I love LA

Interestingly, if I try to do a non-emoji heart symbol in the title, it reads it as broken code. Good to know.

I adore Los Angeles, think of it very much as "home," and after a year of living in Chicago still say I'm from California. I wasn't excited to go, though, which might be in part because I travel so much that it sort of takes that kind of edge off. It wasn't until I got on the plane and buckled my seat belt that I thought, "I'm going back."

This post is about two months late, and I won't be getting into a ton of detail because most of what I did was hanging out with friends and catching up, and there are some things that don't get shared. But there are the things that can:

-I nearly killed the car as soon as I got it. It was driving weird, and I barely thought they were going to let me out of the Avis lot with it, the way I was stopping and starting while figuring out the brakes, and managed to figure out how to shift gears so I could actually drive on the freeway. It wasn't until I had gotten out of the car and gotten back in later that I realized I had put it in first when I could have just put it in drive. Oops.

-Went to In N Out first thing. I'm a vegetarian, but their grilled cheese is basically the hamburger without the burger, and it's incredible. I need one transported to the Midwest.

-Found vegan Chinese food.

-Had a quiet moment at Long Beach, which I think was my favorite moment of the whole trip. Just a girl and her filty, filthy beach.

-Got Mexican coffee from my favorite place, Portfolio on Junipero and 4th.

-Buzzed past my old apartment in Long Beach. It's pistachio green now, I swear to god.

-Went to Disneyland! Did a bunch of Star Wars stuff, then realized the lines weren't bad so we kept putting off lunch until we felt blood sugar crashes coming on. Then we went to Trader Sam's to drink for three hours before coming back. I came away with a Han Solo lunchbox and a light up Millennium Falcon ice cube. A+ trip.

-Met a friend from Canada to go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Aside from some sets and the prop house, we saw the DC and Harry Potter museum, and a warehouse full of Batmobiles. Also there were four adorable teenage-ish sisters who were so happy whenever we got to something Pretty Little Liars-related.

-Got my picture taken at Central Perk.

-Also did some Harry Potter greenscreen work.

-Found myself a horchata latte. If you can ever get one of these, do it. If you can get things like Mexican coffee, drinks, or food, get it, it is actually authentic there.

-Spent most of my time stuck in traffic on the 710, now my least favorite freeway.

-Met up with said Canadian friend to go to Universal Studios, where I went on maybe three things, but I got to hang out at Hogwarts and have butterbeer and that's all I really needed from life.

-Left Universal at 3, and got coffee at the Starbucks there, which was a grave mistake. Got coffee at 3:30. Drove over to Avis at LAX in traffic to drop off my rental car and was told I could catch a bus from LAX to Union Station. Leave Avis around 4:30 on the shuttle to LAX, find the right place for the shuttle, then wait. Realize at 5:30 I should see when the bus is coming, realize I have about a half hour to wait. Bus gets there at 6. Bus gets stuck in rush hour traffic. Bus gets to Union Station at 7:23, at which point several people have missed their trains and I'm about to. The guy checking people's tickets is extremely rude and keeps making people who're about to miss their trains wait for him because "that's not the way to be." I get on my train at 7:25 after sprinting through the train station with my luggage, basically have a mild asthma attack, pick the only empty seat on that car next to a poor guy who after ten minutes of me coughing and wheezing and being a general mess, asked to get off at the first stop to get away from me. :(

-Then threw an aspirin into my bra.

So, LA was a ton of fun, and there's still plenty I want to do. I still haven't gotten to the Last Bookstore, and I want to go back to Hollywood Forever for a movie, and I want to drive up to Hearst Castle, and go to the Broad, and I'll have to go back to see Star Wars Land when it's finished, and and and. I also think I did things in the right order, too; I'm not sure I could have left LA without my heart breaking unless I was going to San Diego next. And then by the time I left San Diego I was so tired I just wanted to get to my bed, I didn't care what state I was in.

I'm picking a better way to get to San Diego, though. That method did not work.