By: Samie

Travel Dates: November 23rd-29th, 2024

Day 1

(Arrival in LA, Picking up Rental Car, Supper at MidiCi, Pool Bar)

To kick off this post, we visited Los Angeles in November of 2024, just over a month before the start of the extremely destructive Palisades Fire. While we were able to enjoy our time there, we are aware that many others faced and continue to endure the devastation brought on by this fire. If you are interested and able to donate to support communities impacted by the wildfires, we encourage you to do so here:
https://www.calfund.org/funds/riviera-community-donation/
or to a local Salvation Army or American Red Cross Disaster Relief.


Now, a little backstory for this trip. After celebrating my golden birthday in 2023, I had another big birthday coming up immediately the consecutive year. I was going to be turning 30! While looking into what we might want to do to celebrate the end of my 20’s, I realized that my sister, Rebekah, would be turning 13 just two weeks before I turned 30. I was already wanting to do a 13 Going on 30 theme for me, but once I realized that Rebekah was turning 13 the same year I was turning 30, it was pretty much too good to pass up!

Rebekah also knew and loved the class rom com and instantly fell in love with the idea of having a joint birthday celebration with me. Originally, Luke and I had thought we would be taking a November trip to New York City to truly live out the Jenna Rink fantasy, and we thought we could celebrate with Rebekah over a spring break time. However, this idea really bummed her out as she seemed to have her heart set on getting together closer to our actual birthdays. Everything just so happened to line up and work out that both her and my mom and Luke and I could fit a trip to Los Angeles in our schedules and budgets the last week of November, and then we would also be able to celebrate Thanksgiving together, which we hadn’t been able to do in about 4 years.

So, Luke and I sacrificed our original plan in order to celebrate with more of my side of the family and soak up every last moment of time with family that we could! On our end, we had originally planned on flying out of Minneapolis, which if you have followed along with previous posts, you know is our go to airport. While getting ready to book our tickets, I decided to do a reverse search out of LAX to see if I could find any direct flights to an airport I might have missed. To our surprise, there was a direct flight out of Rapid City. Despite Rapid City being in the same state, the drive is actually about half an hour longer than it is to get to Minneapolis, but the tickets were about a third of the price! This meant we would be adding the Rapid City Airport to the list of airports we’d flown out of!

The only hang up was that we were originally planning on flying out on Tuesday evening and fly back on Friday so that I wouldn’t have to take any time off work (since I get very little leave as a teacher), and we could instead use those days to make a trip to New York City later in the year. In order to fly out of Rapid, we would have to fly out Saturday, three days earlier, and I would have to take two days off. We decided it was worth the trade-off and were able to add a whole extra adventure to our trip that we wouldn’t have had time to fit in before, so I’m excited to share that extension later!

One perk about flying out of Rapid City instead of Minneapolis is that we cross a time zone and gain an hour. Our flight was set to depart Rapid at 2:45, which would be 3:45 our time. This meant that we could leave an our later than we normally would’ve needed to. Instead of needing to be on the road by 8:00-8:30, we just had to be on the road by 9:00-9:30, which is a pretty casual morning all things considered when it comes to flight times!

It was a very nice and easy drive. The weather was surprisingly nice and cooperative for late November in South Dakota. The sun was out. The win was fairly calm. It was very pleasant! I napped on and off as we had been up quite late finishing some last-minute prep for my sub plans for the two days I would be gone. We didn’t actually get to bed until about 2:00 in the morning, so getting a later start to the day was much needed.

The Rapid City Airport isn’t a huge airport, so it was very easy to get through and maneuver, and we were settled in at our gate with a decent amount of time but not an overwhelming amount of time to fill. We checked to see the temperature difference from back home versus LA. At the time of departure, it read 21 degrees at home and 60 degrees in LA, a solid 40 degrees warmer. We would take it!

We flew into LA with some thick cloud coverage right around sunset, so it was one of the most gorgeous descents I’ve ever been fortunate enough to experience. The gold of the setting sun settled across the fluffy blanket of clouds like spilled honey. While I’m sure down below, the cloud coverage put a damper on local spirits yearning for the warmth the sunshine brings, we loved getting to experience some of the LA sunshine before actually arriving at LAX.

Now, despite our many travels, one experience we had yet to cross of our list was renting a car to travel around a place we had flown into. We had used many different types of public transportation including buses, trains, and the most common being Ubers. The last time we had been in LA, we had relied on my sister, Alyssa, and her husband to help us get around. However, due to our added adventure, they would be unable to lend us a vehicle or cart us around wherever we needed to go, which we had felt guilty enough about asking anyway, so we were fine with that not being a possibility. This meant that we were going to rent a car for the very first time.

When I had booked the airplane tickets, adding on a rental car was part of a package option, so I ended up doing it through the same transaction as our tickets so that everything was in one place. The signage at LAX is very well-marked, so we were able to follow the signs that led us to the bus we needed to get on to take us to the car rental building. It was a surprising distance away, and it was now around rush hour, but our bus driver was very efficient. Once at the building, there were two floors depending on which car rental company you had gone through. We went to the upstairs floor for ours. Once at the counter, it was pretty easy since all our information was already in the system. She simply pulled up our info, confirmed all the important details, and printed a contract for us to sign. Then we headed out through a set of doors where we were met by a lot attendant.

