we are now all back to our normal lives, which means the People Mover is no longer at maximum capacity, and restaurants no longer have to be scared when we walk through their door and ask for seven to be seated.