Exploring Los Angeles

The City of Angels has so much diversity and so much to do!! It would have been overwhelming to explore the city by ourselves. Luckily Los Angeles has been an awesome experience for us thanks to Donné and Babak. They planned such a fun itinerary. We’ve been so busy these last 4 days. These are some of the things we’ve been up to:

We went to a food market in downtown LA and it was proof that Americans don’t just eat burgers and fries. There was such a wide variety of nationalities, people and food. I couldn’t even pronounce the names of most of the foods we ate that morning but with Babak around we definitely were not going to miss out on any good food. It was very interesting!

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an obvious must-do touristy thing when in Hollywood, LA. It didn’t take us long to walk a few blocks reading the names of the stars. I only recognized the really famous names. There are also cartoon and movie characters walking around everywhere. My favourite were Darth Vader and Chewi. You could also visit the Wax Museum or Ripley’s Believe it or not Museum if you wanted to. It was so unreal to see the famous Hollywood sign from the Kodak Theater. It looks so small in the photos we took…you have to really zoom in to see it. It’s much cooler when you’re actually there.

We did about a 2 hour hike in Griffith Park and then went to the Griffith Observatory. This hike took us up to a view point where you could see the Hollywood sign and look out over the whole city of Los Angeles! Amazing view! We then climbed/slid on our bums on the path less travelled (or never travelled) to the observatory.

Every Saturday night in the summer months a different classical movie is screened outside on a big screen in LA. People bring their dogs, blankets and pillows and come chill outside under the stars to watch a live band and movie. It was such a nice atmosphere. There were many food trucks there selling strange but tasty combinations of deliciousness. We ate grilled cheese, Japanese fries and salted caramel ice-cream sandwiches.(luckily we hiked that morning to compensate for all the food!) Food trucks are a very popular thing here.

Venice and Muscle Beach was our first stop after our long flight. There’s so much happening in the Venice beach area! There are many hippies, beach bums, artists, painters, skaters, cyclist, rollerbladers and stores selling random stuff. Dagga is legal if it’s for medical purposes, but according to the signs, it seems like the “doctor” at the stall will first sell it to you then make up your diagnosis. You can smell the marjuana fumes everywhere around Venice Beach. (Either everyone is very sick or very healthy!?) There’s also a real freak show. (They advertise themselves as freaks, so it’s not just my opinion.). We saw the turtle with 2 heads, the half girl, the bearded lady and the wolf-man. If you wanted to see more freaks you need to pay $5. It seems like there could never be a dull moment when you’re at Venice Beach! Muscle Beach is a section on Venice beach where Arnold Schwarzenegger used to gym during the time he was Mr. Olimpia. We also went to the Gold’s gym close by which is where famous body-builders (past and present) work out.

We’ve done a lot more which I will write about in the next post. So far, the local American people we’ve interacted with are really, really nice and very friendly! Like today at the tar museum we were in the wrong line at first and then went to the right one and the people in front of us in the line told us we can come in front of them because they saw we were actually there before them. And the lady at the petrol (gas) station was also really friendly. There aren’t any petrol attendants here so we put petrol in our rental car by ourselves! (which is weird for us.) I’ll post again about LA soon!:)