A weekend to remember

I tender to hold onto things, not like a horder, but little mementoes with the intention of them sparking a memory at a future date. I was cleaning out my office last week & I found this

It is a book of matches from a restaurant in Malibu, Ca. This place:

Why do I have some matches from a restaurant in Malibu? Well in February 2005 I had a really great weekend & I wanted to remember it. My wife was in Los Angeles on business all week so we decided that I would fly out there on Friday night & we would have a weekend in LA.

It was an awesome weekend, the kind of weekend I dreamed about when I was a kid, the kind of weekend I hoped for when I moved here from England. The kind of weekend everyone needs more of!

We stayed at a hotel in Bel Air & yes, I booked us in Bel Air entirely because of this

We rented a convertible Mustang

We had Jamba juice for breakfast in Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive, We went to Hollywood simply so I could see the sign in the flesh.

Then we went to Malibu, because we could and we hung out on the beach & pier for a while

Where we saw an alarming sign

Then we found a place for lunch, Geoffrey’s of Malibu; Oceanside dining experience  The place was just flat out swanky, I felt like Eddie Murphy crashing the rich folks party in Beverly Hills Cop.It’s not often that I have Filet Mignon for lunch, but dang this was a good day to do it. The meal was wonderful, but the setting was way better, beyond spectacular, a simply beautiful view overlooking the pacific ocean.

After lunch we decided to try Venice Beach, I think we did that the wrong way around though, you should go to Venice beach & then Malibu not the other way around. We didn’t even get out of the car in Santa Monica, too many people & an alarming homeless population had me wanting to go back to Malibu, so we did, & I played on the mountain back roads in the ‘stang.

We had dinner at some restaurant in Marina Del Ray that night, I don’t; recall the name of the place but the swordfish was good.

The next day we went back to Hollywood & walked on the stars,

went in a couple of tourist trap museums & checked out the front of the Chinese theater.

I even saw my 1^st Circle K

which as a fan of this

when I was growing up was pretty cool to me.

Then once we got through LAX’s poor attempt at a TSA section (this was 2005) we flew home. One great weekend, many special memories & a crazy amount of things checked of the “I wish I could do that one day” list I had when growing up in England.