Stay @ Our Hotel (Vagabonds Inn)

Winnie says:

Rrrring.... there goes the alarm clock.. it is 8a.m. in the following morning. We slowly wake up and go out to the reception counter to get our breakfast. To our dismay, there is only one muffin left. After our very simple breakfast, we return to our hotel room. Luckily we asked the SQ air-stewardess for 2 chicken pie beforehand. Or we will go hungry for the day.

We use the internet via our wireless laptop. Subsequently we go out to the nearby shops to walk around and eat at one of the restaurants there. We eat at Burger King in which the meals are quite similar to those in our hometown, Singapore. Then we set out to the University Village to shop around. There are a lot of shops and fast food restaurants as well as a food court that sells international food. Examples are a big supermart, 'Superior' that sells all kinds of supplies from utensils to the basic necessities and so on, Denny's Restaurant, Burger King, Bank of America, the cinema, a post office, a 'Dollar for Dollar' shop that sells provisions at a dollar each and other shops that sell clothes and accessories and so on. It is pretty like Singapore except that the concept of the shops are one storey shops that are placed in small little cottage houses that are sort of dispersed around unlike those of Singapore which are in boutique concepts housed inside shopping centers.

After that we scout around for our permanent apartments at the 36th Street, the 24th Street and so on. Some of the apartments for rent are unfurnished but yet spacious, mostly 1 or 2 bedroom types, while the rest are like 1 bedroom for rent within a furnished house, where you get to live with a family and get to use the facilities within. Most of the facilities that are available are a laundry, a dryer, a double bed, closet, a TV and wireless facilities and so on. We manage to find a beautifully decorated house with a pretty and hospitable landlord and her family. She and her family does not live there. Hence we have the whole house to ourselves. Though her son also lives there, but he lives in another small house at the backyard of the house. It should be quite an enjoyable stay there. Hence we make an appointment to sign a contract the following day.

The University Village is near to Boy's university that he is going to study in; in exact University of Southern California, the USC. After that we return to our hotel to have a bath before we set out to Mikoshi, a Japanese noodle shop which is just opposite our hotel to have our ramen dinner. Boy has a curry ramen, while I have a Gyoza Ramen. They taste delicious quite to our liking. Subsequently we walk upstreets from the noodle shop to look around for some other restaurants that we can eat at for the remaining one and a half day stay at the hotel. There are Popeyes that sells fried chicken wings and buffalo wings set meals, a MacDonald's, a KFC, Panda Express that sells Chinese mixed food like those in Singapore where you get to choose a wide variety of Chinese prepared food like fried vegetables, fish or meats, to go with steamed rice and Carl JR that sells lovely burgers like the normal fast food restaurants.

After some time of scouting, we proceed back to our hotel room to watch TV for a while before we turn in.