The 2 hour drive from San Diego to Hermosa Beach turned into a 3 hour journey from one traffic cluster to the next, so we didn't arrive until sometime around 8pm Friday night.
Dan Neary, a friend and former co-worker of Laura's, was our amazing host and served us a much-needed home-cooked meal shortly after we arrived. The rest of the night was "girl's night"- we just chilled, watched movies, and drank margaritas...
Saturday morning, Dan's uncle stopped in for a visit, so while they took off to spend some quality family time together, we ran a few loads of laundry (the dryer apparently thought my socks were too big, so it shrunk them down to bite-size!), and walked down to the beach to catch a few afternoon rays. We walked all the way from the pier at Hermosa Beach to the pier at Manhattan Beach, which was probably the equivalent of 4 miles round-trip. Along the way, we saw more dolphins far out in the water, and I picked up a baby crab that was living among the barnacles and mussels that were attached to the pier supports.
On the walk back from the beach, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some items to make our famous chicken fajitas for dinner. We also got to witness yet another amazing sunset (which is apparently the norm for the area) from Dan's back rooftop balcony, no big deal.
After dinner we all crashed out for a power nap and then got ready to hit the town... Unfortunately, since this was a much more populated area and a very popular location for nighttime party enthusiasts, every place was jam-packed and charged a cover! So we checked out one of the places that had the shortest line to get in...
At this time, I must take a moment to demonstrate how corrupt and made-up the admissions are: We were waiting in this line for a few moments, when a group of very attractive young girls walk up, past the line and the bouncer lets them right in... A few moments later, the same thing happens again. Shortly after that, the bouncer hasn't let anyone else in, but notices that four young and attractive girls are waiting in line behind us, and so he comes to the back of the line and asks, "How many?" The girls reply, "Just us 4," so the bouncer tells them to go ahead in. He then looks at us and sees that there is a guy (Dan) in line with us and walks back up to the front without a word. Several moments later, two heavier-set girls, who probably don't rank in the top 5 most attractive females on the strip walk up past the line and approach the bouncer, chat for a moment, and then walk away, and we hear them say, "It's a $5 cover here too." Slightly irritated, and hoping to find a place that doesn't have a cover charge, we step out of line and wander around, but all the other places have cover charges or extremely long lines, so I decide to see if we can beat the system, and walk up to the bouncer to see if he will let us in even with a dude. Or at least if we can sort of play it where he thinks he's just letting 2 girls in and then after he says yes, Dan walks right up and we just say, "Oh- he's with us too..." So I approach the bouncer and ask him if he can let us in and again, he asks how many, so I admit there's 3 of us and 1 is a guy. He says he has to ask, so he walks over to a guy who is sitting on the patio, they chat for a few moments, and then he comes back over and says, "Sure, but the guy has to pay $10." No problem, 3 for the price of 2 and we don't have to wait? Whatever!
Once we got in, we had to wait another 20 minutes just to get our first drinks, and it was so crowded that we couldn't find a single place to chill for a minute where we weren't being chased out of the way by bar staff or pushed away from tables that were claimed by peoples' stuff... Last time I checked, in a crowded bar, 'stuff' doesn't save seats- it gets stolen! But, being the nice person that I am, I didn't steal anybody's stuff and I moved when they came back to their table and stared us down until we felt so uncomfortable that we didn't want to sit there anyways! So we pounded the remaining 3/4 of our drinks and checked out of that place REAL quick... We caught up with one of Dan's buddies and moved on to the 'Boston' bar, which was founded by a former Bostonian and displayed Boston sports memorabilia, just like home! :-)
After last call, we headed back to Dan's condo to crush a few more beers and then called it a night.
Sunday morning was football and breakfast burritos, and then we all took another walk down to the beach for a stroll in the 80-degree sunshine... Rough, we know. ;-)
For dinner, we decided to try out one of the local grubberies, and Dan got his first official California Icing, courtesy of yours truly! We packed it in early because Dan & his roommate had to be out early for work in the morning (I've almost forgotten what that's like...). So we were back on the road, sort of, by 7:30am Monday morning!
We actually stopped at a bagel shop for breakfast & coffee, and to use the free WiFi to figure out our next plan of action... So we were back on the road by 10am Monday morning!
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