Almost vegan in Los Angeles I

I’m finally going to tell you all about the trip to Los Angeles I took in January! (I had to put to some space between it and my Europe posts, hence the delay.) This will be a multi-parter, since I have quite a few pictures. For the most part the weather was lovely—what a wonderful escape from the bitter midwestern winter!



Matt and I left KC early on a Thursday morning, and arrived in sunny California by 10am. My luggage, unfortunately, did not. How can Southwest, arguably the best airline there is, do that to the same person twice in three years?! (At least the situation wasn’t as dire as the first time it happened, in the spring of 2007—I went on a Caribbean cruise with my family, and out of 11 suitcases, the only one that made it to the ship was my mom’s and sister’s suitcase full of nothing but shoes. We had to spend the first three days at sea with nothing but the clothes on our backs and what little we had in our carryons. Gross!) Anyway, I tried to put the missing luggage out of my mind, and Matt and I grabbed lunch in Hollywood at a place we spotted called Gindi Thai.



The inside was clean, simple, and relaxed. We were right down the road from both Warner Bros. and ABC Studios, and we noticed at least a couple tables of people having lunchtime meetings, talking showbiz, reviewing scripts, etc.



I got an unsweetened passion fruit iced tea to drink, and Matt and I shared some miso soup to start.



I got the Vegan’s Fried Rice, which had broccoli, carrot, celery, red and green pepper, and fried tofu cubes. The sauce was sweet, spicy, and tangy all at once, and for some reason that rice was some of the chewiest, nuttiest, best rice I’ve ever had. I raved and raved about this dish; I wish I could have it again!



Matt and I spent the afternoon driving through the neighborhoods of the Hollywood Hills, trying to peek through the foliage at the pricey homes and stopping now and then for a photo op.



On the drive back to our hotel (the Hollywood Inn Express North, if you’re curious), we stopped for a snack. We don’t have Jamba Juice in KC, so we took advantage of its prevalence in LA by sharing a mixed berry soy smoothie. (Is it just me, or this smoothie glowing? "Jamba Juice OF THE GODS!" ::Cue angels singing::)



Not only had my luggage not shown up yet at 4pm, but Southwest was claiming they still didn’t even know where it was! I was freaking out a bit, but Matt helped calm me down, and we went shopping at the Lip Service bargain basement, which we’d planned to do anyway. That place is a grown-up-goth-kid’s dream come true. A really nice girl gave us a tour of their studio, where they design all the clothes and sew all the prototypes, and then we browsed their clearance racks like kids in a candy store. Matt very generously bought me some clubbing clothes. All in all, we walked away with $250-300 worth of awesome clothing for a mere $125.

After securing me an outfit for the evening, we set out in search of shoes, but another call to Southwest yielded the joyful info that my suitcase had been recovered! We were en route to The Grove mall, but we stopped in our tracks, swung by a Whole Foods for a quick takeout dinner, and returned to our hotel to change and get ready. We spent our first night in LA at The Ruby, a club on Hollywood Blvd, the Hollywood Blvd. Thursday is Perversion, a goth-industrial-electro-darkwave dance night. We watched people dance, Matt danced quite a bit, I even danced a little, and we both drank plenty. More than plenty, in fact...when we awoke the next morning to find pictures on my camera of us cavorting drunkenly down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, posing with the most inanely random stars, we almost fell over laughing (but didn’t, because then our heads would have hurt even more).



No sir, I can’t say I remember much of this at all. Oh, the hilarity. I daresay these pictures alone were worth the hangover.



More LA awesomeness to come!

If you like this, you might also like…
Europe, duh
Denver
Dallas 2008 and 2009
Mexican cruise, parts one, two, and three