The City of Angels
Now Playing: Kids - MGMT
As most of you already know, we decided to visit Los Angeles for spring break this year. It's one of my favorite places, Greg had never been, and flights were cheap from Indy so it was a done deal.
I'll organize this post in days the same way I do most of my travel posts. It's important to note that Greg and I have a couple of big priorities when traveling:
- Eat lots of good ass food.
- See the sights as non-touristy as possible.
- Just have fun.
So food is the main thing. I research restaurants like crazy before trips and I am rather pleased with myself because we ate at some amazing restaurants!!!! If you are planning a trip to the LA area, if nothing else will post will give you some killer restaurant recommendations.
Day 1: Friday, March 3rd, 2017
We flew Southwest and landed around 3pm and uber'd to our Airbnb in Hollywood. Next time we got to LA we won't be staying in Hollywood. Our Airbnb was great itself, but Hollywood was a lot dirtier than I remembered. It's cheap so that's why we chose that neighborhood, but next time I would rather stay in Santa Monica or Venice Beach area. Moving on, we were hungry so we walked to Stout burger for some happy hour fries (WE LOVE FRIES.) and beer. Then we went to Venice for First Friday, an event that my friend Jack told me about. On the first Friday of every month, all the LA food trucks go to Abbott Kinney in Venice and line up on the street and people can walk from food truck to food truck and get all kinds of food. It was just like I pictured it would be, but it was also super packed. Greg hates crowds, and we were exhausted from traveling, so we didn't stay that long. It was a cool experience though. A couple pictures from day 1 are below.
Day 2: Saturday, March 4th, 2017
Day 2 we woke up at like 5:30 in the morning. Our bodies were still used to being on eastern time. Greg and I have a habit of waking up really early on trips and hitting the ground running. Saturday was no exception to that. We had been to 4 places by like 11am. Here goes....
Since we were up, we decided to hike Runyon Canyon and see the sun rise. We got there around 6am and there were very few people there....which is exactly why I love doing things early in the morning because there are less people. It was an easy hike. I know it's like, where people go to act like they're hiking when really it's just to be seen...but it was right by our Airbnb so we were like, whatever. It was very nice...the view from the top was cool. I'm sure there are probably better hikes, but it was good enough for us. After Runyon, we walked to this coffee shop called Rise-N-Grind where I literally had the best breakfast sandwich. It was egg, cheese, and avocado on an unreal croissant. I take my breakfast sandwiches very seriously, and it was top 3. So good. Next we went to LACMA and the Urban Light installation. Pretty touristy, but the great thing about getting there at like 9am is that no one was there yet!!! It was cool to finally see it in person after seeing it in so many people's Instagrams. Then we decided to go Griffith Observatory. I hadn't been there before so I was excited. We got there right at 10am when they opened. Very, very cool. I highly recommend going if you are in the area. The view is great, and best of all....it's FREE! This is an important note.....we uber'd up to the Griffith entrance, but when we were ready to leave...we discovered that they wouldn't let uber's up the hill to pick people up. So we had to hike the 2 miles back down the hill/mountain whatever. I wasn't expecting that and it's a good thing we had enough time to do so. I don't know if that's always a rule? Or if it was just on Saturdays or something? Who knows....but that was annoying. At least the weather was perfect and we both had our tennis shoes on already. After Griffith we met up with my college friend Jack and his girlfriend, Stace, for brunch at probably my favorite restaurant of the trip: Catch LA. It was expensive...which is why we only went for brunch. But the decor and everything was UNREAL. It was made for instagram! Located on a rooftop in West Hollywood, it's brand new and if you have a chance to go....go! Just the ambiance alone was amazing. After brunch we went to visit UCLA's campus. Greg really wanted to see it....I had forgotten how amazing it was. It's so beautiful. What an incredible place to go to school. It was so great catching up with my buddy Jack...when I think of California...I think of him.
Saturday night we met up with another friend of mine, Carly. She was my best friend Carrie's roommate at IU and she recently moved to LA so it was great to see her! We went to dinner in Hollywood at this place called The Running Goose. Another really cool restaurant. My meal was amazing. Then we went to St. Felix for drinks following dinner. We could walk to all of these places from our Airbnb, which was nice. I wasn't kidding when I said we hit the ground running on trips....we did so much on Saturday! See pics below.
Day 3: Sunday, March 5th, 2017
Sunday morning, we again, woke up really early. This time we decided to go to the Hollywood farmers market. It's only held on Sunday mornings so we figured we would check it out. We could walk there from our airbnb, which was great. Farmers market was a success! Very cool and not touristy so that was great. I had a blueberry coffee cake thing that was amazing! We had brunch reservations at a place in West Hollywood called The Hudson. Again, I just found them from yelp and we were not disappointed. It was very reasonably priced and I think the mimosa special was a caraffe for $12...which was like 2.5 drinks each for two people. I think they were very strong, but still.....much cheaper than a lot of places. The food was really good too. The inside was very cool and trendy again, but definitely a different feel than Catch LA the day before. I recommend stopping in for sure. After brunch, we just kind of strolled around West Hollywood for a bit and stopped in a sports bar to watch the Purdue game. I'm a big Real Housewives fan, so we went to Pump for a drink and it was really cool. The inside was just how it looks on the show. Sunday night we went to Inn-n-Out! It was Greg's first time. It was super busy and honestly, it wasn't as great as the other times I've had it but oh well. That's Sunday!
Day 4: Monday, March 6th, 2017
Day 4 was our "beach day". We thought a Monday would be better to do the whole Santa Monica, Venice beach thing. We started out by meeting some friend's for brunch at this cool restaurant called Superba Food + Bread. Very cool and open and popular place. Food was great, atmosphere was wonderful. We met up with a friend that was in a similar program to Greg's at Purdue, Jackie, and her husband, Nick. After brunch Greg and I walked to Venice beach and hung out, walked the boardwalk, etc. It was really really windy at the beach so that kind of sucked but it was still as pretty as I remembered it to be. We went back to Abbot Kinney and just walked around and it's a really cool area! I got new lenses for my Illesteva sunglasses and we had the most incredible ice cream at Salt and Straw. Following that, we met back up with Jackie and she offered to drive us to Malibu! Which was great. So we all went to Malibu and checked out Pepperdine and then went to Point Mugu along PCH. Such a beautiful drive....there's really nothing like it. And Malibu was just as beautiful as I remembered it too. Definitely worth driving to!! Sunday evening we had dinner and drinks in Santa Monica at The Misfit. They had a great happy hour special and the inside was eclectic and cool. This was probably my favorite day of the trip.
And Day 5 we just traveled home, so that's pretty much our trip! I hope you have found this post useful and if nothing else, you got some good restaurant recommendations out of it!
