This past week I had a speaking engagement in Torrance, California on Thursday evening, so I decided to extend the trip a couple of days and take Anna with me to have some fun together. Over the years I’ve tried to take a short, two-night-three-day, one-on-one trip each year with each of my kids still living at home. Overall I’ve been pretty consistent—although there are some gaps. Anna and I went to Disneyland together about a year ago so we were due for another trip.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Early morning flight. I used some of my Delta Skymiles to get Anna a ticket, and it was nice when Delta upgraded us to first class. We landed at LAX about 9:30am.
Rode the bus to Enterprise Rent-a-Car where I found we had also been upgraded to a white BMW 430i convertible. Thanks, Enterprise!
A quick drive through Jack-in-the-Box for breakfast sandwiches that we could eat in the car and we were off to make it to our 12:15am reservation in Hollywood to take a TMZ Celebrity watching bus tour! Yeah… Everyone needs to do it once in life, right? The tour was actually kinda boring and uneventful (didn’t see any celebs), but we had fun anyway.
Sometimes I forget just how awful L.A. traffic is. We headed toward Torrance and it took us about 2.5 hours to go about 20 miles. Got to Torrance about an hour before I had to speak, so we had an early dinner at Lemonade in Torrance, across the street from where I was scheduled to speak.
I spoke to a group of about 120 that evening at the DoubleTree Hotel. Anna sat in the front row and shot a little video at the beginning. She had never heard me speak in front of a dental group before. I told her before I started that it would probably bore her out of her mind. After I finished, we drove to Irvine where we stayed at the Marriott Courtyard there.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Up early to fight the traffic to Universal Studios! Anna had been wanting to see the new Harry Potter area of the theme park that just opened a few months ago. I had purchased V.I.P. tickets that included a nice breakfast and lunch, and a tour guide, so there was a designated time that we had to be at the park. 8:00am!
The whole day was super fun. The passes let us skip all the lines and go right to the front and get on the rides. For most of the rides, I went to the front of the line, but only Anna rode because I am so wimpy when it comes to motion sickness on theme park rides! It was a great day. We had so much fun.
After a long day of fun in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Dobby was tired and went straight to bed when Anna and I got back to the hotel.
After we got back to the hotel, I took a dip in the pool, then we went and had dinner at the Capital Grille in Costa Mesa.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Packed up around 10:00am, put the top down on the car, and headed to the Pacific Coast Highway. Slowly made our way to Santa Monica, shopping along the way and just having fun.
We were in a little area called Abbot-Kinney (where one of my favorite shoe stores happens to be) and we stopped to have brunch. We both had their unique version of Eggs Benedict… poached eggs, turkey breast, truffled spinach, carmelized onions and cheddar, on crisp pretzel bread. But the best part was their twist on hollandaise which included whole grain mustard. It was fantastic!
Back to LAX, and home. It was fun spending time, Anna. Love you.