What a great way to end our ‘vacation’.
Sitting at The Farm café on the Malibu pier
with just a few hours to reflect and savor all the American-ness before we
start the trek home.
LA has far exceeded our expectations. As we anticipated,
it is very spread-out, a bit smoggy (nothing serious) and the traffic is
gnarly, but the up-sides more than offset these elements.
We wasted no time doing the most touristy
thing you can do, and jumped on the hop-on / hop-off bus to explore LA. Compared to some other cities we have done
this in, this one is worth a mention.
There are 4 main routes (and a couple of extra connections), which cover
the main points of interest with some informative narration along the way. It did take a long time, because due to the
size of LA, each route took at minimum 2 hours without getting off to
explore.
In the little time we had in LA, we feel
that we made the most of it. We walked
along Santa Monica pier and Venice beach, window shopped in Rodeo Drive, wandered through the 3rd
St mall and poked around Sunset Boulevard.
We had a look around Hollywood Boulevard looking for Johnny Depp’s walk of fame star:
We didn’t find it L, but we did find one dedicated to Donald Trump instead (hehe):
We took a stroll through the streets of Beverley Hills, to check out how the rich and famous live. Interestingly, each street is lined with a single type of tree to distinguish itself from the others:
The stand-outs were the beach areas of
Santa Monica and Venice. Wide sandy
strips, calm seas, a variety of attractions such as the famous skate park,
‘White Men Can’t Jump’ basketball courts, muscle beach, Gold’s gym and lots of
really American shop stalls along the boardwalk. Both beach areas were nice, but quite
different despite being situated next to each other: Santa Monica clean, up-market,
manicured, and typically ‘Baywatch’, whilst Venice gritty and raw, strewn with
‘trash’ and homelessness, typically ‘Grand Theft Auto’.
Celebrity spotting delivered modest
results. We bumped into Adam Godley at
the Cheesecake Factory (yeah, we had to look him up, too – J only recognized
him from Suits). The cheesecake was delicious!
We spent a fun evening at The Comedy
Store. Great value – only $15 for an
all-night line-up of comics doing 15min sets.
Some good, some bad but overall, a great thing to have done. J was happy that Joey Diaz showed up to try
some new material (me – not so thrilled with his performance).
We nearly ended up taking part in a live
audience recording of the Dr Phil show, but logistics worked against us.
Uber is a life-saver here. The fact that it’s so popular means that there
are always cars near by, and people to ride-share with to halve your fare, if
you want to. Uber took us shopping last
night to successfully clear out more stores.
The trip was a 2-hour affair across town in peak hour traffic, for only
8 bucks. Bargain!
We packed up our stuff with sadness this
morning and checked out of our fabulous accommodation. You always win some and lose some with accommodation
when travelling and this one was definitely a win. A granny flat at the side of our Airbnb host’s
house was clean and well equipped. The
bed was way too comfy, and the fridge filled with snacks and drinks.
We will miss LA.
Ahead is a 16-hour flight home, just enough
time to mentally prepare for work on Monday.
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