Los Angeles

We arrived at LAX in the afternoon and Nosh, our friend who you might remember we met on a train in Thailand, collected us from the airport, we were going to be staying with him and his lovely family during our stay in LA.  The two of us, Nosh, his wife Kio and their cute son Zelzen went out for dinner at a great Italian place close to their home.  When we arrived though, they advised that they were shutting soon so we ordered some very tasty pizzas to take away with us.  We ate dinner and then hit the sack, myself and Kay were exhausted after flying from Singapore and very jet lagged since we had crossed the date line and gained 15 hours during our flight.

The next morning Kio dropped us off in downtown LA where we had a nice breakfast and then took a bus to Santa Monica where we spent the day enjoying the sun at the beach. We made our way back to Downtown and Nosh collected us from there and the three of us went for dinner.  We had some awesome burgers which were enormous, none of us could finish them. My burger was sandwiched between two cheese toasties! Amazing but just too much, I had thought that because LA is so image conscious that the portion sizes wouldn't be as bad as the rest of the US but I was 100% wrong.  We had another early night as we were still very jet lagged and so neither of us had slept very well the night before.

The next day was one for being proper tourists in LA.  We started our day by doing a tour around the Hollywood hills, Beverley Hills, Rodeo Drive and West Hollywood.  I wouldn't recommend these tours as we spent most of our time being shown the houses of celebrities, which neither of us were that interested in.  We then walked around west Hollywood where we saw the Walk of Fame and also the Chinese theatre which is where all the hand prints are.  We spent the afternoon doing some shopping and then had burritos for dinner at a small Mexican place near Union station. 

On our last full day in LA we went for an amazing breakfast with Nosh and Zelzen in the morning, again, the portion sizes were so huge that Kay and I couldn't eat any lunch - we were still so full.  Myself and Kay then took a bus to Venice beach which was my favourite place in LA, there is so much to see and do, lots of cool wee shops, surfers, skaters and street performers.  

That night Nosh took drove us out to see Pasadena which is such a cute looking place, it has the look and feel of a small town even though you're in LA.  We went for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works in The Big Bang Theory, the food and drinks were amazing.

I'm really glad that we got to stop in LA for a few days and we were very lucky that we got to see places that tourists don't normally get to see.  I won't be in a huge rush to return though, LA just isn't for me.