This weekend I took the train up to L.A. to visit one of my best girlfriends, and since she lives on the west side, we decided to use the train station’s downtown location to explore somewhere far east of the 405. We chose Silverlake, and it was a breath of fresh air to be far away from the glitz, ritz and overall sceney vibe I’ve found in places like West Hollywood and Santa Monica.

If you find yourself in L.A., step into the cool little enclave of Silverlake for well-edited boutiques and awesome food choices. Here are some picks:

First things first: Taking the train to L.A. from San Diego is amazing. No traffic, no hassle, and pleasant conductors who sing the California state song and update you on NFL scores during your journey. Yes, really. It’s pricey ($75 round trip), but I don’t go up to L.A. that often, so I think it’s worth it.

Lunch at Gingergrass, a Vietnamese restaurant that’s hip, modern and fresh, fresh, fresh. Based on the interiors you’d think it’s a place that’s all looks and zero taste, but the food was phenomenal. I actually kept thinking about the meal afterwards. The taro fries appetizer was as delicious as the waiter promised and my bahn mi was equally wonderful. Great prices considering the portion sizes, too. But I think I loved the Vietnamese coffee best; you can’t go wrong with condensed milk.

Broome Street General Store is part cafe-part shop, and we went in for the latter. It’s not cheap by any definition and I’m not sure I ever need a large can of rose water, but I can’t say the selection isn’t pretty to look at.

Dream Collective is just that — a dreamy boutique of jewelry, Moroccan rugs, bath products and pottery. It’s pricey for sure but one of those stores with that “special piece” you save up for.

Pillowy soft whipped cream on my berry shortcake cupcake at Lark Cake Shop. I did not mind the 50:50 cream to cake ratio.

I got a kick out of this L.A. alphabet poster by at Stark Waxing Studio, a salon next to Lark Cake Shop. (A is for air kissing, J is for juicing and X is for extra botox, please.) The print is by Mr. Boddington’s Studio, which offers similarly fun prints for Chicago, San Francisco, New York and other cities.

Not a Silverlake pick, but since it’s just down the street from the Amtrak station, I had to check out Poketo’s brick and mortar store after ogling at their online shop for so long. I loved the kitchen products and home decor, but these accessories popped out most of all. I love the simplicity of everything, especially the light leather fabric used to make those necklaces. Good thing the shop is so close to Union Station. I’ll be back for more!

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When we went backpacking for a year, one of my main concerns was that I wouldn’t be able to slather on body lotion post shower. I’m a skincare freak. I’m obsessed with face scrubs, diligent about washing my face before bed and you’d better believe SPF is no joke to me.

Remember how I recently found out my beloved Neutrogena Sheer-Touch isn’t as great as we think? And remember how I recently blogged about wanting to use a skincare routine to achieve some calm? Around the same time, I also heard about Beautycounter, a new L.A.-based skincare brand that’s committed to responsible, healthy and safe skincare products. Here’s a little food for thought: 1300 chemical ingredients are banned in the European Union; 11 are banned in the U.S.

For their part, Beautycounter prescribes to a Never List, a lengthy list of harmful ingredients that you’ll never find in their products — obvious ones like parabens and phthalates as well as not-so-obvious ingredients like mineral oil, which sounds totally fine, right? (Mineral oil is actually a by-product of petroleum distillation that can cause contact dermatitis. Yikes!)

Here are a few of my favorite (Beauty Counter) things:

Lustro Face Oil 2 – Jasmine. I love putting a couple drops on my dry areas (forehead and around the my mouth) before bed. This jasmine scent is the closest thing to the smell of jasmine in India, and I’m so obsessed with these oils that I usually make sure it’s the last thing I do before bed so I can go to sleep with the scent on my hands. (Like two nights ago when I asked Eaman to take the puppy out to the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to wash away the fragrance.)

