LA Trip

View first morning in LA!

Last month I went to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. It was such an amazing trip! The last time I had been properly abroad before this was 2008, when I went to Prague (I say properly abroad as I have been back and forth between UK and Ireland every year and it doesn’t really count to me!). The last time I’d been properly abroad with my boyfriend was 10 years ago! Yes TEN! We went on holiday with a bunch of friends summer of 2006 to London, Rome and Paris. So I was very excited to be going to LA, a present my boyfriend got me for Christmas and to celebrate 10 years going out together. We were so lucky to visit our friends K&K in LA, who had stayed with us in 2012 and who we went to London with in 2013. K&K graciously put us up for our visit and were fantastic hosts, knowing locals really makes such a difference.

 

The first day we went to Downtown LA, went to The Last Bookstore (I’ll have another post with pictures from there), wandered around looking at the buildings and Union Station, getting a mini tour of the area. Tha evening we went to see a Dodgers game, which was super fun! And of course, we had to have a famous Dodgers Dog while there!

 

Disneyland was another big day for us! I’ve only ever been to Disneyland Paris before (on that 2006 trip actually!) so it was fun to try out another one. We had a blast, even getting soaked on Splash Mountain! I had my first Dole Whip as well, after hearing about it from friends. It was DELICIOUS! Seriously, I want another one now!

 

Clockwise from top- The ‘Y’ in the Hollywood artwork outside the Hollywood Museum of Death; Craft and Folk Art Museum; La Brea Tar Pits; Craft and Folk Art Museum

I love going to museums so I was glad we got to go to some in LA. First off we visited the Hollywood Museum of Death. It’s not for the faint of heart! I did enjoy it, I spent a long time looking at everything, it’s certainly fascinating, but I do think that one or two exhibits were there for more of a shock factor and therefore they were tacky. Another day we wandered around the La Brea Tar Pits. While there is a museum you can pay in to look around, if you don’t fancy that then there’s loads of information around the grounds. Across the road is the Craft and Folk Art Museum, a small gallery that has a cute gift shop. I really regret not buying the drinking glasses with cacti on them!

 

Of course, being in LA it’s hard not to go check out Hollywood. If you just want to see The Chinese Theatre and the handprints, as well as the Walk of Fame (like I did, I wasn’t interested in doing a tour), then it can be easily done in half an hour. It does get crowded around there, it is perfect for people watching though!

 

While we didn’t see any celebrities ‘in the wild’ we did see some! Our friends scored us tickets to a Conan O’Brien recording so we got to see Conan, Andy Richter and Will Arnett. Conan is such a pro, he only messed up once and he was very funny. I also won a t-shirt at the show! That night we went to a comedy show, Hot Tub Show, which was hosted by Kristen Schaal. We also walked past the Bernie Sander’s cafe, which isn’t really a celebrity I know, but seeing as it was around the time of the Californian primary there was loads of people milling about taking pictures!

 

No trip to LA would really be complete without a trip to the beach! The photos above were taken at Santa Monica pier, we spent a whole day there wandering around, taking pictures and just having a relaxing day. Got to dip my feet into the Pacific Ocean!

 

As our flight out of LA was at 6pm, my friends suggested we go look around Venice Beach for an hour or two. We spent most out time at the skatepark, it’s mesmirising around there! The picture on the left was taken in the evening we spent at Santa Monica. We walked up along the beach towards Venice Beach but stopped when we saw a bunch of people slacklining. I couldn’t resist trying it myself so eventually I gathered the nerve and hopped up on the smallest line!

I realised after returning that I’m a crappy blogger. Because I took zero photos of food! Even though there’s no photos, oh boy was it amazing. Trust me! Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, after drinks snacks, we had it all! I’ll need to learn how to make my own French Dip sandwich.

I’ll have a separate post for my roadtrip to Vegas and Grand Canyon, another for the bookish delights and one for the small beauty buys. But for now thanks again K&K for helping to make our holiday amazing!