Los Angeles: June 25: A Motley Assortment

On Saturday, Di Yin and I did a motley assortment of things. I of course took pictures. Din Yin did too. The link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #133). When you see a picture captioned "Checking out Venice with Edison" (picture #182), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link the following pictures in the next post.

First, we drove across town to Eagle Rock to see C and her new baby. C is a friend of Di Yin's; we attended her baby shower months before.

After visiting, we planned to stop by Galco's Soda Shop because it was in the neighborhood. We enjoyed it on our previous visit to L.A. but had by now drunk the bounty from that visit. C and J, despite living in the neighborhood, had never been to Galco's so they came with us and we showed them around.

I bought quite a haul: various ciders (most from my favorite Vermont cidery), a nice pile of Mr. Q. Cumber sodas, and an assortment of Hot Lips sodas in various flavors, among others, including some for E.

We then headed to Monterey Park to meet E for a late lunch. He'd selected Huge Tree Pastry, a joint he loves for its Chinese breakfasts (served all day). We ordered and ate too much (because it was good). Details as usual are in the pictures.

After a quick stop, we returned to E's place. I like how most of traffic in L.A. was going in the opposite direction both in the morning and after lunch. I guess we have good timing or good karma.

We relaxed for a while at home. Some people napped. In late afternoon, Di Yin and I decided to go for a walk. After a bit of research, we decided to explore Beverly Hills and Beverly Gardens Park, a two-mile-long green strip of park-land along Santa Monica Boulevard through Beverly Hills. E warned that parking might be tough in the area so we took a bus.

We walked alternating between walking in the park and walking through the residential streets of Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is nice. We enjoyed admiring the houses, many of which have wings. The park is also nice. Basically, it's a long promenade interspersed by big green areas. In one of these, I climbed a tree! It was fun; I want to do it more often. There are also a rose garden and a cactus garden.

Once we reached the end of the park, we hunted for a bus back to E's place. It took forever to come. I think the bus that was supposed to come before the one we took had something wrong with it and didn't come. All the passengers were grumbling. By the time we were on our way home, night had fallen, and consequently we missed out stop. By about five stops. Ugh, what an unpleasant bus experience. Finally we got home.

By the way, parking in Beverly Hills looked fine. We should've driven.

You may notice in the pictures a lack of photographs of dinner. This is because we didn't eat dinner. Our lunch was so large that this ended up being a one-meal day.