With less than two weeks left in Southern California, I’ve been trying to take advantage of all the places I’ve wanted to go. This past Friday, I made my way up to Manhattan Beach to spend the afternoon bike-riding with Gina. Well, that was the plan. But on a gorgeous day with beautiful weather, rental bikes were rather limited so we changed up our plans a bit.
I got there around noon and we were both pretty starving. After parking the car, we started walking up and down the boardwalk in search of a place for lunch. We wanted something casual, but also with an outdoor patio so we could enjoy the weather and the view! Thanks to Yelp (who knew you could search for ‘outdoor patio seating’ and get over 50 return results?!), we found a place about a quarter of a mile away called Ocean View Cafe.
They really made us trek to get to the food. Pre-calorie consumption hike.
It was exactly what we were looking for. The food wasn’t fabulous, but it was pretty cheap and we definitely got an “ocean view.” (Although, next time I’d rather try the pancake house next door for better food and the same view!).
Appetizer Platter: Pita and hummus, salad w/ mustard dressing, herb pizza, tabouli
Herb Chicken Pizza Wrap w/feta, chicken, sundried tomatoes, and tomatoes
Our view from the patio 🙂 beautiful day!
After lunch, we walked straight over to Manhattan Beach Creamery (a place I’ve wanted to try for over a year now!). I’ve kind of avoided it in the past because I haven’t really had a valid justification to inhale an enormous ice-cream cookie sandwich. But me leaving Southern California is a good enough reason! 😉 I got the chocolate chip cookie sandwich with Cookies N Cream ice cream in the center. Diddy Riese style, but I think I liked them better because the cookies were softer!
Gina =) AKA Gyn
They also sell loads of chocolate covered things. Like a $3.50 chocolate covered strawberry. I’ll stick to my cookie sandwich, thank you very much.
Yum. Every bite was glorious and WORTH IT.
So since bikes were out of the question, we just walked for about 3 miles on the boardwalk…talking about all the fun things we would do if we lived right along the water. Yes, it’d be expensive. But we had fun imagining…. 🙂
Going to miss my Favorite Friend tons <3
After dropping Gina back at home, I headed north to West LA to meet up with Liang to play tennis! I had forgotten my tennis racket and tennis balls at home, so Liang wasn’t too thrilled with me. 😉
Stopped at CVS to buy some tennis balls. A very unhappy and disappointed Liang.
But once we started playing, we were both just ecstatic to be on the court together. We played for over two hours and I am definitely still feeling the soreness in my arms. I LOVE PLAYING TENNIS. I forget sometimes. Because I don’t really know many people around here to hit with anymore. So I just let weeks…MONTHS (and I’m ashamed to say this…but even years…) go by without playing. But every time I get out there, I fall in love with the sport all over again. I think when I move up north, I’m seriously going to look into some online group that meets up to play on weekends. I’m still on an extreme tennis high. Anyone wanna play?!?! 🙂
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Any other Southern California natives have recommendations of places I should go to or restaurants I should eat at before I leave?
What activity gets you all giddy and excited?! 🙂
The chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich looks delicious!
I love playing tennis! I don’t know a lot of people who like to play so I tend to let months and years go by too. But I agree with you, I always fall back in love with it no matter how much time goes by!