These are two pictures that I never shared from our West Coast trip two years ago. The top is the Chelsea Hotel in New York and the bottom is a Walmart somewhere outside Portland Oregon. Walmart was on my to-do list to take a look at while we were on the trip as you see them in films and so on. Wow those shops are huge.
I can also see that the top must have been from a roll of Kodak Portra 400 VC and the bottom from a roll of my beloved Kodak Ektar 100.
Abbot Kinney Boulevard
Breakfast gnocchi! at Gjelina
The carousel at the pier, my sister and I loved this when we were kids, it was nice to see it again.
TOT, my drink is ‘half and half’ which I hadn’t heard of before, it’s half ice tea and half lemonade and very refreshing.
Little Tokyo
Venice
In-N-Out.
View from Mulholland Drive
Throughout the trip we had a real mix of accommodation. For our hotel in LA I used the Priceline name your own price bidding system and got a good deal. With Priceline you bid on the area and star rating and then hotels with spare rooms they need to offload accept your offer if it matches what they had in mind. As you don’t know exactly what hotel you are bidding on I don’t bid on anything lower than three stars as there is an implicit standard that you get with a three star plus place. This does mean however you often end up in the big hotel chains like Hyatt and Marriott. I don’t mind that though as it’s quite an interesting experience in itself! Huge corridors and ice machines, and the main thing is you get a proper hotel room with a big bathroom for tiny hostel type prices.
So we ended up staying in Hyatt Regency Century Plaza which was nice enough. I wouldn’t stay there if I had to pay full-price as I’d rather be somewhere cute but it had a good location for driving to everything. It’s next door to the big Century City Mall which we took a look at one evening as it was on our to-do list to take a look at a proper USA mall :) I was in Los Angeles for several months when I was young so there were plenty of things I remembered such as the craziness of Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, and the palm trees. No earthquakes this time though.
We were only in LA for two nights but we packed in quite a lot. We had a nice breakfast at Gjelina on Abbot Kinney Blvd. We visited Little Tokyo, browsed in Kinokuniya, had a great meal at Teishokuya Of Tokyo aka TOT (a tip from my dad), and visited the Japanese American Museum. The only downside to Little Tokyo as far as I can see is that it doesn’t have any public toilets, so you have to go to the Starbucks. We drove along Mulholland Drive (great views and pretend house shopping). Went to the Getty Center (wonderful building, wonderful art). Tried Pinkberry (yum). Oh and we tried In-N-Out which I had heard so much about, I’m no fast food expert but the burger seemed tasty but the fries not very.
I actually took three cameras with me on this whole trip, while that might sound a bit crazy two of them were very small. These were taken with the Lomo LC-A and 400 VC Portra film. I’m tagging each post with the cameras used should anyone be interested.
A couple more of the Lomo LC-A pictures from around the neighbourhood that I work in. I think some in this roll were quite underexposed like this last one. I am going to try changing the battery in case that will help.
I bought a few rolls of Kodak Portra 400 VC for the Lomo LC-A and I thought I’d give one a try as I was going about my daily business, here are some of the pictures.
Sunny days.
Meeting friends for a coffee, or in my case a spiced chai.
Fountain at work.
Tried on some velvet jackets in the vintage store, felt very 1996!
I was in Maison Blanc to pick up a loaf of their delicious Campaillou.
Neapolitan ice cream houses
Out with friends.
Never thought that would come out! I think I need to get a bit better at judging the focusing distances.
Night bus home.
The end :)
I have some Lomo pictures from Berlin too. This is almost the last bit of Berlin talk for this year :) The flat I stay in is in Friedenau so I know this area fairly well. I guess you could perhaps say it is kind of like the Upper West Side in New York? It’s a leafy mainly residential area with nice bakeries and neighbourhood cafés dotted around the place. In Berlin most people live in flats and I am always very impressed by how much effort seems to have been put into making these attractive.
In Berlin old flats you get a front set of flats that are on the streetside and a back set of flats with a garden in between, to get through to the back house and the garden you get corridors like this were people put their bikes. This is the corridor in the day when it is mostly empty, at night it would be packed full of bikes.
I have a few more Berlin Lomo pictures left which I will put up soon.
