My friend Michelle got into town a few days before the weekend of the convention. She has other friends in Phoenix, so while I worked through my last few days of work, she was enjoying the BIG WAC, which is a Vegan BigMac. Oh did I mention, Michelle is straight up Vegan! I would later hear for days about the Big Wac, and how she couldn't stand how yummy it is, or that there isn't a restaurant by her back home that makes anything like it.
We finally got on the road on Thursday, and set on the journey to Los Angeles. We talked, and laughed, and acted silly the whole way. There wasn't a lot of anything between Phoenix and Palm Springs. Desert, cars driving slowly, dust devils, people driving ATVs around like cars... that is pretty much the excitement on the drive. As soon as we got into California, there it was to the right... an outlet mall!!! We were not going to stop, but we say Versace, Gucci, Tory, etc... all these huge designer names, suddenly we both needed a chance to get up and stretch out our legs!! We of course stopped into yet another Forever 21, because 'they could always have different stuff from the last 2 we checked out'. The clearance was calling to us, BOGO?? OK!!! We loaded up on even more cute clothes, because we both thought we were going to dress cute for the convention. Michelle even got some silver Chuck high-tops. Mostly we drank a bunch of coffee. Oh and we found a pizza joint called Blaze Pizza, that makes Vegan and Gluten free Pizza. You should have heard Michelle shriek!
Back on the road, the GPS was saying we still had at least 2 hours left of the journey, and at that point I almost felt inclined to just wait it out at the mall. But ALAS, we got back to the car, and the time decreased quite a bit! We pulled into the parking lot for Hotel Solaire. It is in downtown LA, DTLA as the locals call it. We didn't know the convention was next to the Staples Center, but we decided to walk. over to it to check out the location and figure out what we would be doing that weekend. We stopped into the Yard House next door to the Staples Center, and found out that the Lakers were playing the Chicago Bulls, and the Bulls won!!! There was a plethora of wasted people out and about, we had to fight to get drinks with about a thousand people. We decided to try to find somewhere else to go. We asked a valet at the hotel across the street, and he sent us to the rooftop bar at the Ace Hotel. What a bunch of young, bougie hipsters were hanging out there. They were swarming around the pool, dancing around the DJ, and sitting around looking bored with life. We fought again to beg a bartender to take our money and make some drinks. The ridiculous guy told us we were waiting in the wrong area for drinks, but would get us one round, WOW thank you!! WHAT A GREAT HUMANITARIAN!! We decided to give up, and head back to the hotel. The streets were littered with the homeless, sleeping in tents on the sidewalks, shopping carts, in the doorway to the ATMs at the bank. We suddenly felt very out of place, and lost. Thankfully, after only being lost for a half an hour, we found the HUGE shoe store, which told us the hotel was just around the corner.
We decided to get Michelle out to the beach, since she had never seen the ocean in her life!! We stopped first in Brentwood, hoping to brush shoulders with a few celebs. Isn't that part of what being in LA is all about? We went into a kitschy little coffee shop, which was boasting being macrobiotic. I just wanted a dang coffee with a kick. My fatigue was catching up with me. The did have some chia seed, something or other, that Michelle was excited to eat. I got a chocolate croissant. haha! right, carb addict girl here. With my milk alternative coffee, croissant and comfy shoes, we took off down the road to look for something to be excited about. We found a chocolate shop called Comparte. You could actually watch the chocolate being made in the shop window. We stopped in to check it out, duh!!! They had a wall full of different chocolate bars, and the glass counters with beautiful truffles and candies. I picked out donuts and coffee and hazelnut toast bars. We found out soon, they are almost $10 a piece, woops! We saw they had TooFaced bars, which is one of my favorite makeup brands, but it was dark chocolate with pink sugar salt, meh.
It was off to the beach! We went to Santa Monica. We walked through the sand, dipped our toes in the ocean, and took one of Michelle's most popular Facebook pictures, by ahem yours truly... We walked along the boardwalk, dodged seagulls, watched people spend money on ridiculous touristy things, and play arcade games. There was an overwhelming smell of funnel cake, which was starting to become too much. We decided to walk to the Santa Monica Promenade mall. We looked around, and walked around looking for new sunglasses, which we both wanted badly. We stopped in shops we could only visit in LA. We stopped for dinner at Cheesecake Factory, which used to be a favorite of both of us. Not anymore! We both felt sick after, and went to bed really early.
GENBEAUTY SATURDAY!! Finally!!
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