saturday and sunday

Tuesday, July 20, 2004, at 05:35AM

By Eric Richardson

As I continue with the play-by-play of what my mom and I have been up to since she's been out here, I'm still holding to the short summaries. I will come back and fill in details for a few of these as I get time in the upcoming days. We pick up the tale Saturday afternoon.

  • Saturday afternoon included my customary trip over to the Bonaventure Hotel to ride up and down the glass elevators. It's a fun view, and it's close and free.

  • Saturday evening we had dinner at Border Grill in Santa Monica. Very good food, and reasonable given the $20 off coupon we had (thank you Last Remaining Seats). Afterward we walked over to the park overlooking the ocean, and were there around sunset; though the sun had already gone behind the hills to the north there was lots of color to be had.

  • Sunday morning we went to Bel Air Presbyterian for the 11am service, and afterward looked off the hill at the plume of smoke rising from the Santa Clarita fire.

  • From there we made our way down the 405 to Manhattan Beach, where we walked around for a while. Lunch was at Wahoo's, since you don't really ever see a fish taco in the midwest.

  • From Manhattan Beach we headed slightly north, ended up at Lickity Split in El Segundo. I had peppermint while my mom had chocolate.

  • Sunday evening we had dinner at Water Grill, just around the corner on Grand just north of 6th. It was everything you expect a high-class resturant to be. We started by splitting Clam Chowder and crab cake (Water Grill kindly brought the clam chowder in two bowls). The clam chowder had real clams in it. For a main course I had the Rhode Island hook and line striped bass, while my mom had the Alaskan troll caught king salmon (as you can see the menu was very descriptive of where and how each fish was caught). Both were amazing. Dessert was a chocolate truffle tart with ice cream on top.

I'll leave off here, and pick up with Monday later on today.