It’s taken a while and there’s been a bunch of holidays since but this is my update for our most recent trip to Los Angeles. Great if there’s some interest in these but ultimately I love looking back on them myself and reminding myself of what a fun time I had. (I’ll caveat that last sentence with a note to say that I am writing this on day one and so I am being very presumptuous that we will have had a nice time when I am ready to post).
The trip is going to be Los Angeles, Las Vegas and then head home from San Francisco. We’ve got about a week in LA about 5 days over Carolina’s birthday in Vegas and then the last two days are in San Francisco.
Los Angeles
We tried to get an upgrade to Club World with BA for our flight out here, the £1,100 they wanted per person was a little (a lot) Out of our price range and so we ended up with two seats together at the back of the plane, it a nice journey anyway.
Our journey to Los Angeles was painless really, there was a slight delay on our flight and then Customs in Los Angeles was the longest I’ve ever experienced in America but still only about an hour. We planned to take an Uber from the airport to our AirBnB, in Santa Monica and we found out that in order to get a taxi/Uber/lyft you have to take a free shuttle service from the airport to a designated location, sounds like a pain in the arse but in reality it was fine.
What wasn’t fine was our Uber driver, felt like he needed anger management, a hair raising 20 minute drive from LAX to Santa Monica felt like a life time with our Uber swerving in and out of traffic, gesticulating and beeping at every other road user that he had cut up. We made it though and Carolina had found a really nice AirBnB right in the centre of Santa Monica
We’d arrived at our accommodation at about 7/8 o clock in the evening and our intention was to stay up until a reasonable time to go to sleep. I couldn’t do it though, I fell asleep. (That’s why this is currently being written at 3.17am, I’m just so crazy).
We were both up and ready to roll really early in the morning, so we found the earliest place that was open and headed there. It was “Jinkys Coffee” we think it’s a chain because there is a Jinkys Cafe round the corner. It was only a 10 minute walk from us, past Santa Monica Pier, but the walk wasn’t without its perils and Navigating around sleeping homeless people or piles of Dog shit was a common theme of the walk.
Food was nice, we got it to take out and sat on a bench overlooking the pier. All week the weather forecasts had been quite bleak but this was turning in to a really nice day. Layer by layer I was removing clothes which meant after breakfast we thought it would be a good idea to go for a walk, we went from Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach. As we approached the pier there was an interesting occurrence. There were maybe 5/6 helicopters hovering above, and the pier was shut off to the public.We hung around to find out what was going on. A building was blocking our view, so we couldn’t quite see what was happening but we could see that the activity was drawing a lot of interest with lots of people just milling about and lots of people with cameras. All we could really see was a wire hanging from the helicopter and you could see that it had been connected to something then the helicopter started to rise and it was going to reveal its cargo. I couldn’t have guessed what it was carrying; in a scene that could have resembled a random side mission in Grand Theft Auto V, the helicopter was carrying a theme park ride, the famous “Sea Dragon”. It was a very bizarre scene that started to develop in to one of those random dreams as the flying ship was followed by a parade of Flemenco dancers and a man wearing two pairs of trousers but one of them falling down below his knees, it was all very weird and really set the tone for our trip to Los Angeles renowned for being a bit beyond reality anyway.
The walk, although much less chaotic was not without incident. The less fortunate L.A. residents, although it’s sad, they are still a point of fascination for myself. I cant get my head around the sheer number of homeless people , and it was shocking to me just how many of them have issues, clearly fuelled by drugs. None of them are wanting to interact with members of public, they mostly just talk to themselves, but just the sheer numbers are shocking.
After stopping for some light refreshment and resisting the temptation to order a beer at 9.30am we stood and watched some skaters for a bit. There were one or two decent skaters and despite this I still hold on to my long held view….not one amateur skater can actually land a kick flip.
After completing all our circles on the Apple Watch, we headed back to our apartment in the hope that we would get some sun on our balcony. Which we did!!! We sat on the balcony drinking white claw, eating cheesy snacks and crisps whilst sunbathing….it was then that it finally felt like we were on holiday.
A noteworthy event, which forced me in to a tweet, I just had to let my 89 folllowers know, we saw a Hummingbird, I don’t know how common that is but having not seen one before it was quite exciting!
Our third attendee of the trip was due to arrive that afternoon and the intention was to meet up after a nap. Håkanson’s nap was to recover from his day of travelling our nap was to make up for the very early start…..none of us made it out that evening.
Our day started at Mel’s Drive-In, we met Fredrik outside. Mel’s drive in is everything you think of when you think stereotypical American diner. They even had a jukebox on the table. I went ahead and got some change and in a boomer moment put the wrong song on about 8 times.
The weather was awful, I mean it started ok but the rain made it impossible to just mill about and as it worsened it was clear we would need some shelter. We thought shelter would take the form of a shop or something like that but it seems the Americans a bit lazy and shops weren’t opening until about 10. Despite the bad weather we persevered and visited some of the local sites again. When the shops finally did open we browsed, more to dry off rather than anything else, and then after a few hours and some lunch at a taco restaurant we headed back to our apartment.
The evening entertainment for us was pub quiz, at a bar called “Trip” We unfortunately came last, in what turned out to be a very American quiz but we had fun in the process. The other highlight of the evening was meeting a man from Harrow…..it always happens, you always meet someone local to you on holiday, so weird. We were all still recovering from tirednesss but we had made it to 10 o clock which seemed like a normal time to go to bed and hopefully gave us a bit of a timing reset for the following days.
The day begun, as all good days should, at Mel’s Drive-in again, this time far busier due the weekend. I had French toast and ordered a side of toast….Carolina and Fredrik found this very funny.
After Mel’s we went for another walk, this time we took Fredrik on the walk that Carolina and I went on a few days which took us down to Venice and around the canals it was a nice day.
The evenings plan was to find a lobster roll and a fried pickle, I won’t drag this one out, we found neither. We went one a random bar crawl which ended in O’Brians Irish bar but the penultimate stop was the best one as it was the busiest bar ever. The security guard kept letting people in but you had to push you way in to the bar. It was a Kareoke bar but it was way too busy to get in.
We were picking up the car the next day and so the night was never going to be a mega late one and we were in by about 12.
We picked up the car from the airport and headed towards Tinseltown. It was Oscars night and we were determined to see someone more famous than our last visit when we saw George Clooney. Driving to Hollywood from airport was the easy part, finding somewhere to park proved a lot more difficult we drove around for hours but with multiple road closures we couldn’t stop anywhere, when I say we couldn’t stop I mean we literally couldn’t stop so much so that I let Carolina and Fredrik out of the car to take a picture of the Hollywood sign whilst I carried on in the traffic they then got their picture and got back in the car. After a few hours driving we decided to give up and drive back home….pretty saw we saw Kylie Jenner driving past us though….maybe or it could have been someone with dark hair, for the sake of an exciting blog let’s say it was Kylie Jenner.
We all had an early day for another day of exploring Hollywood and Warner Brothers the following day.
We’d had Mel’s diner a lot and Ferdeick had found a bagel restaurant with a rating of 4.9 out of 5, we had to try them. I’m the worst travel blogger ever, not only can I not spell I also don’t have a clue what the name of the bagel place was…..it was across the road from a school and it deserved its 4.9 it was very tasty. Next on the agenda, was the Hollywood sign 2.0, we were actually gonna park up and see it today!
We drove to Griffith Observatory and parked there Free of Charge which is always a bonus, because the machines were out of order. The observatory itself was closed but still worth the visit just to see the views of the city skyline. Those views were not as majestic as they sometimes can be because of the wild cloud cover but you could still make out parts of Downtown LA. There was some debate as to whether we should walk to see the sign because we were on a strict deadline to make sure we made it to our Warner Bros studio tour on time. Having had done the walk before I knew we had the time and so we set off. We saw the sign, it said HOLLYWOOD in big White bold capitals, and the walk only takes about 20 minutes from the observatory albeit you are still quite far away. After reading the sign we dashed back to the car ready for our next stop….Warner Bros
Warner Bros studio tour, what can I say. It’s a very interesting tour and good fun when you get driven round all the sets on a golf buggy. The guide was really knowledgable and we saw some really recognisable locations. We also saw a “famous person” he said “howdy folks” I am reliably informed it was the dad from Young Shelton whose lost a bit of weight so there we go…
Aside from the locations and things as you’d expect they have some really cool memorabilia which was cool to look at although I personally prefer the Harry Potter Studios in Watford. The weather was glorious and so after the tour we decided to have attempt number two are parking in Hollywood and taking a look around and we managed it! We found parking for 14 dollars down a shady side street guarded by a man who I was sure was going to steal the car but it was only 5 minute walk to the Walk of Fame, so sometimes you gotta take them risks.
We sat in a bar, Cabo Cantina, and had what felt like at the time cheap drinks but it turned out they massively over charged Carolina and so my recommendation would to go to the Irish bar next door. Whilst sitting outside the bar enjoying the sunshine, we witnessed a scene which would not have been out of place in Sons of Anarchy, about 10-15 motorbike drivers flew past us, weaving in and out of traffic lots of them wheelying. I couldn’t watch I just felt like one of them would fall off, they didn’t. After one drink we walked the full length of the walk of fame and then headed back to the car and it hadn’t been stolen.
That night, we had planned to re attempt the pub quiz and now we knew what to expect and with a determination to show the Americans that last place earlier in the week was an anomaly I was confident we were going to score well….and we definitely did better we came in six place, just one place away from winning a cash prize, I could live with that. Aside from the quiz itself there were two highlights, the first one was Carolina being recognised from the quiz earlier in the week and greeted with a very American “Swengland in da house” and then the Americans upon being told a dessert from the cheesecake factory has over 2500 calories, the Americans whooped and cheered one even shouting ‘Murica that really tickled us non natives. After all the excitement of the quiz it was back to the accommodation for bed to dream of what excitement the following day would bring and no dream could have prepared me for the day had in store!
We started the day off in Mel’s it was kind of our sign off breakfast on what began a bit of a grey and miserable day.
Today was the day when we planned to rub shoulders with the greats, we’d downloaded a guided audio tour of Hollywood homes to visit to famous and sometime infamous residents. The weather made this activity the perfect pursuit as we were locked in a car all day, it was great. In the very unlikely event you’ve read one of my previous blogs you might recall the story about the rain in Ihla Grande, and this was a close second. It rained for 12 hours straight and not just lightly it was chucking it down. So when our tour guide said “sometimes you’ll see Al Pacino outside his house sun bathing today was not going to be that day there were a few highlights though –
Taylor Swifts Mailbox
Jack Nicholson Gate to his drive way
Beyoncé and JayZ security wall
But none of those things could have prepared us for the absolute highly of the tour.
We were driving in the mountains and it was lashing it down, the windscreen wipers were on max and I was driving extremely cautiously it really felt like at any moment there could have been a landslide. Eyes focused on the road in front of my a saw something going across the road, at first I thought it was just a bit of litter but then as we got closer I realised it was a mole, an actual mole running across the road. I know this doesn’t sound exciting but I was buzzing. I’d never seen a mole before and so it was the highlight of my day.
We needed an early night to prepare for our drive tomorrow morning. All the way to the Grand Canyon.
I mean how can reading about an 8 hour drive to the Grand Canyon be fun: I’ll set the scene, long straight roads, nice scenery, car snacks, music…..that for 8 hours but well worth it to get to the Grand Canyon. I suppose the high of the drive is driving through Dolan Springs a small town on route the Grand Canyon. It’s very “trailer park-y” and gives us English that impression of every stereotypically small town America weve grown up seeing on TV.
I had seen the Grand Canyon before and despite that I was still just as awestruck when I saw it again, I don’t know what it is about the place but it just so massive it makes it difficult to comprehend. Last time we went it was in the middle of a drought and so although we went to the exact same location, the pictures were different there was a lot more greenery which meant our pictures were looking slightly different.
Whilst at the Grand Canyon I had spotted two swedes and I had told Carolina and Fredrik they were swedes, they were convinced. That is, until we were waiting for the bus and Fredrik started putting his snus in his mouth and the man, who I’d pointed out as a swede, look at Fred and said “ahhh, snus” whilst pointing at his own pack of snus. Automatic friends! Less automatic friends were the Americans who joined us after who had queried what our salaries were within their first three question.
