Road Trip to Los Angeles

Once again, this past weekend was another busy one. My friends and I went out in Tempe Friday night and had a good time. While we were at the bar, we decided that Saturday morning we were going to hop in the car and drive out to Los Angeles.

So Saturday morning, feeling a little hungover, we hoped in the car and headed out of Phoenix at 9 am. For the next five and a half hours we drove through the desert. The drive was not too bad, much better than the drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas.

Along the way, we made a stop in Indio, California, which is one of the only cities I have ever seen with such a lack of restaurants. We had to drive for half an hour just to find a fast food restaurant to eat at.

Once we came in to the city, we drove through downtown Los Angeles and then hopped on the Hollywood Freeway towards Hollywood. All I can say is that Los Angeles is one BIG city. It made Phoenix seem tiny in comparison. Once we got to Hollywood, we drove up Sunset Blvd. and just did some sight seeing to see what it was all about. We could see the Hollywood sign for the first time which was cool to see.

From there, we drove to Beverly Hills since we wanted to see Rodeo Drive. It was pretty crazy, considering the second we turned on to Rodeo a Rolls Royce with 20’s on it came flying around the corner. There was a lot of paparazzi running around the sidewalks. One guy with a video camera was trying to chase Kobe Bryant’s Mercedes which seemed pretty intense. The guy was literally hiding behind bushes and climbing behind buildings.

It was pretty eye opening to see so many Mercedes, BMW’s, and other exotic cars just cruising around. You can definitely tell all the money is in Los Angeles.

Going out was a whole different story. Since none of us are very smart, we didn’t even think to pack sport coats and nice shoes. Most clubs had pretty strict dress codes so we knew we weren’t going anywhere fancy. We ended up going to the Pig N’ Whistle in Hollywood for a few drinks and then tried out a few other small bars. Eventually, we ended up driving down to Santa Monica to go to the World Cafe.

Of course, when we got there around 1 am, they were no longer letting anyone in. From there we tried a few other bars but none of them were letting any more people in. So we ended up making the drive back to Hollywood Hills to crash at the hotel room.

Yesterday, we managed to do a lot more sight seeing. We drove up towards the Hollywood sign and did some hiking to get as close as we could to it. The letters are definitely bigger than they look from down on the ground. We could also see the whole city and it was crazy to see the size of the whole area.

We also drove by Universal Studios and looped around to Bel Air. UCLA was right there so we drove around and checked out the campus. We then drove towards Malibu to see how the beaches were there. Malibu is amazing and the beaches are larger than I thought they would be. We then finished the day out in Santa Monica, with a few beers and some food at O’Brien’s Irish Pub.

The whole trip was fun to just get out and see Los Angeles for the first time. We are heading back in a few weeks for a longer trip and have some tickets to the Price is Right. I am hoping to find myself in the showcase showdown, but we’ll see.

What I did manage to conclude this weekend is that Los Angeles is definitely somewhere I am thinking about moving to this summer. The city is great and there is so much to do. Being near the ocean is something I have missed since I was in Hawaii so I am hoping to get back to it.