Bookish Fun in LA

I’m a bit late posting this seeing as I was in LA in June but I still wanted to share the bookish adventures I had while there. I would have loved to have visited more stores and bought more things but I’m very happy with that I did get up to and buy.

The first day in LA we went Downtown and went to The Last Bookstore. It’s a massive bookstore that sells new and used books, records and has a labyrinth upstairs as well as a gallery and shops (including a yarn shop where I treated myself to a ball of yarn). There’s so much to look at it in there and the book tunnel in the labyrinth is a must see!

       

 

 

My friend is part of an awesome all ladies bookclub. While I was over visiting they had a meet up and my friend invited me along. She had told me the book they’d be reviewing in advance so I would be able to discuss it with them. The book was Euphoria by Lily King which I read in May and you can check out my review here. I had never been to a real life book club before and it was super fun. We ate delicious food, drank wine and debated about the book. Everyone there was lovely and very inviting and I had such a fun time!

 

 

Skylight is a bookstore in the Los Feliz area of LA and was the nearest bookshop to my friend’s house where we were staying. Skylight is an independent shop that is jam packed with books and hosts loads of events. It’s partly owned by Jeffrey Tambor who you might know better as George Bluth Sr and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development which is pretty awesome! Their website has drawings of the covers of that month’s bestsellers done by one of their employees and it’s such a unique idea. 7th June was the release date of Grunt by Mary Roach and I made a beeline that evening to the shop to pick up my copy. The following week I returned with my friend and her book club. They were interested in reading The Girls by Emma Cline so they decided to go see her do a reading and Q&A. Seeing as The Girls is one of the biggest books of the summer it was interesting to go along to the event and it was nice to see all the book club again, I felt like an honorary member!

Other places I visited included Stories and The Time Travel Mart in Echo Park and Barnes and Noble for all of 5 minutes. I would have loved to have gone to more bookstores but just had too much other stuff to pack in!

 

As for my purchases I only bought two things. One was Grunt by Mary Roach. I had mentioned it in my Most Anticipated Books of 2016 post and I started reading it while on holiday. I wrote a review for it in which you can check out here. I had found out that the day I was leaving Mary Roach was doing an event in LA but while I could find the time and place I could find no information on tickets or anything so I couldn’t go. I also got myself a small pin that looks like a bookshop store front. It was so cute that I couldn’t resist picking it up. It’ll go well with my Penguin books pin!

Overall I’m very happy with the bookish section of my trip. It was great to be part of a book club even for those two events and everyone was so welcoming! If you’d like to see more about my trip to America you can check out my post on LA by clicking here and my post on my roadtrip to Vegas and Grand Canyon by clicking here. I also did a post with the same beauty haul which you can check out here.

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!