Final Day of Santa Monica

Posted on June 26, 2022    Posted by Athena Scalzi      14 Comments

And what a glorious last day it was! My friends said they wanted to give me what they consider “the TOUR” of LA, or at least enough of it to fill about six hours. I had no idea where we were going, but I had a strong suspicion that the first stop would be coffee. I was correct.

When people speak of hidden gems, usually they don’t mean literally hidden out of sight, but in Dayglow’s case, it really is obscured from the passerby’s eye. Which is a shame because it’s an extra cool, hip little cafe with a ton of personality, and really fantastic drinks. It’s built right into the side of another building, and you have to go down some stairs into what is basically a little alley to get to it. But you’ll know it when you see it, thanks to their neon lights.

Besides a friendly staff and cool decorations, you can also get incredibly cool drinks, like this one called “Totoro”!

This was some kind of sesame, blood orange, vanilla, coffee drink. I’m not entirely sure, but it was so good. I’ve genuinely never had any drink like it before. It tasted like sesame candy, but was cold and creamy. I loved the cup, I wish I could’ve bought one! I was going to try the “Howl’s Moving Castle”, but they were out of it.

After getting our day started with a tasty drink, we headed to a bookshop called Skylight Books. I was specifically on the hunt for a postcard that said “California” or “Los Angeles”, and my friends told me they had them here.

The bookstore was super cute. It felt very cozy, and had some neat stuff besides books, like stationery. I ended up getting this sticker sheet and my highly sought after California postcard.

After that, it was time for lunch, but the place we were originally going to go to wasn’t open until dinner time, so we went to another cafe. This one was called “Go Get ‘Em Tiger”, a local chain with almost a dozen locations all across LA! We went to the one in Highland Park, and it was so cute! It was like in a little glass box inside the indoor part of the structure, and then you would leave the glass box to go sit in the seating area, either indoors or outdoors.

They had a display case of baked goods, but I could not get the glare off the glass, so here’s a picture, full of glare:

I opted to get something a little more nutritious, so I got this soft scramble with avocado on an English muffin:

This was undoubtedly the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had from a restaurant. Every time I make scrambled eggs, they come out as like, rubbery individual little pieces, rather than being a soft, cohesive pile like this. Plus, the flaky sea salt on the avocado was a really great addition. This was around twelve dollars, I think, and I also got a housemade iced chai which was a little over six dollars:

The chai was definitely on the less sweet side, which is fine but not my preferred version of iced chai, though it was still good, especially if you’re not really an over-the-top sugary person.

They also had a cute mobile order pickup station outside their glass box! Seems convenient.

Following the super yummy lunch, I got to see the Hollywood sign! Though, only from the car, so I didn’t get any good pictures. Not that I really wanted to get out and try to walk to see it. It’s not something that has ever seemed worth it to me to hike up a literal mountain for. But it was still pretty cool.

Then, we decided it was high time for another sweet beverage (I’m kind of obsessed with sugary drinks if you couldn’t tell by now). So we went to Boba Guys, a boba place in Hi-Fi.

The inside had a clean sort of simple look to it, with a pleasant atmosphere and nice music. I thought the menu/display area was cute, too.

My usual order for boba is either brown sugar milk tea or Thai tea, which my friend actually did get:

But I had just had boba the day before, so I wanted to try something a little different, and was shocked to see that this place offered horchata. So I had to get it.

This horchata was so sweet and creamy, and had the perfect amount of cinnamon in it to spice it up. I felt good in my choice to try something different, as this was some of, if not the best, horchata I’ve ever had. It was so much lighter than boba would’ve been (not that I don’t love boba, because obviously I do).

I also snapped a pic of a stranger’s drink when it was ready on the counter, because it looked amazing. It was the strawberry matcha drink.

I also got this pin (ten dollars) and this (free) sticker!

I am obsessed with anything that looks like a stamp that is not a stamp, including stickers, pins, washi tapes, anything along those lines. I have several stamp-style washi tapes and stickers, but this is my first pin of that style.

Also, I love hot air balloons. So really this pin is a total win in my book.

That was everything we got up to on our tour, but on the way back, I saw this cool painting.

I would be very interested to hear the story behind this painting.

So, yeah, my last day in LA was super fun! I got to be driven through Hollywood, Silverlake, Hi-Fi, Little Bangladesh, and see so many cool things, plus have some really fantastic food and drinks!

If you’re from the area, have you been to any of these places before? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS