Let’s Go . . . Here

With a week off (well sort of … there’s some iffyness on this), and B-Rod also having time off, we decided to try out our new travel privileges of flying standby for a good price.  We were hoping to get to Mexico to go to a friend’s wedding, but alas that wasn’t meant to be.  There was no problem getting a flight there. The problem was the soonest we could possibly get a flight back was the Tuesday after I return to work. That seemed to be the case with most of the flights down South. Guess everyone is sick of this prolonged winter weather. Damn me and my sense of responsibility otherwise we would be in Mexico right now!

So on Thursday we decided to try getting to Los Angeles. B-Rod had flown there with work a couple weeks ago, saw the Hollywood sign and thought that it would be fun to do the cheesy,  touristy stuff.   We had also recently watched an episode of “Parts Unknown” with Anthony  Bordain where he spent time hanging out with a couple of Koreans in LA’s Koreatown.  The food along with the cultural diversity also inspired this trip (check out this episode and others if you are interested in travel and/or food).

On Thursday we put ourselves on the standby list, on Friday we arranged to rent a little studio suite in Santa Monica and at 4:30 this morning we hit the road to get to the airport. Not only did we have no problems getting on the flight, but B-Rod’s friend who was ultimately the one who was able to get B-Rod on with his latest job was one of our pilots.

I had a good snooze on the plane, then we did what we do best when we land in a new place … we hit the ground running!!  Figured out how to use the public transport to get to our place (who wants to pay the high prices for cab fare when we got to our destination for $2 AND enjoyed a “cultural” experience),  then we walked to the beach and just put on many miles walking around checking things out.

It wasn’t as warm here as I thought it would be (maybe because it was super windy?), but I’m trying not to complain since it was starting to snow as our plane pulled out of the gate in Calgary. 

We started out by hitting the beach in Santa Monica and walked along the strip to Venice beach. I can’t even imagine how crazy this place is in summer (when it’s warm!)

The most exciting part of the day was when we were walking around and ran into a Kogi food truck. The owner of this truck was one of the Koreans who Anthony Bordain spent time with on the show. He has a few trucks that don’t have a permanent location (B-Rod signed up for a twitter account just so we could track down one of these baby’s!) So, finding one of these trucks by accident was pretty exciting. The food was AMAZING!!!  And the owner ended up showing up to this location as we were there. B-Rod was like a teenage girl who was seeing his teen idol in the flesh “look who it is” he practically screamed as the guy passed by “we saw you on Bordain” he said to the guy as he shoved his hand into his for an enthusiastic handshake. The guy seemed a bit surprised, yet also indifferent “I haven’t even watched the show,” he said. We thought it was pretty funny and had a short chat with him. He came across the same as he did on the show. Pretty humble and low key. It was awesome. Our first celebrity encounter : )

B-Rod enjoying some tacos topped with kimchi. 

My kimchi quesadillas – yummy!!

Looking forward to seeing what the next few days bring.