Of Summer - 3 weeks in California (Part 2)

Mulholland Drive is one of those places along Beverley Hill that's vastly popular. It's LA's most famous street, with a winding drive down the mountain with multiple lookout points overlooking LA's downtown. It's home to many Hollywood celebrities, and there's a running list online on where each celebrity stays. It's a little creepy that a subset of the tourism industry sprung up just for people to stalk celebrities. Do celebrities need privacy, and are they truly celebrities unless everybody knows their home address and/or blood type? It's on the way to Santa Monica, the coastal town with its ever-iconic beach and a Ferris wheel. It's just a few days after we visited Malibu, but we were in the tail-end of summer, and we wanted to make the most of what we could of LA's beaches. Another group that we saw on the beach along Santa Monica had the same idea; they were setting up a picnic complete with charcuterie, wine and all sorts of fruits. 

After we built up an appetite, we went over to Santa Monica Seafood Market, Cafe and Oyster Bar, where I'd had a transcendental experience with their singular Seared Sesame Crusted Albacore. It was deeply rare in the middle, with a seared exterior and crusted with sesame seeds. It didn't taste like anything I'd had before, and even a few months later, it's the first thing I think of when I reminisce about the food I've had in LA. 

Food plays a prominent role in my travels, and even the fast food was terrific. I couldn't get enough of Five Guys' Burgers' magnificent fries and burgers. It's no-frill, just a simple meal of burger-and-fries done perfectly well. Chick-fil-A also makes chicken burgers so tender,  I could scarcely believe it was chicken breast. 

I was on a mission to try every fast food I can, and Chipotle was one of the places I went to that brought a great cheer to my trip. The much-known American friendliness is well and alive in LA - where, get this - when the manager heard that I was a tourist having Chipotle for the first time, gifted me guacamole and a bag of tortilla chips. On the house. Sigh. 

In-and-Out is just across the street from Camarillo Premium Outlets, where we had spent several enjoyable afternoons browsing and buying items that I hadn't quite realised I need in my life - until I tried them on. The days passed by rather splendidly. 

My favourite pizza find was over at Parma Pizzeria Napoletana, where they serve regional pizza of every major style. I fell in love a little with their Detroit-style pizza, with their square-pan shapes of pizza with crisp cheesy edges. They were a delight. 

We walked plenty around the neighbourhood. It wasn't still summer by the Gregorian calendar, but the Lunar Calendar runs on its own time and declared it the middle of autumn already. We spent a fine autumn evening in Deerhill Park, where the sun lit the surrounding mountains up in warm hues for the Mid-Autumn Festival. We drank plenty of tea, stuffed ourselves silly with mooncakes and watched the performance staged by Oak Park Chinese Association. And later, as dusk fell, we carried lanterns through the shadows. 

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Such a long holiday like this doesn't come by often, and for myself, traveling solo on a plane for 20+ hours isn't quite appealing. But, like my sister had observed, there's no better time in my life to drop everything and fly off somewhere else. Money can be earned again, but carefree memories of youth is priceless. I'd near spent all my money, and then whatever's left, I loaded up on Royce chocolate during the Tokyo stopover. We cooked and we ate our way through the weeks. We spent days lounging at home, playing all manners of board games with the kids. We ate too much, drank too much wine (Californian, naturally), shopped too much and generally over-indulged. 

And there was no better way to spend the holidays.