Tag Archives: Los Angeles

from the road

Day 41: LA Overnight

Greetings from “our” house in Hollywood Hills!

Mica at Hollywood CottageSince we don’t know anyone very well in Los Angeles, we decided to spend our one night in the area using AirBnb. Catherine lived in LA for a few years, and she suggested this cottage to us. I know very little about LA, so I was glad for any advice we could get.

Catherine did not steer us wrong, that’s fo’ sho’! Helen, our host (and the owner of this awesome “Hollywood cottage”), is down-to-earth and totally chill! Right away, she warmly opened her house to us and gave us directions to a cool, “hidden” view of the Hollywood sign!

Helen is awesome, but her chihuahua Lucille Ball is a TRIP. We were advised to avoid all eye contact.

Mica with Hollywood sign Harrison with Hollywood signSo yes, we’re staying IN Hollywood Hills! It’s pretty fancy, but the houses aren’t what I expected. I think I confused it with Beverly Hills, so I’m delighted to find that the homes are mostly cute one-story buildings with neat lawns. Each one is different!

Hollywood HillsThough, of course, it is still a very wealthy area. That’s one reason why AirBnb is so appealing–we’d never be able to get this kind of location and with such “inside” knowledge in a hotel!

Helen also recommended that we go for Chinese in Chinatown!

Chinatown gate, LAHarrison was really excited to eat some quality hot-and-sour soup at Hop Woo!

Hot & Sour soupSomeone’s eyes may have been bigger than his stomach…DEFEAT!

Full HarrisonToo bad we’re only in LA for one night on the way down to San Diego. Of course, we could stay here a week and only scratch the surface. It’s definitely a different place. At 9:30pm on a Monday night, there was tons of traffic on the highway. Where are all these people going?

And here’s another thing! What do all these LA residents do for a living? It’s the second largest city in the US, but I don’t know what most of its residents do. Does the entertainment industry supply the majority of jobs here? I’m curious!

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planning

WVT Goes to Hollywood!

I will preface this post by saying that Mica and I have wildly different opinions of southern California. I once spent a summer in Pasadena, and I think Mica’s experience is limited to a family reunion in San Diego and watching my brother graduate from Harvey Mudd.

Mica stops to smell the roses in SoCal!

So basically, neither of us knows anything about what SoCal is actually like. That said, Mica is terrified of southern California because everybody is beautiful, there’s lots of traffic and smog, and they have earthquakes [Mica: Also, mudslides and wild fires]. I think southern California is pretty much the greatest place ever because the weather is nice all the time (except when they go into deep freezes and it gets down into the 40s), they have ocean and mountains right next to each other, and everybody is beautiful. Nowhere are all of these things more true than in Los Angeles.

Harrison & a stubby palm tree

You may have noticed on our previous “Tentative Tour Dates” post that Los Angeles was listed as an unconfirmed destination. That’s code for, “we would like to go there, but we have no couch on which to surf.”

Fortunately, through the miracle of the internet, we were able to connect with somebody who in fact does have a couch (The couch, at this point, is a metaphor; we will actually sleep in a real life bed) on which we can surf. Not only that, but the proverbial couch is in Hollywood Hills! Major thanks to our friend Catherine for hunting down LA’s most fabulous airbnb listings!

I didn’t even know Hollywood Hills was the name of an actual place, but it is, and how can it not be full of richy rich people/houses/trees/dogs/trash cans?! We’re less than a mile from Mulholland Drive! I don’t really know the significance of that, but they made a movie about it! It has to be awesome, right?! [Mica: Yes, because all things that have been made into movies are awesome. Twilight franchise, I’m looking at you!]

As you can see, I am excited. After our stay, I reckon we will leave LA via Sunset Blvd. and Rodeo Drive, just in case I haven’t OD’d on chihuahuas and Ferraris yet. If you have any recommendations in or around the Hollywood Hills area, please let us know!

Bonus: If you made it this far, here’s a song that is vaguely about California and is a throwback to our first year of dating. Awwwwww.

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