Monday was Emily's last night in L.A., and the last true night of vacation for me before I was back on my head with client work Tuesday afternoon and commencing with the cocktails and the meetings and the lunches and the cocktail-lunch-meetings.
We had sushi with Cy (our kind and generous host) at a place called SugarFish. I didn't manage to take a picture of anything, not one single thing, because after that first bite it all got eaten too quickly for photography AND I'm pretty sure I was disoriented from deliciousness and would not have been able to operate a camera. After sushi we headed for a street/district in Venice called Abbot Kinney that was just teeming with adorable. Little shops, boutiques and cute restaurants everywhere. And this!
After dessert, we headed to a bar right on Venice Beach called The Venice Whaler. It was dark, so there wasn't much of an ocean view, but the breeze was killer and looking out at the black expanse of ocean across the sand from us was a pretty nice way to end the evening.
Tuesday morning, we had a hankering for pancakes. This was the size of our hankering.
Now with my hand, for scale purposes. 
And now with what I managed to eat out of it in that first sitting. 
I only note "in that first sitting" because I later ate those exact same pancakes for breakfast FOUR DAYS IN A ROW. We were at a place we found on Yelp called The Griddle Cafe, which I felt was Los Angeles' pastry/baked goods equivalent of San Diego's Hash House. And when I say equivalent, I clearly just mean: another place where you will be served more food than even THREE people could eat in one sitting, and it will be amazing, and you will push the boundaries of consumption. And if you're us, drink three mimosas each. Also: WHY DID I ORDER A SIDE OF EGGS? That was ill advised. The fact that I did not nap that afternoon and instead powered through and actually managed to get work done is not only a source of personal pride but also, I feel, grounds for some type of national merit award for advances in will power.
I dropped Emily off for her flight around 2 o'clock and headed for the home of my second host of the week, my friend Ben. We caught up for a bit before I settled into work mode, and after a few hours of responding to e-mails and sorting out my to-do lists for the rest of the week we headed to Smith House, where Ben bartends, for some beers and grub.
Wednesday morning I got up and set out for Venice, back near The Whaler, to get in a morning run. After four days of eating Griddle Cafe Hash House All You Can Eat Vacation Buffet style, my body was ready for a change of pace. And while there were a lot of homeless people out enjoying the morning with me, this was what framed my run. I can't complain.
That day I worked from a cute little coffee shop called Bricks and Scones, outside under palm fronds most of the day. I went to Santa Monica Wednesday night to meet up with Kate, an old friend from middle school and high school who now works in entertainment PR. We had a couple drinks at a bar near her office that was (somehow, miraculously) showing the Memphis basketball game on its one television. After the game and our catch-up, I picked up some dinner and headed back to Ben's to get some more work done and call it a night. Up next is our final installment from the L.A. trip, in which things go south, and then, so do I -- home.
cheers,
elizabeth
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