Now that we were in downtown Los Angeles, Tom and I decided to get our bearings straight. After going through the Exhibit Hall, we decided to go grab an early dinner.

I've heard that The Pantry was a great place for good Denny's style cuisine. Yet, en route to The Pantry, we found a hole in the wall Italian restaurant called La Bella Cucina. You can't go wrong at $12 for a pasta bowl. They played an animation DVD on TV. The restaurant was not crowded, there were some Anime Expo attendees. We were the only ones in cosplay. I decided to ditch the wig since it was way too hot. We ran into our friends, Old Man Mike and his daughter, Ebie. Tom learned that La Bella Cucina was unaware of the convention and did not stock up on their fresh food supplies today.

We returned to the West Hall. It was a bit of a walk from La Bella Cucina to the LACC, but I imagine others had longer travel distances. I ran into some Amateur Voice Actors from my early days. I also ran into Cynthia and her Luna. Her Luna was dolled up in the wedding reception ball gown from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We also ran into (human) Luna and Chibi in their Macross Frontier costumes. Chibi was too shy to do the "Nyan Nyan" song and dance.

We met back with Traveling Valentine: SVU. Our crew was jonesing for some good eats. Since Stan is the token sports otaku, we decided on Fox Sky Bar at the Staples Center. The only downer to that place was that it only opened when there's a game at the center. Just our luck, the LA Sparks had a game that night. I found it funny that on online forums, cosplayers were paranoid about the LA Lakers having a game and being mauled by sports fans. NBA season ends mid-June. The WBNA crowd only gave us the usual stares. Otherwise, they didn't bother us.

For the most part, the food at the Fox Sky Bar was great. I had some of the delicious garlic fries. Tom and I shared a midori sour. After dinner, we decided to just chill in front of the Staples Center to enjoy the lights coming from the Nokia Theater. It was a mellow way to end the first day, and we would not have it any other way.

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