May 18, 2016

After a pretty amazing breakfast at Jacks N Joe we said goodbye to Rickets, on his way to the airport, and to Chris, on his way to work. With Rickets gone it was time to leave USC. Thinking that LA traffic wouldn't be too bad mid morning Eeyore and I took a Lyft to Santa Monica to finally complete the beach visit part of the LA plan.

The beach was overcast and windy but it felt nice to relax on the sand instead of struggling uphill on it as we had been the last few days before. The chilly temperature got the better of us after half an hour or so. We were also hungry again.

We walked 3 miles to an Indian lunch buffet, something we had been talking about for the last two weeks. Then 2.5 miles back to the main strip where we saw Zootopia. We felt a little strange walking in with backpacks but the man at the counter assured us it was fine as long as we didn't pitch our tents in the theater.

Hungry again after the film, we headed towards what we thought was a cheap diner type place. It was not. We ended up just each getting a small salad (which were excellent) before heading on to Westwood.

We were meeting up with our friend David from MIT. He is partway through a PhD in theoretical physics at UCLA and was busy tutoring when we arrived so we killed some time at a coffee shop, absorbing the college campus scene.

We went back to his place and caught up how things back in Cambridge are and then talking about his various ventures. We were up past midnight (crazy for us) and finally called it a night.