Los Angeles. Day 6. Looks Like Another Perfect Day.

“Look at that mountain,
Look at those trees,
Look at that bum over there, man,
He’s down on his knees.
Look at these women,
There ain’t nothing like ‘em nowhere.”

— Randy Newman

Well, Madeleine was up 345-430 coughing. I was so nauseous. Have I mentioned yet that I’ve been nauseous on this trip?

I think I finally fell back asleep at 430 and slept until 630 when Hallie woke me up. We hung out for a while, then she woke up Madeleine soon after that, and then Tzvi got up. We started our day, went to breakfast, and then packed up to head out for the day.

Unfortunately, Madeleine had a tantrum that lasted for about a half hour, so that was fun. Anytime Madeleine does something like this, or something annoying Tzvi is always like “I don’t remember Hallie doing this.” Except Hallie would do this often. I can even remember a vacation tantrum she had in Geneva when she was almost the same age as Madeleine. Good times. [Tzvi: I do remember that.]

Finally, she calmed down and we were able to leave. We drove over to Daniel and Deborah’s house, which I’d never seen. That was very nice. Thank you for having us and allowing our children to run all over your house and furniture. It’s always interesting to see different kinds of house layouts, since basically all of the houses in the five towns are either split levels or center-hall colonials.

After that we stopped at Got Kosher on Pico for pretzel challah, and then Eilat Bakery for cookies. At Eilat I got out of the car and stepped in something that was probably homeless person doodie. Anyway, they no longer serve food at Eilat, which is unfortunate because I remember them having good stuff. Probably a Covid death. Mostly I was just disappointed that they didn’t have the chocolate allegator, though you can’t really fault them for that since it was Schwartz Bakery that sold the alligator, not Eilat.

We were hungry and weren’t sure what to do for lunch, so we decided to drive back over to Toast again. It was delicious, again. No celebrity sightings this time though. I had a tuna sandwich and Tzvi had a tuna melt. Hallie ate potatoes.

Then we drove to Hollywood. Madeleine fell asleep in the car, but Robyn me and Hallie walked around Hollywood Boulevard. We saw the stars on the Walk of Fame, including Donald Trump and Michael Jackson, which was exciting for Robyn who is a big fan (of Michael Jackson, not Donald Trump). Then there was a Ghirardelli/Disney Studio Store, where we bought more stuff, because why not. We also went to the Hollywood Store, which is basically a gigantic souvenir shop, and bought some Hollywood paraphernalia. That was fun.

Then we headed over to Larchmont Village, which is basically one street with a bunch of nice stores. We did some shopping, including at a cute bookstore that had a nice kid’s section and we got a couple of Little Golden Books of Disney movies, because we hadn’t bought enough Disney stuff on this trip.

And then we finally got Salt & Straw ice cream, which we had been looking forward to all week. Salt & Straw is the best ice cream and it didn’t disappoint. Although, I will say that they always have interesting flavors, which are sometimes good enough to get but at least usually good enough to try. This time there were really no interesting flavors that I was even willing to try. Tzvi tried the corn and cotija cheese flavor, which tasted like exactly that, and which should never be put into ice cream; I have no idea who’s getting a whole cone full of that. Anyway, our ice cream was delicious. We both got cones with sea salt with caramel ribbons and salted malted chocolate chip cookie dough.

Oh, no idea why I’m remembering this now, but two nights ago at dinner at Della Terra a dog licked Madeleine’s face. Robyn had been walking with her outside and they saw a dog and Madeleine asked to pet it, and the owner said she could, but warned that she likes to lick. Well, Madeleine came running in very excited to tell us, ‘A doggie licked my face!’ I swear Madeleine loves every dog except Margie.

Margie

Anyway, from Larchmont Village we drove over to the Kaplans and brought them ice cream. We hung out there for a bit, and then went downstairs to Erewhon, the grocery store at the bottom of their building. Erewhon is popular (mostly on Tik Tok and Instagram) for being probably the most expensive grocery store in LA. It’s always interesting to walk around there to (1) gawk at the prices and (2) sometimes gawk at the celebrities, because who else is paying $14 for a small bottle of juice? Well, other than us, because we had to try it and see what kind of juice could be worth $14. Actually, it was freshly squeezed orange, pineapple and strawberry and it was delicious and came in a very nice glass.

Then we came back to the hotel to get ready for Shabbos. We had to say goodbye to the car because it was being picked up at 7pm. Tzvi was sad about that, but it was great having it.

Around 730pm, the Kaplans came to the hotel with the Shabbos food that we had ordered from Lieders. They had heated it up in their apartment, so we had hot Shabbos food which was nice. We had ordered London broil, schnitzel, chicken, grilled veggies, humus, little egg rolls and pigs in blankets and some other stuff. We had a very nice Shabbos dinner in our hotel room, though Tzvi and I were still so nauseous. Tzvi took like three bites of food and then was ready to pass out on the couch, which was convenient because that was also where he was eating his dinner due to the lack of chairs in our rooms.

For dessert we ate the cookies from Eilat and some desserts from Erin McKenna’s Bakery (a vegan bakery that we stumbled on next to Salt & Straw earlier, and which also has outposts in NYC and Disney World).

Eventually we got the girls to bed, then said goodnight to Sherry and Mark. Tzvi and I decided we would take a bath, but then we passed out on the bed reading. Actually, I was reading in bed and I thought OK, we discussed that we’d like to take a bath, but let’s see if Tzvi will go start it. Instead, he laid down to read. I was too tired to continue reading so I just thought ok, if he starts the bath I’ll go. If not, I’ll fall sleep. I think we woke up around midnight and decided to just quickly shower and go to sleep.

End of day.