Welcome to Los Angeles

 March 7, 2014

We worked a LONG (okay maybe it just seemed long… it was probably regular) day at school. Then the King picked me up right after school and we headed straight to the Victoria airport for our 6 PM flight. No hitches at all, and the second flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles seemed short because Air Canada has the seatback entertainment systems, so we both watched Last Vegas (which is hilarious by the way!).

Our flight even arrived a little early, and the bags came quickly! So now it’s about 11 PM and we are pretty tired (Friday night is usually an early night for us old elementary school teachers).

We find the rental car shuttles easily. There it is! The Avis bus. We walk over and stand behind the other people standing in front of the Avis bus. He opens his doors… no one moves. Luckily, Steve had the foresight to ask the people in front of us whether they were getting on because they said no. Here’s a tip… get out of the way! Anyway, we got on and the shuttle stopped a whole bunch more times. Who knows how many people got left behind the wall of people standing there and not moving. It seems there must be a better system!

First he pulled up to the Avis “Preferred” spot. If you aren’t “preferred” do NOT get off here… they will send you walking the rest of the way to join us peasants (I saw it happen with my own eyes). Anyway, we get to the regular people Avis spot and the line is long, there are people spilled out all over the sidewalk and it is about 11:15 now. Why am I telling you all this you ask? Well, because I have a beef with Avis (not just because I’m cranky at 11 PM on a Friday either!) They had some people working, but MULTIPLE supervisors standing back against the wall watching (they might call it supervising) the desk staff to make sure they were hard-selling the upgrades. Our guy kept looking over his shoulder at them every time he asked one of the questions. No, I don’t want the extra insurance, No, I don’t want the GPS, NO, I do not want the Prius… etc. I just want to pay the exact price that I booked it for! No wonder the line was so long.  It was after midnight when we finally got in our car.

Dear Avis,

If you ever happen to read this, please know that I’m not likely to rent from you again if I can help it. Get your customers through the line in a timely fashion if you want my business.

Lisa (who can’t be the only cranky one at midnight on a Friday night)

Ok, rant over… time for a helpful tip….

If you print out instructions from Google maps, you should know that the address for Avis in google maps is not the road you exit on with your car. We head in no less than four different directions and make many u-turns before we managed to get on the correct road. There was a lot of “this doesn’t seem right” being said in our car that night.

Once we got on the right road we easily found our way to where we are staying in Venice Beach. Thank goodness we have the light on the phone. I think we were really tired, but it was almost a comedy of errors trying to get the keys out of our lockbox and into the correct apartment. Of course we finally made it in… and I promptly fell into bed and went to sleep.

Saturday March 8, 2014

We woke up relatively early, but it was sleeping in for us, to a sunny beautiful day in California. Last nights roadblocks are forgotten (almost 😉 ) and we head out to find some food. We decide to walk towards the beach (it’s like a magnet to us!). We go all the way down and see some sketchy people waking up for their day.

We back up a few blocks and find a little coffee shop called Spazio. They had a basic menu with omelettes and pastries and  a stellar list of more than 10 (I didn’t count, so can't be more specific) types of hot chocolate. Steve and I each had a chocolate croissant that was amazing. They filled it with nutella and drizzled chocolate and icing sugar on the top. We also each had a hot chocolate… Steve the dark chocolate (I think it makes him feel like it’s healthier) and I had the hazelnut. They were both excellent! Quite a sugar fix. I couldn’t eat it every day, but I certainly hope we can go back at least a few more times before we leave.

We head back home and Steve gets ready to head in to his first poker tournament at the Bicycle Club. (I wonder why they call it that???) The rest of the day was basically relaxing for me.

Steve’s tournament was a three day event. Unfortunately he came back after four hours… not the result he was hoping for. Fortunately, he got to spend time with me in the sunshine!

That evening we decided to walk down to find a restaurant for dinner. I did a little research online and decided on Larry’s Pizza. We walked about 1 mile down the main roads to this restaurant, which was pretty close to the beach. I suspect if it was daytime that the view would have been great. We sat out on a patio, and the lighting and ambience seemed nice. The mixed drinks were a ridiculous price (okay, maybe I’m cheap, but 12 or 14 per drink for a casual patio restaurant seems ridiculous to me), so I went with a glass of wine ($10 but it seemed on the small side when it arrived).

We ordered the fries ($6) to start with three dips. Who can resist a dip trio? The green dip was a chimichurri aioli… YUM!  Steve could not get enough…best fries and dip, ever. Then we both ordered a pizza (about $14 each). They were Italian styled and a fairly good size. We actually had enough to pack up and have for lunch the next day. The pizzas were amazing! I had the wild mushroom one and I can’t remember ever eating a better pizza… seriously. It had nice big chunks of the GOOD mozzarella on it, tasty mushrooms and some kind of sauce that was delicious. We both totally enjoyed this restaurant and the food. We decided to check how well-lit the boardwalk was for our walk home. It seemed fine… at the beginning… it started to get a bit sketchy about half way down so we cut back up to the main road.

Don’t worry friends, we had a plan:

1. I am pretty sure I could outrun any of those sketchy looking people (That doesn’t say much for them does it? Did you hear about the time we were running and the toddler ran past me?!? Seriously!)
2. I took my own personal 4^th Degree Black Belt/security guard with me (I take him everywhere really)
3. In a pinch, if we threw our leftover pizza at them, they’d probably leave us alone. It would have to be pretty serious for me to give up that delicious pizza though!

Final thought of the day… as we were walking I kept seeing this sign that puzzled me. Let me preface this by saying that each sip of wine I take lowers my IQ score significantly… it was only a small glass, but it was a lot of sips.

Lisa (looking perplexed): Steve, why does that sign say , “Bike your Walk”?

Steve (shaking his head and smiling patiently): It says “Walk your Bike”, Lisa."

Lisa: Ohhhhh! That makes more sense...

And on that note, we'll say good-bye for now. 😀