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I feel as though it wasn’t that long ago that I was talking about my family’s quick weekend jaunt to Monterey Bay. At that time, Jian (& probably my little bean too) was itching to travel. It was his idea to go away for an impromptu weekend getaway to temporarily satisfy our wanderlust after a prolonged vacation drought due to that nasty virus going ’round. I know we’ve already been to Los Angeles & Las Vegas multiple times since the pandemic restrictions in our state have eased, but we’ve only gone to visit specific family members & only went out to pre-selected places that were not typically prone to major outbreaks. Since the pandemic crashed down on us, & more importantly since we’ve created our own tiny human, we haven’t really taken a family vacation that was solely for ourselves & not for some family event or celebration holiday.

Shortly after coming back from Monterey, Jian started seriously looking for a new job & very quickly plunged himself into the interviewing pool. He had been thinking about changing jobs for quite some time, but decided that now would be the best opportunity for him to transition to a new environment. Before we knew it, Jian had landed himself a big corporate tech job. It was a very important milestone in his career & a major cause to celebrate. Luckily for us, through a delay in the process of some paperwork Jian’s official start date got pushed back which granted us a few extra days to spend some quality time together, just the 3 of us. It also gave Jian some much needed rest & relaxation time in-between jobs. This gave him the brilliant idea to go on another family road trip again. We had just a little more than one week before he would start his new job. So we decided to take a proper vacation. We waffled back & forth over where we would go, but ended up settling on our trusty go-to vacation spot: Los Angeles. (Again. *Sigh*)

This time on our travels, we ended up booking our stay at a super swanky, elite hotel. I mean, when Jian says he wants to splurge & indulge the family, who are we to turn him down? I haven’t done a hotel room tour in a long time, somewhat because it’s so tedious to edit all my photos; mostly because my little bean won’t let me use the computer for more than 2 minutes before she tries to grab the wireless mouse & keyboard to play with. On this trip, we chose to stay at the West Hollywood EDITION Hotel. The EDITION hotel series is an elite boutique set of hotels owned by the Marriott Hotels parent company & designed by Ian Schrager, the man behind the infamous Studio 54 in New York City.

Back in 2017, we stayed at the London EDITION Hotel in the Soho neighborhood of London for my early birthday celebration. When I first found out about this series of elite boutique hotels, I had figured that it would be an impossible feat to be able to afford staying at any of these hotels, ever. Then, by a sheer stroke of extremely good luck, we were able to grab one of the most incredible deals of a lifetime when we booked our stay in London. I mean, it was nothing short of a miracle we were able to book our stay for a mere fraction of the standard rate (which was triple what we paid). I never thought we’d ever get that lucky again, but this time it was by no means of luck that we were able to book a stay at another EDITION Hotel.

Right before this trip Jian had said to me, “We always drive by that hotel when we are in L.A & keep saying we would love to stay there one day but never actually do it. Why don’t we do it now? Why don’t we once & for all book a stay at that hotel?” So, after some consideration about saving money, we let ourselves splurge & indulge a little bit. We don’t splurge like this very often, & this was definitely a special occasion, so why not?

Also, I should note that on top of being a high-level rewards members through the Marriott BonVoy program, we also got a special employee discount, which grants selected family members of Marriott branded hotel employees special benefits. On top of the very generous BonVoy rewards upgrades, we also got a slightly discounted rate for our stay. We had originally booked a Loft Room with a king-size bed, which is already a very spacious size, but then we got upgraded to a Premier Suite. That 2-room suite was larger than our first apartment! Here is a look inside our posh hotel suite. (Side note, I’ve never stayed in a suite-sized room at a hotel ever in my life.)

As you can see from the photos above how fabulous this room was, you can pretty much guess that we tried to take advantage of this room during our short-but-sweet stay. Our little bean is just learning how to walk right now, so we let her explore around as much as possible. Crawling is our bean’s specialty, but she can side-step (we call it crab walking) around a room as long as she’s holding on to a table ledge, a straight wall, or a chair.

On this trip, we really let ourselves be truly lazy. Aside from our usual early morning wake-ups (because our little bean wakes up at the same time everyday like clockwork), we’d spend our mornings lounging in bed letting our bean crawl around the bed while watching the morning news on TV. Then we’d slowly get ready for the day & head out by mid-morning. At home, we’re usually up & ready for breakfast before starting work, but whenever we’re in Los Angeles we tend to forgo breakfast time so we can take more time to get ready & pack our things for the day’s outing. We will grab a mid-morning coffee at one of our go-to coffee spots (i.e. Alfred, Intelligentsia, Verve, or some other hipster spot nearby). By that time, we’re ready for lunch.

When we go out with our little bean, we try to limit our activities & only explore one or two districts/neighborhoods not too far from our hotel. We will grab an early lunch & try to get our little bean to take a nap. Our little bean is barely over one-year old, & we haven’t yet fully tested her endurance for an entire day’s outing. Therefore, we limit our activities so we can minimize any chance for a fussy freak-out in a public place. On this trip, we decided not to let our relatives know we’d be in town & just keep to ourselves, the three of us. We had considered telling everyone, but since our vacation was planned very on-the-fly, we thought it’d be inconsiderate to call upon our very busy relatives at the last-minute. That helped in making our trip even more relaxing. We didn’t have to rush anywhere to meet people & such.

Overall, we had a truly relaxing vacation. We didn’t have to rush from place to place. We didn’t pack our days with too much driving, & you know how pain-in-the-arse it is to drive anywhere in Los Angeles. We really just took the time to enjoy being with each other & eating good food. Our little bean got to spend quality one-on-one time with her mama & papa. She also got to take a much needed break from her maternal grandmother, who was spoiling her too much to the point of enabling her new bratty behavior.

Since writing this post Jian has already settled in nicely at his new job, & we are already planning our next vacation to Los Angeles again in May. My nephew (a.k.a. my cousin’s son) is graduating high school & heading to military school on a scholarship, lots of May birthdays in our family, & my aunt will have fully recovered from having major surgery done. There’s just so much to celebrate! We haven’t quite worked out all the logistics yet, or whether or not we are actually going back to L.A, but we can definitely say that we are feeling that wanderlust bug again, but this time we are itching to travel out of the country. Maybe we’ll start small & travel outside of our state first, like, Jian wants to go back to New York where he grew up after immigrating to the States. Either way, you know I will write about it when the time comes. Until then, cheers!

Today’s song of the day: