As far as my trip to LA, it was amazing! I could write a few different posts about it, but I decided to
Day 1: Day 1 was really only part of a day, since it was a travel day. We got to the airport really early, got checked in, grabbed some impulse buy snacks, and played Scrabble until our flight boarded. We then flew from Charlotte to Memphis and then to LAX. Flying into LA was really cool. The whole city was so bright! When we got there we waited for our bags, and Anthony came to pick us up. We got back to his apartment, fixed our “beds” (aka the couch and the floor) and went right to sleep.
Day 2: On our first whole day there Anthony told us we could use his car for the day, but he needed to get an oil change first. So we took his car to get an oil change, and walked across the street at a little hole in the wall place for some surprisingly delicious breakfast. We then decided to take full advantage of having a car, and drove down to Santa Monica. This was my first experience really driving around a crazy place like LA, and it was certainly interesting. I think everyone in the city hated me for my driving. What can I say, I like to err on the side of caution. Once we got down to Santa Monica, we walked along the beach and explored the awesome pier, as well as Muscle Beach (which is very appropriately named). Being an East coast girl all my life, it was awesome to see the Pacific. After leaving Santa Monica, we drove around Beverly Hills looking at the big houses and looking for Sprinkles Cupcakes. After a parking garage/personal garage mix up, we found Sprinkles and enjoyed the most delicious cupcakes I’ve ever had in my life. Ever. We then hit up the grocery store for a few necessary items and went to dinner at a place called Salsa & Beer in NoHo.
Day 3: Day 3 started off with Anthony dropping us off at the metro station, where we then took the red line to Hollywood & Highland. Once there, we explored the outside of the Kodak Theatre, which has all of the cool cement hand prints and foot prints, as well as some interesting “characters”. After walking around for a few, we impulsively bought tickets to the wax museum. It was awesome once you got past the initial creepiness of being in a room and not knowing who was real and who was fake. After the wax museum, we walked around Hollywood some more and stumbled upon Boyz II Men getting their star on the Walk of Fame. Oh the things you run into in Hollywood! We then took a nice scenic 4 mile walk to the Grove. There were lots of interesting things to see on the way, like Pinks, the Jim Henson studios, and LA ink. The Grove was amazing. Within minutes of being there we saw Lindsay Lohan and ran into a taping of Extra. We watched them film for a while and grabbed a cheap lunch at the Barnes and Noble, before continuing our walk around the Grove. They also had an awesome Farmers Market! Oh and we saw Christina Aguilera out shopping around. Then we began the long 4 mile hike back to the metro. Once back at the apartment we had a few failed attempts at making dinner before we headed down to Ventura and had a few failed attempts at finding a place to eat dinner. We finally found a Panera and a cute little Barnes and Noble to hang out in. We then decided to make the drive back down to downtown Hollywood to a place called Millions of Milkshakes. Even though we drove through the winding Hollywood hills without headlights for a little while and couldn’t find parking anywhere, the scary journey there was made totally worth it by the most amazing milkshakes I’ve ever had in my life. Seriously. (Sidenote: Millions of Milkshakes was just featured on Kourtney and Kim Take New York this past Sunday! What a coincidence, right?!)
Day 4: Anthony gave us his car again for the morning, so we drove to Burbank for the WB Studio Tour. Driving on the 101 was slightly insane. The tour was awesome and we even got to visit some of the FRIENDS sets. After the tour, we stopped in Studio City for lunch and brought the car back to Anthony. Then we took the metro down to Hollywood & Vine for some more walking around. We went in the Kodak Theatre and to the Hollywood Bowl. It was such an amazing place, and kind of looked like a mini Vegas inside! We came back kind of early and went to bed. Jet lag was still an issue.
Day 5: Day 5 was the day of the event. I plan on writing a whole separate blog post about the event, so I’ll just share the basics here. We started off the day with Anthony’s car again, so we headed to the Griffith Park Observatory to see the Hollywood sign. It was a nice park and would have been even nicer if it weren’t so smoggy. But we enjoyed the view and even went in the planetarium for a little while. We then stopped at a Subway, where we saw someone being arrested, and then home to get ready for the event.
Day 6: Day 6 was the lamest of all the days. We woke up, packed up, and headed back to LAX, where we flew from LA to ATL back to Charlotte. (During this time period, Lindsey proceeded to anger all of the people in first class by commenting on how small their area was, while standing next to them. I do believe she used the word quaint and then tried to backpedal by saying it would make for a nice "community" feeling.) The time change was really confusing. We left LA at 2ish and got into ATL around 10, and then into Charlotte around 12. So we pretty much lost a whole day. Oh well!
Anyways, that was my trip. In detail. Phew, feels good to get that off my chest ;)
