Los Angeles. Day 4. This is Where the Jews Are.
I woke up this morning with less pain! Hoorah!
Tzvi woke up early (like 6ish) to start work, which woke me up, which is annoying. We headed down to breakfast, my first at the hotel. I have to say, very nice spread, though Tzvi has already talked about that. We obviously had to pay extra again so Hallie could have pancakes. Talia, the babysitter, showed up around 9:30 to take Hallie, and Tzvi and I sat at breakfast for almost another hour and a half doing some work..
The restaurant is very serene with lots of light wood and makes you feel like you’re up in the trees looking out at the great views of downtown. It was lovely. There were only two issues keeping it from being perfect. One was the inability to serve hot decaf coffee. Even when they brewed a fresh pot, it wasn’t hot enough! So weird. The other was a baby that kept crying and the parents were doing nothing to try to stop it. There was a man, probably in his 30s, sitting a couple of tables away from us. He was just drinking coffee and looking out at the view remarking at how peaceful it was there. Then the baby started crying and he turned to us and said, “well now it’s starting to feel like a Denny’s in here.”
We went back to the room to do some more work and watched Harry Potter. For the past few days there have been Harry Potter marathons on USA and SYFY. The annoying part is they play Fantastic Beasts after HP7b, and who really wants to watch that?
In the early afternoon we decided to go for lunch, but basically everything shuts down here on Christmas (even more so than it does in NYC). It’s kind of weird - maybe it’s because of everything that’s been going on, or maybe it’s because we’re away and it’s not cold and frightful outside, or maybe it’s because Tzvi hasn’t watched A Christmas Story on TBS 12 times, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas.
We took an Uber to Canters, a non-kosher but very Jewish deli that’s open 24/7 and has been around forever. The place was packed with Jews (and some non-Jews, but mostly Jews). The line was out the door so we had to wait a little bit. While we waited we listened to the two women behind us talking to each other about how Jewish they were. I don’t remember what they actually said, but they kept talking about challah, and latkas, and Russ and Daughters in NYC. We finally got seated and both ordered vegetable soup, we shared latkes, and Tzvi had some cottage cheese.
After lunch we went back to the room and watched more Harry Potter. My parents landed late in the afternoon and after much back and forth between everyone about where to go for dinner (most of the kosher places were open for dinner) we decided it was only fitting to have Chinese, so Sherry and Mark picked us up at our hotel and we met my parents for dinner at Shanghai on Pico. Of course it was packed and it took a while to get our food (especially' Sherry’s vegetable lomein which didn’t come until we were all finished eating). The food is very different from Chosen. Some things were better, and some things weren’t. Just different.
After dinner we went back to the hotel to put Hallie to bed. As we were walking to our room Tzvi realized that he forgot to get channukah candles from his parents apartment. This led to an hour of back and forth until finally Tzvi gave up, got in an Uber, and picked up channukah candles from his parents apartment. We had already put Hallie to bed at that point, so we lit candles quietly and kept the door open while it was pouring rain and freezing outside.
After that whole ordeal was over, Tzvi went to the lobby to cash in the free drink coupons they had given us on the first night. Tzvi got a mezcal drink and I got a blueberry mojito (sans-alcohol of course). We took a bath and then got into bed and Tzvi fell asleep on his computer.
Better day.
