On our last full day in LA we woke up to… more rain and fog! Ugh! Wah wah wah, right? (But! The good news! My nose and eye stopped running!)

And I had only gotten about four hours of sleep the night before so I woke up feeling a bit testy. Not good. I worked on blog posts and Instagram for a bit and then on finding a place for breakfast. I figured we’d go to the All Day Vegan Café that opened at 9:00 the day before… but… it opened at 10:00 on Saturdays. Sigh. Ha ha ha. I was annoyed by that. So we decided to go to Erin Mckenna Bakery after our first stop of the day. And I hoped they’d have sandwiches llike the location I went to in September in Santa Monica, and not just sweets. (Spoiler, they did not and I was very whiny.)

Our first stop was the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the TCL Chinese Theater. They were really close to where we were staying in West Hollywood. It was fun to walk on the stars and read the names, and see the theater in person! And they already had the street all blocked off for the Oscars.

After that we went to Erin McKenna Bakery and spent an arm and a leg on baked goods and coffee and a (bad) chai. I think it was around $46 for four baked items and two drinks? Yikes. We got a savory scone (so so), a donut (pretty good), a cinnamon roll (also pretty good), and some cran-something bread (so doughy and yummy I went back and bought a piece of banana bread (for $6) for the next day).

I was just so moody that morning. I was annoyed the place I wanted to go to opened late (even though that was about the time we got to the bakery, ha), that the bakery was only a bakery, that it did not have a public bathroom, that is was raining and my hair was all frizzy. Wah wah wah.

I did NOT get enough sleep.

We walked around a bit after eating breakfast then drove to SpaceX to see the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. That was really cool to see in person. And I took a vertical pano that turned out hilarious:

Ha ha ha.

After that we headed to the Venice Beach area. I wanted Steven to see a different beach, and we want to drive on Highway 1 a bit. We got Sweet Greens (a salad chain) for lunch, then drove to the beach and decided we didn’t want to pay to park. Then we drove around Venice Beach a bit and decided it was not for us and got on Highway 1, headed north. I was excited to drive by Santa Monica and see the pier and think of the great time I had there with my snis and Ella in September!

My salad wasn’t supposed to have kale, and I am not supposed to eat kale because it has so much Vitamin K (and that makes your blood clot faster), but I figured since I was having so few greens than normal, maybe it would be okay? We will see at my INR appointment today!

We drove up to Malibu, got Starbucks (I was falling asleep in the car), then turned around and went to Castle Rock Beach. The beach there wasn’t groomed like the one in Huntington, so it looked no where as nice, but we still enjoyed it! I hid a rock there (the first one of mine I hid on the trip – and I heard back that someone found it!) and took a rock to paint.

We got in the car after the beach to head to the Griffith Observatory. I really wanted to see the view from there when I was in LA last year and didn’t, and was so excited to go. Then we got there and it was completely foggy. Sigh.

Getting up there is a bit of a pain. It’s a bunch of out and backs with parking along the side. We thought maybe there would be parking near the top since it was so foggy and getting close to sunset but the parking staff would not let us go up there (then opened it up right after we parked, of course) so we had to go back down a bit and park then walk back up.

Wah wah wah. My motto for the day.

I’m still glad we tried!

We decided to get pizza for dinner and google maps took us through some windy neighborhood to get there, which was fun… and scary. It’s amazing how hilly LA is, and seeing how they build on the hills there.

We ordered pizza (and “chicken” wings & sweet knots – all good but the knots were the best!) from Fresh Brothers. While we waited I finished writing postcards, and Steven looked up local real estate prices on Zillow. Ha.

We took the food back to the Airbnb to eat (on a sticky table… that place was just a bit ick). We watched the penultimate episode of The Last of Us, then walked a bit on Sunset Boulevard – we wanted to see The Oppenheim Group Real Estate office (from Selling Sunset). Sunset was happening! There were lots of people driving, and waiting in lines to get into places. And there I was, walking around in my joggers. Ha.

After we got back we packed and tried to get to bed early since we had a 4:00 am (but would feel like 3:00 am due to DST starting) wakeup call to catch our flight home!