After driving back to Vegas and checking in the hotels and having a very quick spin on the machines (I won 77 dollars) we went to bed in our new rooms.
The following day we had plans, we were going to the Shark Aquarium in Mandalay Bay. We were all still reeling from our experience of the first aquarium of the trip, and hoping this had to be better. We weren’t disappointed, the best aquarium of the trip. I mean, it’s got nothing on London Aquarium and I am sure many of the other aquariums in the world but compared to the one at Santa Monica Pier this was a solid 10/10. I can’t remember how much it was but if it’s more than 25 dollars I’m not sure I’d go again.
On our way back from Mandalay bay we walked through the Luxor and admired the faux-Egyptian decor, it’s pretty cool but looks a bit tacky compared to some of the more classy looking casinos.
The following day, March 16th, was Carolinas birthday…..the whole reason we were there. We had a few things planned. We were going to take a walk around the town, stop for a few drinks then head to a show Carolina had booked called the Tournament of Kings then do some Gambling then go to bed. I’m not sure if it was Carolina’s dream 30th birthday but we were looking forward to it.
During our exploration we stopped at a street bar, with no seating just a hatch in the street and so we thought we’d grab a beer and make the most of what had turned out to be a sunny day. Håkan offered to buy the drinks, an offer he’d quickly come to regret as the bill come to nearly sixty dollars for a beer and two smallish cocktails from what looking a temporary bar, crazy! After these expensive drinks we thought we’d test our spending limits and head to Brewdog which has a rooftop bar. We all had cocktails and some food and were pleasantly surprised when the bill came. We had great views of the strip, definitely better drinks and some food to add to that, despite all that the bill was only very slightly more than the on the street drinks. I wouldn’t describe it as cheap but definitely good for your money in Vegas.
After getting ready back at the Excalibur hotel, we were heading down to their resident show “Tournament of Kings” it’s a medieval show about a jousting competition with some dancing, stunts, pyrotechnics and audience alike. It would be great for kids and really enjoyable for adults too, they have some unique techniques to make you feel period authentic like eating with your hands for example. We all really enjoyed the show.
We headed out for a bit of gambling and drinking, on our way out we decided to get a quick picture of us in front of the hotel. We found a good spot and starting posing…..it was only as we were doing it that we realised we were also taking a picture of a man peeing in the background and he definitely clocked us taking a picture. It provided us with a both of a laugh.
The night ended with me and Carolina back in our room, continuing the gambling by using trinkets from our room, buttons, pairs of socks, lighters and cigarettes to play the most unorganised and non sensical that Vegas had ever seen. In my recollection, I won.
To recover from Carolina’s birthday we thought a relaxed day of Hotel hopping was called for. Last time I went to Vegas we didn’t really do this too much. The Excalibur is at one end of the main strip and so we got cab and walked back stopping in loads of hotels. A couple of highlights were Ceasars Palace, the Bellagio and surprisingly the flamengo.
Ceasars Palace
In my opinion, the is the best Casino that I would consider “themed”. I did also Like the Venecian one of the things it is famed for, the gondolas, we’re incredibly underwhelming compared to the social media pictures whereas Ceasars Palace is just so nice put together it feels more authentic than some of the other hotels. It has a great shopping mall, some great restaurants, a big fish tank and even a circular escalator, which is something I hadn’t seen before.
Bellagio
Even without the water show, I think this is the best hotel. Looks fancy, good food and restaurants and then add to that a feeler water show everything 15 minutes and you the best hotel. Shame it’s pricey! I didn’t get to see the water show last time I went and so I was making sure that I saw it this time around and it is worth checking out, it’s no so much that it’s super impressive, it’s just more fun to watch than I expected.
Flamengo
This one was a suprise package for me, leading up to the trip I watched alot of youtube videos and this hotel often gets a bad rep, but walking through it I thought it was decent and then once your outside there is an area with a bunch of animal to checkout, one being the animal that the hotel is named after. Definitely can say it’s better than some reviews give it credit for.
