La la Land....

Well here is the post you have all been waiting for!!!

See how the air looks all thick and smoky... and SMOGY! YUCK! LA was definitely cool and Aaron and I are happy that we went. However, there was SO much smog... all weekend long! I thought that stuff clears up over the weekend? The picture above was taken on Sunday from Griffith Park which overlooks all of LA. We could barely make out the skyline with the smog. Also, I had a headache and was sneezing all weekend and I am sure its from the smog. BLECK! I can't believe all the people in LA put up with this stuff. Its scary to think of the long term health problems people are going to have there.

The other thing we hated about LA... TRAFFIC. OMG. I cannot even begin to tell you how much traffic we got into. We stayed in West Hollywood which is about 8 miles from Downtown, Little Tokyo, Griffin Observatory http://www.griffithobs.org/, the Tarpits, and every where else we wanted to go. Only 8 little miles... we thought with a car we were fine. We were wrong, we were very, very, wrong. It took us over an hour to get to downtown LA and all of those other places too! It was unreal. We also got a bit lost one day, which was our fault, but seriously, the traffic was unreal.

Well, lets get started on the recap. We stayed at the Standard Hotel which is very interesting and includes some random chick sitting in a fish tank in the lobby, a weird lounge with fish flying above and desert scenes on the walls.

This fish was one of a few....randomly hanging from the ceiling. Um? Am I missing something?

This was the wall covering in the lounge...which makes you feel like you are in...the desert? Why? I just think the hotel was maybe a little bit too trendy for me? It was all very minimalistic but kind of new age at the same time. It was pretty cool in all honesty, but definitely not your normal hotel. In the rooms they had all kinds of things for sale...including condoms, star maps of Hollywood, $100 bottles of champagne, specialty candles, bubble bath, cds....They also had little cacti for sale for $20. I guess that was a continuation of the desert theme.

Aaron ordered a beer in the lounge. This lounge was exclusive enough that they had a guest list and several security guards. Even so....they brought Aaron this... a 40 oz beer in a brown paper bag. Aaron was in heaven. I thought it was...odd?

Isn't he great? I think the 40 got to his head. :) The first night we got in pretty late so we hung out at the hotel and went to dinner and this really good Japanese Tapas Bar that was right down the street on Sunset. We had all kinds of tasty treats including a green papaya salad, shrimp balls, salmon rolls in soy paper, and crispy rice with seared ahi. It was all so good. I should mention that even though I am abstaining from meat including beef, poultry, and pork, I am still eating fish. I didn't have the gall to take pictures in the restaurant... I never feel quite at ease in LA and thought pictures of my shrimp balls would not add to my cool LA attitude...um right.

The next morning we went to the Original LA Farmer's Market. It was so cool! It's a permanent structure with all kinds of food stands and farm stands...shops, bars, etc. We looked around and settled on an organic Mexican eatery. I had a grilled veggie burrito that was amazing and not too heavy. Aaron had a sampler plate of 12 kinds of mini tacos. He said they were great! We sat a little bar and had a SF favorite... Anchor Steam Beer. It was such a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. We then went into a little French shop that was REALLY hard to resist. I bought some tea... Kusmi Tea and some French Macaroons. We are still savoring the cookies and I can't stop drinking my new Gunpowder Green Tea from Paris. :)

After the Farmer's Market we headed to Little Tokyo.  The above was some kind of tower at the entrance. We also met up with my old college friend Aimee. She was really busy because she is an editor for a teen star magazine and the Grammy's were the next day...so she had interviews, etc. to do . But we saw her for a little while and it was great to catch up.  Aimee and I were in the same sorority... eek! a sorority! at SDSU and we were roommates too. We did tons of fun things together and used to love spending time at the beach. While I still consider us good friends, we don't see each other that often anymore....it still seems like we know one another really well and like we hadn't been apart for as long as we have.

After hanging with Aimee, we did a little bit of shopping and I got some cool new kicks...

I also picked up some bento boxes which will make it onto the blog. Little Tokyo was really cool...lots of food stands and shops and museums...that we didn't have time to go to because of the traffic. 

We made our way back to the hotel after stopping at Vito's pizza http://www.vitopizza.com/ for some dinner. I had some great veggie slices and Aaron had some kind of meat deluxe business. It was good, thin crust pizza with lots of veggies and not very much cheese....nice and light. We relaxed for a while and then headed to the Nokia Theatre district so we could meet up with an old friend I haven't seen since high school! Lindsey (otherwise known as SUGI) was one of my best friends in high school. She was the ASB president, the cheer captain, the president of the dance team, on and on. She was amazing and really a great dancer. She has followed her dreams to LA and after attending UCLA she now has a full time career in teaching high school dance, coaching cheer, and she has her own dance studio. I am sorry I did not get any pictures because she looks lovely. I also met her husband and they have three children who did not join us. Although many years have passed and many changes have happened in our lives, it was like we had never been apart...it was really great to see her. It's funny how time can change some things so much... and how time sometimes time can't touch friendships. 

After we had a couple of drinks with Lindsey and her husband...we headed to the Eddie Izzard show! It was fantastic. I am not going to try and recreate any of the jokes because it just won't sound as funny. He mainly joked about Sarah Palin and God. It was great. The energy was unreal... I had never been to a big comedy show like that and it was really, really, cool. What a nice, big theater too!

The next morning we had breakfast at a little French Place and then headed to the La Brea Tar Pits. Interesting! It was full of TAR! There was tar everywhere. There were also some cool buildings...some museums, etc.

After looking at the cool museums.. we saw some ....can you guess....TAR!

It was all over the place... it grew in the trees.....

And it really was everywhere. 

This is me! See the little paw prints on the ground? I think it was supposed to be "tar prints"....

This man was playing his guitar in front of the tar pit museum and I just found him very charming with his hat and old guitar. The whole place was so surreal with the tar pits being right in the middle of all these tall modern buildings. Weird. 

Then we headed up to the Griffith Observatory which was very cool despite all the fog. 

Here is Aaron trying on some astronaut stuff inside.....

This was a really neat thing in front of the observatory. It had statues of astronomers (several of which were also philosophers). I really liked it...so Aaron took a picture of me......

Don't I look...philosophical? :)

After the observatory we drove to Sunset again and found all kinds of cool little restaurants and shops. We ate some veggie burgers for lunch, poked around, and headed home. 

Like I said, all in all, it was a great trip but I really don't like LA. Too much traffic, smog, and snotty people. The people in LA are NOT nice and are so perfect they made me feel self conscious.  There are tons of amazing things to do and see but I don't think I could live there.