The drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles was rather lengthy and we were very grateful when we safely parked our car downtown, especially considering the flipped car wreck we encountered on our way over.

After trying (and failing) to eat what must have been the biggest piece of chocolate cake in the history of chocolate cakes we met up with Dirk, a Belgian friend who also happened to be in LA.

He then took us to his friend Blitch, who plays bass in a band called Middle Finger Mob and lives in a really rad loft downtown. The walls were plastered with posters of bands and I'm still secretly envious of the kitchen. After hanging out for a little while we had some Ramen in little Tokyo and quickly checked out Hollywood boulevard before interviewing an up and coming rapper named Pharaoh Jackson.

The next they we visited a workshop for aspiring makeup artists before heading to Leora's house. I couchsurfed with Leora last year and it was fun to return to her charming place in West Hollywood. We chatted a bit and headed out to little Ethiopia for dinner (is anyone else catching on to this pattern of talking and eating?). Koen and I had never had Ethiopian and were a bit cautious at first, but it turned out to be pretty yummy! The "plate" was made out of a sour tortilla and it came with all our food on it. The meat I picked was a little on the spicy side for me so I'm afraid I ended up stealing a bit of Leora's food (woops, sorry)

As I'm talking about food now anyways, I think it's a good time to bring up my "food problem". First of all, the portions are more often than not a little too large for me to handle. I see the food, my jaw drops, I try to eat the food, I fail, I feel bad for letting perfectly good food go to waste, I ask for a box (which I then often tend to forget someplace), I find out I never really have an opportunity to (reh)eat the food before it gets bad or makes the car smell like feet, I end up throwing it out anyway. Blah.

Anyway, after our stay in LA we drove to Ridgecrest, a rather small town right before Death Valley. We had a pizza (As if medium wasn't big enough, they accidentally got me a large one. Then again that might have been a blessing in disguise because I knew there was no way I could ever finish my pizza while Koen tried to force his medium pizza down anyway and then ended up feeling like he had eaten too much) and went to see The Bounty Hunter at the local movie theater. We headed to bed soon after, death valley awaits.