Doing Los Angeles

 Even though I've only been to Los Angeles three times (I'm not including the times we drove through to and from other places), I will definitely miss that city. It is such a fun town and once you get off of the freeways, the traffic isn't even that bad. I really love seeing all the places that, until I moved to California, I had only seen on TV, in movies, or read about in books.

My first trip to LA was with my very good friend, Jennifer S. She's pretty familiar with LA and took me to all the great tourist sites. The second time was back in 2010 when the Mister and I went to the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA. That was pretty fun and we're going to try and go back again this year at USC. The third time was just this past Wednesday. I wanted the Mister and the girls to be able to see all the places that I saw with Jennifer.

First, we went to the Santa Monica Pier. We all got lemonades at the original Hotdog on a Stick and had a potty break in some very nasty restrooms. Why are restrooms at the beach so freaking nasty?? Then we went to the famous Farmer's Market for lunch and a bit of shopping. That is a really unique experience and there is so much food that it was hard to choose a lunch spot and we ended up going to different places. Next, we went to the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum. We got to touch the femur bone of an extinct giant land sloth. I can't go to the La Brea Tar Pits and not think of the movie, My Girl 2, lol. Because we walked from the Farmer's Market to La Brea, we walked back to the Farmer's Market and had dessert, hehehe. After some massive sugar shock, we drove to the TCL (aka, Grauman's, aka, Mann's) Chinese Theater/Dolby Theater.

Both of these theaters have changed names since the last time I was there. I was confused. Anyway, here, we checked out the foot prints, hand prints, and signatures of celebrities, saw the Hollywood sign (a first for all of us), and bought some kitschy souvenirs. After we were done walking around the there, we drove down Rodeo Dr. to gawk at the shops and the houses in Beverly Hills.

SO. MUCH. FUN.

I could barely walk the next day, but we have some great memories to take away with us to Florida. I didn't take very many pictures this time around because I had so many from my first trip. However, I did get one of the Hollywood sign since I didn't get to see it my first trip because it was dark. I also got one of the original Star Trek crew's cement slab at the TCL Theater. I know many people who will find this particular slab very cool. Click on the pictures to make them bigger.