Summer 2021, Day 56; California vacation, Day 6

Today was our first full day of vacation for all four of us with no driving and no work retreat. We jammed much into it.

We ate breakfast at the hotel and got out the door about 10 a.m. Our first destination was the California Science Center near USC. The museum's main attraction is the Space Shuttle Discovery, and we spent a lot of time in the exhibit hall, taking pictures and reading all the exhibits. The rest of the museum was interesting, though some of it was under construction. Besides many old air and space vehicles, it featured exhibits on different ecosystems with cool interactive features that, if the boys were a few years younger, they would have loved.

From the museum, we walked over to USC to check out the campus. Michael wasn't as impressed with it as he was for UCLA, I think because it's in not as good a neighborhood (but you could tell USC takes security seriously -- the campus is fenced in and felt safe). We found the building with the video game program, but Michael wasn't in the mood for a tour. Although we could have spent more time at the large museum/stadium campus where the Science Center was, we had other places to go.

Our next destination was downtown Los Angeles. We found a place to park and walked to a cool bookstore -- The Last Bookstore -- that Lori discovered online. I found a used baseball book about the 1968 season, and we bought a couple other books after a long time browsing. From the bookstore, we walked to the Grand Central Market, which featured food vendors and some shops. We hadn't bought lunch yet, so we each found a vendor to order food from. I bought a delicious burger, Ben bought a wood-fired pizza, and Lori and Mike got these bowls from a Filipino restaurant that I wished I had gotten instead. Ben and I bought donuts as dessert, and we headed for our next destination.

Downtown L.A. is so different than downtown Chicago -- it's spread out and not really inviting. We walked over to Little Tokyo, where Michael knew of a used video game store that sold only Japanese imports. It was neat, and I was tempted to buy something (I have a retro console that will play old Nintendo games), but both Michael and I passed on a purchase. We walked back to the car and left downtown.

Our next destination was nearby Koreatown, the other game store owned by the people who owned the Japanese store. Michael found a couple Wii U games and I bought an old Super Nintendo game cheap. We endured rush hour L.A. traffic and weaved our way back to Sherman Oaks, first stopping at Trader Joe's to stock back up on provisions and get what would turn out to be dinner (I had a frozen mac and cheese). At the hotel, we relaxed after a long day and watched HBO

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