Gentle Exfoliator Polishing Cream. What’s interesting is that when I compared this scrub to one from a natural foods store I have at home, all the safe ingredients matched up. What was different was the feel. The old scrub was rough and frankly, smells really bad now after a few months, while Beautycounter’s is silky smooth. It’s the coconut oil!

Glow Sugar Scrub. Do you like Fresh’s Brown Sugar Body Polish? Because I’m obsessed with it. But it’s expensive and not a practical purchase for me right now. So I did a happy dance when I saw that Beautycounter has a body scrub inspired by Fresh’s — for nearly half the price! It leaves just the right amount of oil (and hydration) and no other scrub since Fresh’s has left my skin so smooth. It was much needed to get all the dust and sunscreen (and dead skin) off after a day of hiking.

Other favorites include the Hydrate Everyday Body Lotion (coconut oil makes this rich but not heavy), Routine Clean Cream Cleanser (the first time I’ve approved of a face wash other than my beloved Clearasil), Every Night PM Hydrating Cream (coconut oil, aloe and green tea) and the Rosewater Uplifting Spray (a savior for my 3pm workday lulls).

The packaging is wonderfully minimalist and stylish, too, which is typically hard to find in the world of natural products. I mean, they even do a little pop of red inside the box!

I love the honesty, commitment and sense of responsibility behind the company, but I also love that the line has re-energized my skincare routine and given me a great way to wind down at night. Yes, I still check Instagram before bed, but at least now my smartphone-swiping fingers smell like jasmine.

Beautycounter sent me products to test for this post. I was not compensated, but I do earn a percentage if you click through to buy the products. All opinions, as always, are my own. I share only the stuff that I’d share with my best friends.

First two pictures via Beautycounter.

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I don’t know why I bother buying Teddy stuffed animals when he rips them to shreds. To be fair, I only buy his toys at Ross or T.J. Maxx so they’re much cheaper and he’s painfully adorable when he first meets his new toy, but this particular one lasted one day before Teddy ripped an ear off. On Sunday, he ripped the other ear off. Poor blue pup.

My cousin came to visit Friday to Saturday and now that we finally have a handle on interesting and delicious food spots, we basically did a food crawl from a fish taco truck (below) to ice cream sandwiches at Baked Bear to Thai food at Sab-e-lee. We ordered a spice level of four there, and I’m still coping with the ramifications of that choice. (I’d get a 2 or 3 at most!)

I hopped over — actually, it was a nearly four-hour drive — to L.A. on Saturday to cover an Emmy nominee event for Entertainment Weekly. I stayed for the rest of the weekend to spend time with one of my oldest friends who now lives in the city. The event just so happened to be near uber-trendy bakery/restaurant Bottega Louie, so after my reporting duties were complete, I walked over to grab myself a rose cream macaroon (delightful!) and a couple of mini cakes for my friend.

On Sunday, we hit up the Brentwood farmer’s market, which put our Hillcrest neighborhood market to shame. There was dragon fruit, chili peppers, green beans and tons more I can find only in grocery and specialty stores in San Diego. There was also a petting zoo; not sure how I felt about that. (Look at the tufts of hair on these ducks!)

My friend’s birthday is in two weeks and since I can’t make it back up for her day, I took her to lunch anywhere she wanted. She chose Sun Cafe, a raw vegan restaurant in Studio City that also happens to be the #3 raw restaurant in the world. We were joking about how overzealous the Yelp reviews sounded, calling the food a “party in my mouth,” but Yelp, you were right this time around. Any raw and/or vegan meals I’ve had in the past have been pretty bland, but Sun Cafe does such a wonderful job with flavors and spices here. I highly recommend the lettuce tacos and strawberry shake made with strawberry, goji, cashew and agave. The shakes are out of this world and probably the best thing I’ve had in SoCal since I moved here.

And because driving in L.A. makes us both totally crazy, we ditched plans to explore Silverlake and Los Feliz and instead went back to her apartment and watched The Real Housewives of Orange County. In my defense, I don’t have a TV and it’s pretty much the only thing I can’t find online. Don’t hate.

