A few days after Alan was released from the hospital last Thursday, my mom and sister flew in for a week long visit. A few days after that, because I have grown used to feeling like my eyelids have been filled with sand, my sister and I decided to go on a short trip to LA. The main reason for the trip was so Sophie could tour UCLA, but it seemed that the main reason for me was to melt into a giant, sappy, nostalgic puddle. Friends! Oh, I missed them! UCLA! What a beautiful place! Food! How I love thee!
First stop, Silver Lake. Jennifer took us to this amazing gelato place where all the flavors tasted exactly like what they were supposed to be. I got a scoop of grape thinking I’d taste some Groovy Grape Bubblicious flavor, but it tasted exactly like I was eating a bunch of grapes. And my scoop of PB&J tasted like a Goober filled sandwich. The gelato place was also conveniently located across the street from the Casbah Cafe, the cafe where Jennifer often sees Scott Speedman. And who doesn’t want to see herself some Ben from Felicity?
A cute, quirky boutique with decorative pillows that would look amazing on my couch. But that would cost about as much as 20 medium, 3-topping Pinkberrys.
Dinner at Honda Ya in Little Tokyo. I could eat Yaki Onigiri for every meal.
My roommates at some point in time.
Jennifer and Karin
Ending the evening on a sweet, tangy, ultimately refreshing note.
The next morning we woke up early to prepare for the arduous 17 mile drive from Silver Lake to Westwood for our 10 o’clock UCLA tour. An hour after leaving, we were still stuck in traffic. And why, oh why, there is traffic between 9 and 10 A.M. after everyone should be at work already is beyond me. The only thing I could think of was that they were all headed to the UCLA tour, too.
I know, I could have given Sophie a tour myself, but I wanted her to experience the real deal for herself. And what a great idea it was. The tour guide did such a good job of pumping us all up, not only did I want Sophie to go to UCLA, I wanted to go, too!
I forgot how pretty the campus is. This building is where I took one of my first psych classes. I can’t remember the exact class title, probably because I was too focused on the way the professor pronunced her words. Like how the word process was pronounced PRO-cess.
Does this look familiar? Our tour guide told us Tom Hanks filmed Angels and Demons here.
I never knew the Powell Library ceiling cost $300 million until this tour.
Bruin love.
Sophie loves palm trees. This is why she needs to go to UCLA!
After our tour of UCLA and Westwood, we paid a visit to Roy. And because he hates us and wanted us to fall into a deep food coma and crash our car and die, he cooked us a gigantic meal that we continued to digest well into the next morning. Who knew bomb diggityness took so long to digest? He started us off with a wonderfully light, aromatic tomato basil soup with ridiculously garlicy bread.
Spaghetti Carbonara tastes like MMmmm.
It took a whole hour to drive 20 miles out of LA and seriously, why hasn’t anyone invented teleportation yet?