Buca Di Beppo

September 14th:

My mom, K, and I went shopping this afternoon in Santa Monica and I spent way too much on a really nice, fuzzy sweater. I needed one, so it wasn't like I was buying it just cause I liked it, but I definitely could have tried harder to find a cheeper one. Luckily my mom pitched in half, so I'm not broke.

After shopping, we re-parked (or risk a ticket), and headed to Buca Di Beppo for dinner. We got the mini tour of the kitchens and then were seated in the back of the restaurant, which was pretty quiet. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back a HUGE French tourist group had taken over the room and were loudly conversing in their native tongue. I kinda interpreted some of the directions the tour guide was giving the group, which I was proud of. :3 We ordered and got our food without a hitch. Our waiter was really cool and charismatic and talked a bunch with us every time he came to the table. When it came time to order dessert, K and I got the "Colossal Brownie Sundae" which was advertised as this: "Twelve decadent chunks of freshly-baked brownies layered with six scoops of vanilla bean and chocolate ice cream, topped with caramel and chocolate sauces then buried in mounds of whipped cream - and we won’t forget the cherry!" along with this picture (which we thought was a SLIGHTLY larger than normal sized martini glass):

This is what we got (GINORMOUS!!!)(yes, we ordered the whipped cream on the side):

K said, and I quote: "I almost cried when I saw it" because it was so overwhelmingly large. I literally felt like adrenaline had been shot through my veins because I got hyper just looking at it. Hahaaaa!

The French people were STARING at our table when it arrived - one guy even came over and took a picture of us with it. It cracked me up. I think French people have really small portions so the Buca plates are huge to them. Well, they're huge to me too, but for them they must have been freaking amazed. We ate a good amount of it before giving up:

We started getting crafty with our placemats and I made a crane, K made a jumping frog, and my mom made a cootie catcher with deep questions instead of fortunes. Our waiter was SUPER impressed with the cootie catcher, and asked for it, but my mom didn't want to give him hers, so we made him one to take home with the same questions. He was ECSTATIC.

Then K and I tried to eat more:

I took the frog, the crane, a little note that said "Buca is awesome! I hope you enjoyed your meal! - a random customer", and another copy of the deep questions and pinned them on the wall next to our table by fitting them behind the edges of the picture frames. The next person who got that booth better appreciate all our hard work!!! :D

We got back to our hotel and while I was writing all of this, K was kinda talking to herself, and I caught this bit: "I've decided to change my future profession. I want to be an interpretive dancer who sings from her ears." (then she went on to describe that there isn't much of a market for it, so it was a good decision).

I love and will miss my dear friend. <3

Oh, I also visited the Getty Villa in Maibu and had lunch at Duke's right off the Pacific Coast Highway.

Keep it classy!