There’s a bar in the Excalibur hotel called “Dicks” and they fully embrace the bad reviews they get. Advertising the fact that it’s rated the 600+ best thing to do in Vegas. Reading some of the reviews, it looks like some people just didn’t understand what it was all about. The staff are rude, intentionally, to be funny. They give customers funny hats with close to the mark remarks on them. Despite the “rudeness” of we can call it that the service was extremely good with the bar staff preempting when we would need a drink/food. It was a really lovely bar, sometimes people were queueing to get in! I think tables are first come first served unless you want to sit at the bar. Twice a week there is Kareoke and tonight was one of those night, I participated. After one of my…electric….performances I was approached by a couple who were maybe 40/45 and the conversation made me uncomfortable but makes for a good story (admittedly better in person that written”
Couple: *puts hand on my chest* my wife and I would like to do a duet with you
Me: yeah, of course, put our names down and when they get called up I’ll come up and sing
Couple: *looks me dead in the eye, with a more serious tone* no I don’t think you understand, my wife and I would like *pause* duet with you.
I didn’t know what to say, in my panicked state I looked around for a way out and then my knight in shining armour, in the form of Carolina appeared out of no where and I couldn’t quite explain what happened there and then but made my excuses and swiftly ran away with Carolina very confused, until I explained further. It was very odd but it added to a great night.
After celebrating Carolinas 30th. We woke the next day to our final day in Vegas and we were going to make the most of it we were going to a bottomless drag brunch, at The Garden, just out of town. A bit jaded from the night before we had to slap on our make up, put on our dancing shoes and head out.
The brunch is really good, it had a great host and they weren’t tight with the drinks it is a fun and easy way to get drunk vegas, you should grab with both hands opportunities like that. I would highly recommend, in fact when we go back in May next year I am trying to persuade people to go.
I hadn’t mentioned much gambling in this blog and none of us went crazy but day by day I was building up a bit of a winnings collection and despite it not being as much of a dramatic win as last time I was there I had won a considerable amount of money. Each night if I was winning I would cap my winnings and then not go below an amount. Through slots, blackjack and my favourite (the wheel of fortune) across multiple hotels I was about 300 quid up. I was buzzing, so I paid for some food and drink for us all before Carolina and I parted ways with Fredrick for the night and ultimately the trip. He had one more day in Vegas and we had a road trip to San Francisco!
A 10 hour largely uneventful drive later and we were in San Francisco, or at least just outside the city near Vallejo. Two of Carolina’s friends, Holly and a different Fredrick had kindly offered to put us up for a couple of nights. We arrived quite late on the first day and so we ordered some take out had a glass of wine then headed to bed ready for a day of sightseeing the next day and returning our car.
The weather throughout the trip had been worse than you would expect when talking about a trip the Sunshine state but no complaints can be made on the weather we received whilst walking around San Francisco. After we dropped the car back at the airport we took an Uber in to town (about 20 dollars) and had Fredrick show us around. I also think it’s helpful being shown round by a resident, you avoid obvious tourist traps and perhaps no when you need to take a cab/public transport or walk better than what google can do.
We did some touristy things, the main one being going to look at the Golden Gate Bridge and it’s impressive. It’s hard to put a scale to it when looking at it, it feels like you’re look at a 2d drawing and similarly to the Grand Canyon pictures you’ve seen don’t do it justice. But here’s one anyway
I liked the city, it seemed like a bit of a slog to get around but I am sure if you know the transport systems it works well. As it’s surrounded by water we took a ferry back over to Vallejo, before heading out to Napa for some dinner. We ate in a decent Asian restaurant and I can’t for the life of me remember the name, but it was tasty and the portions were massive… this was our last night and we only really saw Napa town in the night but from what I can tell it looked pretty but I feel as though it’s a bit to far from the city centre to have a fun day trip there I reckon you need a night or two.
The next day Fredrick and Holly took us wine tasting which was so nice to do on our final day and the day we travelled home. It was a great way to end the trip and something that I really enjoyed.
Our flight home was delayed but only by a few hours. This goes down as one of my favourite ever holidays.
Travel Ramblings 