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

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Now, I’m more a low-key, off-the-grid kind of traveler/diner, but every now and again, I like to splash out and try buzzed about places to see, well, what the buzz is about. This getaway was a splurge, but I took it as an opportunity to eat at some places on my Life List (a less gruesome way to say the Before I Die list), and once I got past the very L.A. crowds at these places, I could appreciate the great food and even better decor. (But I gotta say, every trendy restaurant in L.A. is obsessed with the same black stools. What gives?)

I ate. I window-shopped. I waited in line for scene-y brunch spots. And I took notes. Take a look at the 8 simple steps to a trendy, seen-to-be-seen kind of L.A. visit.

Step 1: Fancy brunch. We started the weekend not by checking into our hotel, but by settling into the beautiful interiors of Laurel Hardware, a former hardware store that’s been converted into an industrial-styled restaurant. I just about died over that wallpaper and light fixture. And then I died when I saw Rosie Perez in the restaurant because girl is awesome. And then I died over my fruit scone, which was more like a warm toasted biscuit topped with berries and clotted cream. It was delicious so long as you’re OK with dessert for breakfast. And why wouldn’t you be?

Step 2: Party. Bellies full (and blood sugar levels sky-high for me), we headed over to West Elm on Beverly to meet Emily and check out all the cool Etsy shops she hand-picked to be featured at the event. (I personally loved the letterpress stationery of Iron Curtain Press and delicate jewelry made by Upper Metal Class.) We were extra lucky because Jessica had assisted on Emily’s show so we had a chance to chat with the interior designer for much more than a hot second — and take a gazillion SmileBooth photos with her. We sipped our blood orange ginger fizz cocktails by Heirloom LA and danced to tunes by The Flashdance DJ. It doesn’t get more snazzy than that on a Saturday afternoon…until you see Adam Pally from Happy Endings walking along Beverly.

Step 3: Window shop. It’s all about visiting stores you can’t afford, so naturally we stepped into Design Within Reach, which we don’t have in San Diego. (Though, I do find it really odd that there’s a DWR in my suburban college town of Evanston, Illinois.) We ogled at light fixtures, we lounged in comfy chairs, we pretended we had disposable incomes to buy new furniture. But of course we didn’t. So off we went.

Step 4: Chateau Marmont. It’s synonymous with celebrity shenanigans and tragedy, but A-list gossip aside, the famous hotel has an outdoor patio bar that’s quite lovely for a drink on a warm night. (We also happened to see Sam Rockwell there.) We sipped our wine — Coke for me — and listened in on the many overly dramatic Hollywood conversations. I wanted to slap the girl next to us who was going on and on about some egregious career mistake Justin Timberlake made, but I was half-amused and wanted her to continue. You can see just how vexed she (the blond) is in the photo below.

Step 5: Boutique hotel. After rubbing elbows with all those celebrities (not), we finally checked into the Pali Hotel. It has a dark, moody, hipster vibe and even though I found it to be overpriced for what you get — a small room with no phone to call reception — I did like most of the decor, and the food options inside — the Hart and the Hunter and Handsome Coffee Roasters — are wonderful. (The brussels sprouts salad at H & the H is particularly good.)

Step 6: Flea market. You know me and flea markets, so of course I had to go to the Melrose Trading Post, which takes over the parking lot at Fairfax High School every Sunday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. It’s heavy on clothes, but there’s a good deal of furniture, knick-knacks and art to be found as well. I liked this one because it’s a manageable size for people who aren’t as rabid about flea markets as I am but still has a lot of interesting pieces thanks to its big city location. During yesterday’s visit, I picked up a delicate necklace, finally found a picture frame that’ll fit a piece of awkward-size art I bought in India and also an empty frame that I’m planning to turn into a DIY bulletin board. (Market admission is $2.)