We had originally said we wanted a medium-sized vehicle because some of our driving would be through desert terrain, and we didn’t know what it would look like or how well-paved or maintained it would be and didn’t want to get stuck. The attendant told us there wasn’t a lot left for medium-sized vehicles in the lot option we had selected. He told us we were welcome to look around and try to pick something out and that if we didn’t find anything we liked to come back and talk to him. There was one medium vehicle left, but there was also already a person standing very firmly in front of it to claim it, so we didn’t bother. Instead, we found a Chevy Malibu, which is actual the make and model of my car. We decided that it might be kind of nice to have a vehicle we were already familiar with to drive around, so even though it was a smaller car than we had planned, we were very happy to immediately feel at home after hopping inside.

The keys were already in it, so we just tossed our bags in, buckled up, and made our way out of the lot. We plugged Alyssa and Evan’s address into the GPS and made our way to their apartment. We would be staying with them for the first night, so we got all settled in and comfortably warmed up to each other’s company before making plans for the rest of the evening.

Luke and I were very hungry at this point because we hadn’t had an official lunch, so we made getting dinner our very first priority. As we were driving to their apartment, Alyssa and Evan sent us some different food options. We settled on a pizza place called MidiCi that looked delicious. We hopped in with Alyssa and Evan since it didn’t make sense to take two vehicles, and they had a better idea of where we were going. MediCi is on Ventura, so parking can be a bit crazy, but we were able to find a decent spot only a couple blocks away, and it was a pleasant walk over.

We put our orders in at the counter and then made our way outside to snag a table. We ordered a couple pizzas and some garlic bread to share. The two pizzas we got were The Pig, the Fig, and the Goat Pizza and a classic Margarita. For drinks, I ordered some refreshing Prosecco, and Luke ordered a Modello from tap.

The garlic bread was SUPER garlicy, but in the very best way. It was amazing! The Pig, the Fig, and the Goat Pizza is a pizza with fig jam, mozzarella, goat cheese, and prosciutto. I was a little hesitant because I have not had a lot of fig or goat cheese in my life, but the combination together was surprisingly delightful! It something I would actually order again!

The chef had come out to personally introduce himself at some point during the meal. His name was Chef Jesse. After we had finished our meal and were just chatting at our table, Chef Jesse came out with a dessert, and put it on our table. Only thing, we hadn’t ordered a dessert. Chef Jesse informed us that it was a new dessert, and it was on the house! It was pizza dough filled with chocolate and topped with fresh fruit and powdered sugar. He told us to let him know if we liked it! We thanked him profusely and scarfed down the confection to end our meal.

The very last activity of the night was driving over to a nearby pool hall. Neither Luke nor I are experienced pool players by any means, but we were still down to play a few games! We started by splitting into teams by couples because Luke and Evan were both better players, and Alyssa and I are much more mediocre to less than average players. Fortunately, we both got some good shots in through the duration of the game.

While we played, a friend of Alyssa and Evan’s met us at the bar because they knew we were coming into town and were excited to meet us, which is extremely flattering because we don’t see ourselves as that interesting of people! He is an actor and director and actually has some big projects in the works! We got to be excited for him and enjoyed getting to chat and get to know him! We also got to alternate out so that he got to join in games with us, which was nice as well.

We sipped on drinks, played pool, enjoyed company, and let the night slip away around us. It felt much later for us since Los Angeles is two full hours ahead of us. That means that midnight there is actually 2:00am for us. This meant we were getting sleepy before they were, so we had to be the party poopers that called it a night. We bid farewell to our new Hollywood star acquaintance and made our way home.

Despite already being sleepy, some of us, I think specifically the boys, wanted to play some Nintendo Switch. I was already fading fast, but I did not argue or complain because time with family is something that can never be replaced or brought back, so I was determined to make it count. They chose a fast-paced game, mistake if you ask me. It’s called Overcooked. Those familiar with the game are aware of how busy and incredibly well-organized and communicative you have to be to be successful. For those that are unaware of the game, it is a chaotic and high-pressure cooking game where players have to work together to prepare and serve meals under a time limit. There are obstacles in certain levels that shift or make the kitchen difficult to maneuver. You have to take out, chop, cook, and serve each meal, so your team has to decided how to make it all run smoothly together.

I was half-asleep on the couch, but I still somehow managed to chop like nobody’s business, and we actually did pretty alright! However, when I could no longer function, it was time to officially call it a night. Luke and I would be heading out to our extension adventure in the morning, and Evan had work in the morning, so we would not get to see him before we left. We knew we would be returning in a couple days, but we still made sure he knew his presence in the morning would be missed. We said our goodnights and crawled into the air mattress bed in their guest room and quickly found comfort in our dreams.