So it really sucks that the American part of the trip is over (although its cool that I'm writing this from China), and LA is the final instalment. Since this was over a week ago some of my detail may be a bit off but I'll try to overcome my awful short term memory...
When we arrived into LA we went to find our hostel, and ended up somehow in north Hollywood, a good 10ish miles away from where we needed to be... Luckily we stumbled upon a theatre which was producing a musical about mods and rockers in 1960s London, and the people there were helpful in setting us on the right track, and also gave us free tickets to see the show. (Unfortunately we couldn't go because, as has been the tenor of the trip, we got our dates mixed up and thought we were flying to Hong Kong a day later than we actually did...).
Having eventually navigated the journey, we found our hostel, where we were shown to our 'pod' - the hostel is split into individual pods where you sleep, watch TV etc - it's a fun idea where you get more privacy than regular hostels. Before we had time to unpack, we met an Australian guy who persuaded us to go on a LA bar and club crawl. It was a fun evening and we got into five different places, with free drinks at each one, for like $20 (the price of a drink in one club). It was strange because so many of the people we met were either from Australia or the UK, but it was interesting to chat about travels, and we got to know some of the others from podshare too. The Australian from podshare also told us that the night before, a fight had broken out on the street where podshare is, as a group of guys were trying to steal a car - apparently the car owner had tried to stop them but had a gun pulled on him! Literally outside our window!
This kind of leads me onto observations of LA. Various people had warned me that it was rundown, and it's true that there areas of Hollywood that really are horrible. It's common to see rubbish piled on the street, as well as used needles, and the fact that medical marijuana is legal means that distinct smell seems to follow you around in most places. On top of that there is a crazy amount of, well, crazy and homeless people who are far more aggressive in their pursuit of money from people in the street than I've encountered anywhere else.
The converse of all this is that we packed loads of touristy things into our few days, including the Hollywood walk of fame (which started right by out hostel), the Hollywood sign and Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica/Sunset boulevards. Finding the observatory for the Hollywood sign was actually an achievement in itself, as it took several hours of walking and multiple direction requests to end up at the right place. When we got there the observatory itself was closed (boo!) but there was an advert being filmed there, which we think was for toshiba.
In fairness there were non-tourist things that I enjoyed doing too; on the first morning, I went to get lunch at a farmers' market just down the street, which had loads of fresh produce and the newest gluten-free fad products. Speaking to a saleswoman about a new Japanese tea which is fermented using a 'starter' liquid (think sour dough bread, but for tea), I really got a sense that some LA stereotypes about fads must have some basis in truth... We also stumbled upon the Hollywood Fringe, which was set up by people from the Edinburgh equivalent, and later on saw the set up for the premiere of Monsters University on Hollywood boulevard.
Our last full day in the states was spent at Santa Monica beach, where we visited the pier, and took a walk to Venice beach. It was quite busy and the weather was great, so it was a fitting way to finish our trip, and being on the coast on the pacific side really made me realise how large a distance we actually have covered. Having said that, the distance has now subsequently become a lot bigger...
No comments:
Post a Comment