Michael In restaurants, we like to order a dozen oysters as an appetizer, "On the Half Shell," as Americans call the opened and raw oysters, which are served with great fanfare on ice chips on large silver platters on one foot high stands. It's a nice pastime, but not exactly cheap, as a dozen oysters in the restaurant can easily cost $35.

Angelika In California, we're currently wondering a bit if the end is near, as devastating wildfires are raging once again. This time, it has hit Southern California, in the areas of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. The Santa Ana winds keep fanning the flames, and firefighters are working around the clock. When we were in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving, we couldn't believe how warm it was there at the end of November. People were sunbathing in bikinis on the beach. We felt like we were on Hawaii. The fantastic weather was nice for us, but almost a bit eerie, because although it's usually warmer in Los Angeles than in San Francisco, we had never experienced such temperatures there in the winter months.

Angelika Michael is very difficult to buy gifts for because he always buys what he needs for himself. It has happened several times that I bought something for him, and the next day he came home beaming with the same item. Therefore, I have now started creating so-called experience gifts. For his birthday in November this year, I got him tickets to a reading by David Sedaris.

Angelika Thanksgiving is known as the most sacred of all holidays in the USA. Every year on the third Thursday in November, families gather at home to eat turkey, and since American families like to move and often live scattered across the country, everyone and their brother travels back to their hometowns for the occasion.

Michael If you're visiting Los Angeles, you must not miss the chance to visit the top-notch sushi restaurants there. One of our favorite spots is "Sugarfish" in Santa Monica. We always drive there from Venice Beach, and always at odd times, like three in the afternoon, because otherwise, the place is packed, and you have to wait in line for hours. Over the decades, we've found that on weekday afternoons, you either get a table immediately or have to wait at most ten minutes. We routinely park in the municipal garage 100 meters away for the bargain price of two dollars (beware, the parking garage right next to it is private and more expensive).

Michael In San Francisco, we go to Japantown to eat so often that I always joke we might as well rent a place in one of the retirement homes there. Recently, in Los Angeles, we visited the neighborhood of Koreatown, known among insiders simply as "K-Town." Located slightly south of Hollywood and a bit west of Downtown, the area attracted many Korean immigrants in the 1960s, who opened shops in the old Art Deco buildings there. To this day, you can still find these relatively well-preserved houses from the 1920s in Koreatown.