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.
