Day 33: Los Angeles, CA

After managing to put 5,800 miles on our car in just three weeks, we brought it in to a Toyota dealership for its 30,000-mile inspection. We didn’t realize that they would need more than three hours to do this, but luckily we were able to walk about ten minutes from the Santa Monica Toyota to the Third Street Promenade. Abe got a tasty salad from Simply Salad while Arielle went to the nearby Apple Store for her prescheduled Genius Bar appointment. Arielle then enjoyed an Orange Dream Machine Jamba Juice while Abe purchased his signature seasonal Ice Blended Pumpkin Chai from Coffee Bean. Both places gave us the leftover from the blender so that we could each have a bit of the other's drink!

We walked down the promenade to find the area where board games were being provided and played, but got distracted by a T-Mobile tent set up right by it. Arielle was engaged by the representatives, who nearly convinced her to switch from Verizon by guessing what her current bill was and promising infinitely cheaper options with their service, and Abe reset his Twitter password so that he could follow T-Mobile to receive a free gift. We ended up walking away with more than one branded item, and continue to be Verizon customers. We walked back to the Toyota dealership, where we learned the unimpressive news that the USB port we thought had been malfunctioning was actually never meant to charge the attached device, just connect the media, meaning we would need to purchase an adapter for the cigarette lighter if we wanted to be able to charge our phones while driving. We did some food shopping and then stopped at home to change before heading to our first wedding weekend event. We arrived at Temple Beth Am for a lovely outdoor Shabbat dinner for family and out-of-town guests of the Schlesinger and Goldsmith families. We enjoyed reconnecting with Lisa’s friends from Penn, including Rachel, as well as a few other New York acquaintances and Los Angeles natives now living elsewhere. The company was great, and so was the food! After services led by Lisa's cousin and the beginning of the food, Lisa and Michael had people come up to share stories, and Arielle went up with Rabbi Leah Loeterman Fein, who grew up with them and now lives in Syracuse, NY, to share a few nice anecdotes.

We helped close up shop as the last people to leave, stopping at the venue for the next day’s lunch to drop off some centerpieces on our way home. We also dropped the groom off at his apartment since he and Lisa weren’t going to be seeing each other from that point until the wedding day.

Approximate number of miles covered: 47