DAY TWENTY ONE

SAN DIEGO, CA - LONG BEACH, CA - VENICE BEACH, CA - LOS ANGELES, CA

211 MILES. 

Today was a very eventful day. We spent a lotttttt of time in the car without driving very many miles thanks to the wonderful Southern California traffic. I thought the San Diego area was bad with traffic, but I have never experienced traffic like Los Angeles County. We got off a little bit to a late start, and left Oceanside around 12pm, and started driving up to LA. 

We stopped first in Long Beach to see the Queen Mary ship. The Queen Mary made many trips across the Atlantic Ocean in the early 20th century and served in World War 2. I snapped some pictures of it, but am dumb and forgot to put my memory card back in my camera until about an hour later. Oh well, you'll have to take my word that it was cool! 

Next, we hopped back onto the freeway to Culver City, for an In N Out Burger stop (3rd one this trip) and to get our oil changed. Venice Beach is only about 5 miles from here and we parked and walked down to the beach. I really like the area around the beach, and it's pretty clear that artists like leaving their marks on the town. The beach is very interesting, full of people selling art, souvenirs, their talents... and a bunch of other stuff. 
 

Venice Beach

I was hoping to see some bigger muscles

 

It was packed, and the crowds love stopping to watch people dance, sing, walk on glass...etc. There's a muscle beach, skate park, zip line, and a bunch of other stuff. I liked walking around here a lot, and feel like my senses were overloaded. Our headlight went out the other day, so we had to stop by autozone to pick up a new one, which Kenny changed! We went over to Sepulveda Blvd, which took us about an hour to get to our motel on. Traffic in LA is no joke. We stayed at some crappy little motel north of Beverly Hills, which was fine. 

We decided to go back out and drive down Mulholland Drive. It was getting dark out, so it was hard to see the big houses. It's already difficult to see them behind the front gates and hedges, but we still had fun trying to make them out! We drove down the hill to Sunset Boulevard, past the Beverly Hills Hotel, and into the city. 

Beverly Hills is (obviously) beautiful and we kept driving there until switching to Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood is a little overwhelming, and way more touristy and less nice than Beverly Hills. We tried to eat at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, but there was no parking and a really long line, so we parked back around the Chinese Theatre, and ate at a pizza shop. Walking along the Walk of Fame was cool, and we stopped at the Hollywood and Highland mall to try to see the Hollywood sign. 

Hollywood and Highland Mall

We figured out where it would be, but couldn't see it because it was dark out! We walked over to the Chinese Theatre and checked out all of the hand prints, some of them were awesome to see (me and Hermione have the exact same hand and shoe size!)

Johnny Depp for my mama!

Me and the governator

 We eventually went back to the car, and started driving through West Hollywood. This area seems a lot cooler than Hollywood, and we stopped to turn down Rodeo Drive. 

Rodeo Drive

This is some real deal shopping, and I probably enjoyed it a lot more driving by in the car than walking in the stores and looking at price tags. To finish off our fancy night we drove up in Bel Air which I didn't know is a gated community. 

This was one of the smaller houses... seriously

This is most of what we saw... gates

These houses were pretty spectacular, and it was a lot of fun to drive through, especially since we were worried about being discovered and kicked out.