As the weather gets colder here every day, it really makes me miss LA! Even though LA was now about 3-4 months ago, I am going to write a few posts about looking back on it. I miss the warm wind, the sun on your skin, the sun.. in general! No wonder people here lack vitamin D - where are we supposed to get it? I work from 9-5 Monday to Friday, so no hope of getting the sun during the week, and well, as far as the weekend goes, today there is a blizzard out and no hope of seeing the sun.
So, we were really lucky as we got really cheap flights - about 300€ for round flight from Tallinn. This gave us a bigger budget for hotels and we decided to stay a week in Downtown LA and a week at the beach. Staying in downtown area made it easier to visit all other places such as Hollywood and Beverly Hills for example, and for the second week we just rested in Santa Monica and Venice, as we had done all the busy touristy-things the week before.
We flew with American Airlines, which was very friendly, seats were fine and food was actually good! At least going to LA, coming back it wasn't as good. I had pre-ordered a vegan option, and on the flight back they were serving the exact same thing for both vegan and non vegan breakfast - yogurt - with the only difference being that vegan food had pineapple chunks and non vegan had a chocolate muffin.
We knew before that we were going to save as much money as possible and walk as much as we can. But no one walks in LA :) Meaning people did look at us funny as we were dragging our luggage around town! But whatever, it was only about 40 minute walk from the train station to the hotel.
And our hotel! Itself it was fine and the location was good. But, it was so hot - it had no air conditioning and the windows didn't open, so it was impossible to stay at and at night it was even hotter than outside. Later we found out that it was supposed to be haunted! I don't know about you but I never research the hotel I am staying at more than what it says i TripAdvisor or Booking, so we didn't really know to be prepared for that.. But it turned out people had been killed there, people had committed suicides and there is also supposed to be a few ghosts wondering around.. Well, lucky for us we didn't see any, but were more than happy to get out of there as soon as we could, haha!
Everything in LA was so.. American. I know, it's a given, lol. But, it was just so different and yet the same, compared to London. I can't really explain it the best, but for example, the people, they were so vocal about their rights in the smallest places, people were really chatty and friendly, there were homeless people sleeping in tents on the street, there were loads of Mexicans, everything was in two languages- English and Spanish - including information on buses and metro, you had to tip everywhere as it was written on the cheque , there were so many options to choose from in the shops, every food was sugared. But it was awesome.
Our plan was to look around downtown are for the first days and then go to other places. When we actually got there though, it was a heatwave, which meant the temperature had risen to about 40+ degrees! Compared to Estonian weather (where we lacked summer... or have been lacking summer for about 4 years now), this was a big change for us! But we braved the heat and went sightseeing during the hottest days.
So prepare yourself, there will now be about a hundred pictures from Downton, LA :)
So prepare yourself, there will now be about a hundred pictures from Downton, LA :)
M.
