After having lived in the US for about 2 months, I was finally going somewhere. We decided LA because Giri is there. So you know, free accommodation and lots and lots of fun! We drove up on a Thursday evening. I have no pictures because the weather was terrible. It alternated between dark/grey and raining. Not good for picture taking. Perhaps on the way back.
Giri lives in East Hollywood and having never been to LA I was surprised by the number of billboards around and how all of them, and I mean all of them are about actors/actresses, tv shows and movies.
Before going and doing the typical touristy stuff, we decided to have lunch first. Giri took the scenic route so I could see more of LA. Quite an interesting place.
I know, strange, but this is a funeral home at the cemetery where Michael Jackson is buried. It looks like a gigantic mansion. But nope, funeral home. I guess that’s LA for you.
After parking and walking to our chosen restaurant for lunch, I saw an interesting decor feature. A chandelier in the middle of the street. Because that is the prime spot for a chandelier. I was kind of hoping it would fall on the car as I was taking this picture.
Lunch was at Din Tai Fung. Finally! I’ve been trying to get into the Melbourne one for ages but the lines were always so outrageous. And even though one was opening in the Bay Area, because of the hype I know it will not be worth it to go within the first couple of months. They’ve been open in LA for ages so to get in that day, it was only a 25 minute wait.
The wait was totally fine because we got to quench our thirst while waiting for our table. When we finally got seated, I was so excited.
Enter the food, glorious glorious food!!!
These were incredible. We had round two AFTER we’d finished all of the following dishes.
We had two different kinds of these, pork and pork/crab. Tommo, I’m looking at you.
We also had two other types of dumplings (check out the steam from the metal steamers). As you can tell, we were all very happy campers.
After lunch, we walked around the outdoor shopping center and I discovered this little gem.
This store advertised itself as being ALL OVER Australia having originated in Sydney. I gave the girl a strange look (she was American just temping there) and said that I had never see this store. Correct me if I’m wrong? Anyway, their window displays were hilarious!
Can I just say that I like the giant watermelon? And I think the giant pineapple would make good lying down in a pool. The thing that I thought was so weird was …
Can you see what that girl is doing with the flamingo? Do Australians do that with flamingos? Maybe we should start?
Okay, moving on. One of Giri’s mates very very kindly organised passes for us to visit the Warner Brother’s studios. Excitement and photo overload!!!
Nothing. That’s the answer to that question. Nothing is inside these buildings.
At one point we had to pause our wanderings to find a toilet. We went into one of the buildings and I noticed all these chairs lining the corridors and lobby.
These are casting chairs. And I swear the little lobby we were in had a hundred chairs all up. Can you sense the desperation from these chairs?
After wrapping up at the Studio, Giri took us to a great lookout point.
I never realised the sprawl of LA.
From here, we finally got to the touristy stuff.
The Chinese Theatre was so disappointing. The concrete looked so dirty and wasn’t really fun. All the more recent stars were roped off and you couldn’t look at them. And it was so gross and crowded you didn’t really want to crouch down to compare hands!
Giri made us crouch down to get the gratuitous star photo. Tom should feel grateful!
That marked the end of a long long day. We went home, had some hot tub time, went to a bar and then slept. The next day, we went to Venice beach.
Talk soon,
Sim & Josh
1 Comment
Add Yours →Simmi, i can’t believe that you knew nothing of Sunnylife and their giant inflatable goodies! There were plenty of rip offs in the market too, mostly done by Kmart, Target and Cotton On.