
The past few days have been full and this introvert is so happy to be home. We had an amazing (but short!) trip to Los Angeles this past weekend, so I wanted to hop on and tell you all about it!
I flew out from Kalamazoo on my own on Thursday, because Sean was already traveling for work. I met him at LAX and my mom picked us up and brought us to our rental, where we met up with my dad and my aunt.
On Thursday evening, we went over to the house my extended family was renting and spent a bunch of time hanging out with my cousins. Sean and I ended up spending about an hour talking to my cousin and his fiancée (now wife!) about our dogs, which was great because we barely got to see them the rest of the weekend.

On Friday we met up with Sean’s family at Union Station and wandered around a good portion of DTLA. We started at Olvera Street, which had some cute shops. I bought a locally made candle (of course!), and we visited the oldest house in Los Angeles, Avila Adobe. We then visited the America Tropical Interpretive Center and the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles. It was great how many free museums there were in the area!





Once we were done there, we were ready for a break, so we headed to Grand Central Market, and lo and behold, we ran into my family! My sister had gotten into town late the night before, and my parents, sister, and aunt all went to the Grand Central Market the same time we did! So we joined them for a light lunch and some drinks.



After that, we headed to the Last Bookstore for a look around. I successfully avoided buying anything, even though I really wanted to! It was such a cool spot, even without actually shopping.



Once we were done there, we wandered over to Little Tokyo where we found another free museum, the Japanese American National Museum. I’m *pretty* sure it was only free for the day, but I would have paid for entry, too. It was amazing.
After that, we grabbed a bear at Angel City Brewery before going to Tenno Sushi and ate way too much. No regrets.

The next day, Sean and I went to Venice Beach and Santa Monica with my parents and sister. We’d heard about the motorized scooters around town, so we decided to try them out. They were a blast!

We got 4 Lyft scooters and one Lime scooter, and we realized that on the Venice boardwalk area, the Lime scooter was cruising around just fine but the Lyft ones were barely moving. There were people literally jogging past us. Eventually I realized that were in a blackout area, and as soon as we got farther from the water and only to the actual road, we zipped around just fine!


We had a quick lunch at the Albright on the Santa Monica Pier, then walked down to one of the lifeguard huts to recreate some moody photos we took in 2006 when we were in peak The OC fandom.




After that, we headed back to the rental and got ready for the wedding. We got there super early, so we swung by Arts District Brewing Company for a quick drink before the ceremony.

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at the Sidewalk Cafe with Sean’s parents before heading out!

It was a whirlwind trip filled with lots of socializing, but it was an absolute blast! Now I’m going to stay at home for the next few days and not talk to anyone.
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