Hollywood :D

A couple weekends ago, Jeremy and I were surfing on our computers and I stumbled across a great deal on a new flight that Virgin America was offering. Round trip tickets from San Jose to Los Angeles was only $70 per person! Naturally, I couldn't pass up a deal so good, so we jumped on it! So last weekend was our big adventure to LA.

We planned our flights to maximize our time while minimizing cost, most often easier said than done :) But we managed to get a cheap rental car and to find a decent hotel to top off our preparations. We few out early on Saturday morning and arrived around 8am (yeah, it was early). We are not really crazy about seeing celebrities or shopping in ritzy stores, so we planned to keep that part of LA as a bit of a stop over not a main destination. 

We set out toward Runyon Canyon that is north of Hollywood to go for a bit of a hike to start our day. There were a LOT of people on this hike, which was pretty surprising. I was very amused with all the guys running round with their shirts off while showing off their muscles that they must work on every day. Jeremy was not so amused. This picture was taken looking south, toward the city and ocean. You can't see the ocean because of the notorious smog that covers all of LA, but it was still nice. 

Once at the top, we had a great view! 

We got all hot and sweaty getting up there, but it was worth it. 

Then we headed out to drive through Beverly Hills and we stopped for a stroll along Rodeo Drive.

This part of the trip was short, but we had to see downtown Beverly Hills. We were glad we did, because not only could we do some great window shopping, we also saw a pretty sweet car. 

We had our brief jaunt through the ritzy part of town, and off we went to the Getty Museum. Neither of us are crazy about art, but this museum was pretty cool. We were already near the northern edge of LA, so it wasn't really out of our way to get there. The museum is perched right at the edge of the northern hills, so it (like Runyon) had a great view of the city. 

We were a bit tired after this, so we decided to take a nice drive through Santa Monica on our way down to Manhattan Beach were we stayed the night. Dinner was at Mama D's and it was incredible! I think that most restaurants with any form of the word Mother are probably gonna be good. Mama D's definitely lived up to my expectations. 

Nice views on the way to Manhattan Beach.









On Sunday, we walked down to the ocean to enjoy the day. We lathered on the sunblock, and set up our make-shift blanket (which was actually a tablecloth... I brought it because it was thin and water resistant since we only had carry on luggage) and enjoyed the clouds, because the sun was not shining.

After a while, we went walking down the boardwalk, and it was so fun to see all the cute houses along the beach! They have a great idea of making short roads each block so that you can have ocean view homes. They were so cute! 

At the end of the day, we considered going back to Mama D's for dinner, but figured that would be a bit of overkill. Therefore we went to the indian restaurant next door, and it was very tasty! Love me some chicken tikka masala. 

I've reached the end of the LA adventures, but more are to come! Stay tuned!