The lodging.

       Now it's our first Saturday in the Los Angeles area, and being true southerners at heart, that meant finding a sports bar to watch football. Even though football here starts at 9am (yes, NINE in the morning with the time change) we firmly believed in trying all the breakfast places available to us so, that was our first mission. We had passed a cute breakfast place on our walking the previous day that we decided to try out. It was called Crème de la Crepe and it was just as cute as it sounds. Our waiter had a french accent and we were 100% in love with it, so much that Mom talked me into trying a french press coffee (or however you order that pitcher thing with the pushy-down screen thing that I don't really understand - here's a picture).

       When we finished eating we asked our french waiter where we could watch football and were directed toward the beach, which can only be good, right? The bar was your typical sports bar with multiple tvs, about 2 of which had college football on them. We talked to the hostess about changing the channel on any of the tv's to the Alabama-Florida game, and after asking approximately 7 more times, we were watching Alabama play! One thing I learned about California culture was that "football days" here are considered Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. Weird NFL folks.
       After watching Alabama win, we unfortunately had to pack up and leave the awesome downtown gem that was the Art District condo we were staying in. Now with travel nursing, the company I'm using will find and pay for housing for me while on assignment (awesome, right?!?). Well, unfortunately, we couldn't get into the apartment I would be in for the majority of the assignment until the following Wednesday so my company had an extended stay room arranged for us from Saturday to Wednesday. This wasn't the luxury suite it sounds like. It had a small kitchen, bathroom, queen-sized bed, tv, and less than desirable smell. After soaking much of the upholstery in febreeze spray, which proved unsuccessful, Mom took care of the smell (that I probably would have lived with for a few days) by taking our microwave to the front desk and exchanging it, thus removing the I-thought-I-could-dry-my-phone-by-microwaving-it smell that preceded us. And we slept well.