Step 7: Fancy brunch #2. When on a getaway, you must always brunch twice. It’s a rule, I think. We ventured to Toast, which is The Place to Be judging by the huge crowd waiting for tables. Thanks to the high turnover though, we were seated in a quick 20 minutes and of all the places on this list, Toast had the most reasonable prices for portion size. For $9 I got scrambled eggs, toast, veggie sausage and fruit. (And none of that only-honeydew business; there were berries, kiwis, grapes and pineapples.)

Step 8: Bakery pit-stop. We didn’t have much time to linger in Sycamore Kitchen, a very buzzy bakery located on La Brea, so we decided to swing by and pick up a treat for the ride home. The blueberry oat bar was my version of dessert for breakfast once again, and the chocolate hazelnut fudge cookie was really just a decadent brownie. I made a valiant effort to finish it last night once we got back, but it’s powerfully rich. This means leftovers for today. Woohoo!

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But there’s more: the beautiful architecture in Balboa Park, seeing friends in L.A., showing my friend Katy around Coronado, La Jolla Shores (sea lions!), and the microbreweries, and hiking up Cowles Mountain, which clocks in as the highest point in San Diego.

Take a look:

Music: “A Night Like This” by Caro Emerald

Check out the January 2013 video recap.

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You know that movie 2 Days in Paris? Or 2 Days in New York? Well this is the photo diary of less than 24 hours in L.A. We were there this past Saturday to visit a friend I’ve known since the diaper era, and I can’t quite articulate how amazing it is to see such a good friend after going through all the newness of moving, but let’s just say, it was SO FUN. Eaman and I have also been working particularly hard lately, so it was awesome to get away and get a bit silly.

I’ve been to L.A. before and back then I ventured to a lot of neighborhoods on my own out of traveler’s/food lover’s curiosity. This time we headed to previously uncharted territory: Venice, where we walked up and down the famous Abbot Kinney Boulevard, checking out the boutiques and trying not to bore the boys in the group. We also managed to squeeze in a view of Santa Monica beach before driving out to West Hollywood for Mexican food. It was such a great change of pace to be in the thick of things again in a big city. The fashion was riskier, the crowd was more diverse and the restaurant patios were spilling over with drunk twentysomethings. Ah, just like New York — with palm trees.

Check out the rest of the snaps from my L.A. diary after the jump. It’s a lovely one-day itinerary if I do say so myself.

Bountiful is the stuff girly tea party dreams are made of. It’s hard to miss; you can see the beautiful (and expensive) cake stands stacked floor-to-ceiling right from the window. I may not wear pearls or lace much, but there’s a special place in my heart for cupcake stands and shabby chic vases, so I wanted one of everything. But I gotta ask, what justifies a $180-some price tag on that metal scoop?

The school bus parked in the alley was actually a touring Warby Parker sale, touted as the WP Class Trip. Inside the bus was their full collection to try on.

Lunch at Lemonade! With a few locations around the city, this cafeteria-style restaurant is the perfect way to try a fresh variety of food. Even though they have sandwiches and soups, the main attraction is ironically the sides — things like soba noodles and sesame-ginger carrots. Naturally, we also had lemonades: blueberry mint, blood orange and cucumber mint. Just divine.

We stopped at a home store, only to sit in their (for-sale) patio seats and then abruptly leave.

I loved the way the light filtered through the boutique ecookie. Just a sublime 80-degree day in January.

My friend lives in a clutch location not far from Santa Monica, which is where we stopped for a hot second to say hey to the Pacific, check out the cool houses and make a new friend.

I think there’s a rule that you must consume Mexican food and margaritas if the temperature breaks 80 degrees…so we obeyed. El Carmen in West Hollywood is wonderful. The prices are cheap, sizes are perfectly portioned and the chips–oh the chips! They were the best I’ve ever had: served hot with just the right crunch and saltiness. I don’t think I’ve ever downed that much of the chips bowl before. It also put me to sleep all too quickly after dinner and that’s how our L.A. trip ended — in front of the TV, in my friend’s living room, falling asleep to Discovery Channel’s Frozen Planet. Twenty-one I am not.

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