Summer Vacation 2013

After a fantastic week roadtripping with friends, I'm now back home.  Alex is trying to get settled in LA and I'm adjusting back to being home. 

Last week was pretty awesome.  The drive down to LA wasn't that bad besides the typical idiots on the road and having to deal with equally dumb pedestrians, especially in San Francisco. Including the incredibly hot weather, those would be the only negatives of the trip.  Was far too busy talking, laughing, and shopping to focus on the little things.

The first day on the road we stopped in Portland to visit Powell's Bookstore and Voodoo Donuts.  I highly recommend that everyone must try at least one of their donuts (especially their cake donuts).  They have a couple of locations and after driving around in circles, made it to the one outside of downtown which thankfully did not have a line going out the door and we were lucky enough to see a wedding.  We stopped at Ashland for the night and had a quick bite to eat from the diner (service far from great but excellent food) before crashing.

 

 

Tuesday was our San Francisco stop to visit Baby the Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty.  We got a later start than we wanted to, as well as the drive being longer than expected.  After making sure a leak from the car wasn't anything serious, we made our way to BTSSB first, also stopping in to see the Liz Lisa store and having a blast with purikura.  Angelic Pretty was situated more with the general shopping which made it a pain to get to (between the traffic, crazy pedestrians, and parking).  The people who run the shop were very friendly and let us stay after the shop was closed to let us continuing browsing.  We went back to Japan Town for dinner and found that The Face Shop had a store there which I then proceeded to spend far too much money at.

 

 

 

 Since Wednesday was the last part of the drive, we took a leisurely morning and headed out at noon.  A week stop at Walmart and Wing Stop (which I haven't had in almost a decade), we were on our way.  Got in to LA around 8 o'clock and checked into our hotel which was under construction and didn't exactly infused us with the feeling of security.

Thursday, while Alex decided to apartment hunt and take some time to himself, me and Nai went off to visit Fairytale Boutique and explored Little Tokyo, with Nai's friends being our guides.  I was really happy to find that Fairytale had some Swimmer items and was very happy to find a Liz Lisa shirt that fit.  It was the 4th so plenty of places were closed, but still had plenty of places to look around at. Nai also picked up some macaroons from Lette (I recommend the chocolate and violet cassis).  We ended up at The Face Shop again - this location seemed to have a bit more than the San Francisco location, and I picked up a couple more things.  We stayed in at the hotel after getting back and later that night, ended up watching asian period dramas.

 

Friday we walked down to the Chinese Theatre, which unfortunately was blocked off.  I will never do that walk again - far too crowded for my taste and too many people trying to push something onto you.  Got pictures of the stars that I wanted on the Walk of Fame though.  We ended up back at Little Tokyo so Alex could see Fairytale Boutique and to check out some of the stores that were closed.  After a really good lunch and some frozen yogurt, we headed over to Anime Expo as it was free to get into the dealer's hall after 4:30.  After going through a  very efficient registration line, we headed in where we split up: Nai to spend some time at a booth selling manga, while Alex and I stayed together, hunting down the Liz Lisa booth.  One of the girls who was manning the booth recognized us from the BTSSB store, and though I swore I wouldn't buy anything, walked away with a cardigan and a pair of earrings.  Nai had caught up with us, and after finding out that the booth she was at had volumes of Princess Princess, Alex had to go back to it. I ended up with walking away from that booth with the entire Chobit series for only 30 bucks.

 

 

We had an extremely early morning on Saturday, getting up at 4 to be at the airport sometime after 5 since we at a 7:35 flight.  I was both happy and sad to be leaving: coming home meant going back to the same routine and work, as well as not knowing when I'd be seeing Alex again, but I'd be returning to slightly cooler weather, my own bed, and having somewhere where I can get away and be alone for a while.  It was a very quick check-in and the security check and the flight itself was very smooth (thank god the kids near us were well behaved and quite).  After getting picked up by my parents, it was a very easy day, just unwinding from the traveling and getting things unpacked.

It was a fantastic trip and I'm very thankful for Alex for inviting me (I hope I wasn't too annoying).  You can read his blog here and he does a far better job of detailing our trip than me.  Not entirely sure what I'll be posting next but I'll try to have something up soon.