Monday morning, we went to the farmer’s market on Fairfax. It’s confusing because the outside looks like a cross between an outlet mall and a regular mall. I figured there had to be some kind of farmer’s market action in there somewhere, just based on the name, and we did find that at the center. They had a bunch of booths; some of them were actual produce stands, but mostly it was all manner of different foods and souvenir shops. It would’ve been awesome for lunch, but it was a little early in the day.

By now, the sunburn had reached the painful stage, and no amount of sunblock seemed to be preventing further scorching. I could feel my arm burning as I drove. We spent a lot of time in the car, just getting around the rest of LA; we decided to go see Chinatown, so I headed off in the direction of downtown, not realizing how monstrous that place is.

We drove through a business district on Melrose I thought was downtown, until we happened upon the real downtown. We found the original pueblo, so we stopped and walked around there for a while. They had another large array of Mexican-trinket shops there as well, so of course I had to look at them all. We thought the pueblo would be a bigger deal (or perhaps one specific building), but it was interesting anyway. We decided we wouldn’t have time for Chinatown, and I wanted to dine at my favorite LA restaurant from last time around, so we headed over to Real Food Daily on La Cienega.

I love this restaurant not only because it’s next to Trashy Lingerie, but because I can eat every single thing on the menu. That never, ever happens. I had a bigass bbq tofu chop salad, and she had a bean and tempeh burrito. She didn’t seem thrilled by the weird food, but I was loving it. After that, we drove down 3rd, drooling over all the shops I really needed to go to, even though I knew I shouldn’t. We passed them all except for one irresistable one: the Paul Frank store. I’m not a huge fan of Julius the monkey, but dude! I got skull flipflops, a Wienermobile hoodie, and another sweatshirt with amps on it. Stephanie got a pink skull purse. It’s impossible to not love that store.

Sadly, it was then time to head to the airport. In true Dick form, our rental car almost got himself backed into in the parking lot right as we returned him. He made the most horrible noise as I slammed on the brakes. I’m pretty sure it caused me a mild heart attack.

At the airport, we waited in security for the hour that felt like three days. We finally got to our gate, and found a rather small plane awaiting us for our totally-booked flight. We both had middle seats on opposite sides of the aisle; Stephanie got to spend some quality time with the extremely angry dude who talked to himself a lot. I talked to a nice lady about her son, the doctor in Wisconsin, and then every single person on the plane stopped by to examine the flames sweater I was knitting. Or it felt like it, at least. I was a little weirded out when the flight attendant held up beverage service for a long time just to talk knitting with me; later when I went back to use the bathroom (I always use the bathroom on planes, because I enjoy the novelty of peeing at 35,000 feet), she grabbed me again and made me grope her yarn and the scarf she was knitting. Dirty.

Apparently Northwest Airlines has some Dick-service of their own, because we landed on time and then had to sit on the plane waiting for a gate, because some other plane forgot to leave or something. After they finally loosed us upon the terminal, we all sat waiting for our luggage to be vomited out onto the carousel for another hour. They have really excellent service.

My parents were nice enough to drive my car to the airport, so all I had to do was rush on home, whereas Stephanie got to ride back with them, and listen to my dad complaining about the flight delay. Lucky girl.

[Note: I didn’t want to be all duplicative here, so you may find ten different favorite photos from this trip (in larger format) on my journal.]