I love the summer; with the warm weather come cool foods, cold drinks, beaches, BBQs, and summer dresses.
Reid drove me down to LA the previous weekend before last to visit Kim! It was also my first time really walking around LA, as most of my previous trips have been to just to visit relatives during Thanksgiving when I was younger. Reid beat me to the blog post (again), so I’ll just punch out some of my highlights:
1. We went to the Santa Monica pier, where I rode a ferris wheel for the first time. According to others, it’s kind of weird that I haven’t been on one before. So we changed that, but it wasn’t as glamorous as I imagined it to be. It probably seemed cooler in Grease or the animated movie Charlotte’s Web when I was younger simply because I had never been on one before.
2. The one time I did drive through LA with friends was 8 years ago on the way to Tijuana, Mexico for a service trip, and we stopped at this amazing place called Diddy Riese. I dreamed about that place and its $1 icecream cookie sandwiches for 8 years, so my only request in LA was to go back to Diddy Riese. The sandwich is now $1.50 but I think it would sell for $5 anywhere. I had Espresso Chip icecream sandwiched between a peanut butter cookie and a macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookie - and it was beautiful.
I was so happy when I was eating this, except that Kim and Reid made me walk while eating.
3. Din Tai Fung - Now I understand the hype surrounding this place. The xiao long bao at this place are p-e-r-f-e-c-t. Yet another reason to love Shanghainese cuisine!
4. Reid really wanted to drive back up on highway 1, since both of us had never gone that way before. It took 12 hours to get home, with a nice dinner stop at Cannery Row in Monterey, but it was really worth the beautiful views of the California coast in stark contrast to the barren hills flanking the linear, quicker highway 5.
A bit of a "Marilyn Monroe" moment
This past weekend was fun too, except for the part on Saturday where Reid dragged me out to go hiking out to the Dish in the Stanford Foothills during the hottest part of the day. Okay okay, it was more like a 3 mile walk and it was actually pretty nice to get outside. Also on the upside, when we finished the walk, he went and surprised me by purchasing the grill he’s been eyeing! I had also been wanting to purchase a grill since I moved into Sunnyvale last year, and since we cook a lot together on the weekends and it’s been too hot to cook in my kitchen, he finally bit on a good deal. Sweeeeet. Just in time for a mid-summer barbecue? :)
Yes!
Can you tell where my priorities are by the size of the pictures I post? :)
OH and on Sunday, a couple of friends went to Santa Cruz to cheer on several friends that were participating in their first sprint triathalon. We got there only minutes after they finished, unfortunately, but the beach was still fun! Throwing around a frisbee “bee” reminded me of my dad and I doing the same thing in our backyard more than 15 years ago! I’m still just as terrible as I was back then, but I take comfort in consistency.
Action shot with the "bee" (Reid, I'm pretty sure "bee" is midwestern slang..)