a couple days in review

So I mentioned before that Kara and I were heading out to California for a few days.  So I was MIA because I was hanging West coast style, yo.


I'm so gangsta.  I'm actually so gangsta, I have no idea if I should capitalize the W in the word "West."  Yes?  No?


Anyway, we flew out Saturday afternoon and got in at around dinner time.  So we took a taxi to our hotel in Marina del Rey, and when we pulled up, I was thinking, hm.  This doesn't look like the pictures on the review site.  But you know, we were tired, so we rolled with it.  For about 11 minutes.  Because when we got to our room, I was thinking that this definitely wasn't the hotel on the review site.


I don't need luxury.  But when I go away I like to be comfortable - at the very least, equally as comfortable as I am in my own home.  I was not comfortable.  In fact, I thought we may actually be on the wrong side of the tracks.  Are there tracks in Marina del Rey?  I don't know, but if there are, we were definitely not on the right side of them.


So, I set out to figure out what the hell happened to my well thought out plans of relaxing in a luxurious comfy bed in a sweet room looking out over the Pacific.


What I discovered was that I accidentally booked a hotel from hell, the hotel with the practically same exact name as the place that I meant to book.  The place I read the reviews on, checked out pictures of, etc.  (I'm an admitted review freak)  So I called a taxi.  And I called the original hotel and hoped for the best.  And then, we got the heck out of dodge.


We ended up in the good, comfy, cozy place.  The place on the right side of the tracks.  Ah... cocktails in the lobby/bar area.

The room was nice, the bed super comfy.  After a light meal and some cocktails at the hotel bar/restaurant, where I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that I ended up with the best tomato soup that I have ever eaten (and may or may not have actually licked my bowl) in my life, we settled in and just hung out in our beds for the rest of the night.  

Tomato soup from heaven, and a burrata salad... yummmmmm

The next morning we took our time being lazy in the room, and ended up getting out late for a little breakfast at this place called Joni's.

It didn't look like anything special from the outside, it was actually in a strip mall, but it had good reviews for the coffee and breakfasts, and supposedly, it's a favorite of the locals.

So yeah, the coffee was great.  Strong, but great.  And the breakfast was ridiculous.  They must have thought that I looked like I needed something to eat, because I thought I ordered a little egg sandwich on a croissant, and I ended up getting a massive egg sandwich on a croissant, hungry man's style.  There was no way that I was going to finish that yummy beast.  Kara's was equally as huge - too bad we didn't just share!

This croissant is actually on a dinner plate.  It literally took up 3/4 of the plate.
Who knew you could even get a croissants that's about the size of my head.

So after we were chatted up by this older local guy at Joni's who tried to get us to take a ride with him down to the pier, we walked.  We made our own way down to the pier, thank you very much.  It was just a couple of blocks away, and even though it was crazy windy, we went down to check out the ocean, which was gorgeous.

Crazy windy hair like this the whole time.

We didn't spend too much time down there because it was super windy and actually a bit chilly.  I was glad that I had a decent coat with me.  We stopped in this little boutique and Kara found some cool funky tops that she loved.  After a bit, we made our way into Santa Monica to this place called the Third Street Promenade, where there are three blocks of great shopping, all in this closed-off-to-cars street.  There were tons of great shops, and Kara loves to shop, so we spent a looooong time there.  We only made it half way if you can believe it!   We wanted to get back to go to this place called Killer Shrimp for dinner, and we had a tip from the hostess to come at a certain time so we wouldn't have to wait for a seat, so we decided to come back to the Promenade to finish shopping the next day, and we figured we'd also check out the Santa Monica Pier then too.

So I really have to go eat some sushi because I am starving and I might eat my arm off if I don't get food in my belly, like, right now.  So I'll wrap this up here, and continue tomorrow with... dinner at Killer Shrimp.  Stay tuned...