LA. Day 6. There's a pig in the pool.
We woke up to a sunny Friday morning. Perfect weather just in time for us to leave. We had one more great breakfast buffet and then spent an hour at the pool enjoying the hot tub one last time.
Around 12:30 we packed up the car and started the drive back to LA. We made a stop at the outlets in Oxnard so I could shop at the Ted Baker outlet. It cost us a bit of time as the holiday weekend traffic was piling up during our stop, but it was totally worth it. We finally made it to LA around 3:45 and checked into the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Tzvi had booked a room with a terrace (most rooms do not have terraces – there are only about a dozen rooms that do). When we got to our room we found a very nice terrace, but no bathtub. Tzvi had actually called to confirm that the terrace rooms with two beds have bathtubs, so we were confused. We really needed the bath because (1) Hallie still cries when you put her in the shower, and (2) the bathtubs at the SLS are awesome and massive and we weren’t missing out on that. So Tzvi went back to the front desk to be told that there were no terrace rooms left with bathtubs, but he could take a lower category room and a $150 food and beverage credit and move to a terrace room on Saturday. So we did that. We got a fine room with a bathtub (room 317), unpacked a little bit, then repacked completely on Saturday and had a bellman load our luggage onto a cart and take it to the second floor where the terrace rooms were. Except when we got to our new terrace room, while there was a bathtub, the room stunk of smoke. The SLS charges $750 if you smoke in a room, so it’s surprising someone would do it. The hotel apologized and said they would put air purifiers in the room and see if the smell went away in three hours. Meanwhile, we offloaded our luggage back into room 317. Three hours later we came back, checked the terrace room, it smelled great! Tzvi went back to the room and had a bellman reload the luggage onto the cart. While they did that, I went back to the terrace room and found that as soon as they took out the purifiers and closed the terrace door the smoke smell came back. Back to 317! We just spent the rest of the stay in 317 and got compensated with some cash off the bill and some free food at the restaurant. The room was fine, but all the time we lost with packing and unpacking and moving and waiting was really annoying.
Anyway, Friday afternoon we spent at the rooftop pool. We ordered some food and drinks and Hallie splashed in the pool. Unfortunately there was no hot tub. They have two pools, but only one is heated – the other is shallow, freezing, and has a pig in it. The SLS pool is a total scene with lots of girls in skimpy bikinis, and guys making out on pool chairs.
After the pool we changed and drove over to the Kaplans apartment for Shabbos dinner. Mark’s brother Larry was there and it was nice to see him. For dinner Sherry and Mark had brought in Chinese food because we wanted meat and it was the easiest thing for them. Unfortunately, Sherry forgot to ask about nut allergies… We didn’t order anything with nuts, but we were nervous. Tzvi ate everything, but Hallie basically just had the chicken soup and a lot of challah. After dinner we walked back a mile and a half to our hotel. It felt like a very long walk.