West Coast Anniversary Trip: Los Angeles (Day 3)

I'll make LA short and sweet because that is what our time was like there. We didn't want to be there very long and we are both glad that we ended up being in LA for only a few hours. To those of you who really like LA, I am sorry...you may want to skip this post. Neither Ryan nor I were really excited to go here, but were surprised with some fun experiences.

 One of my friends suggested we visit the Olvera Street Market while in Los Angeles. I told Ryan there was a market that had authentic Mexican food and he asked when we were going to get there. He is always in for Mexican food!

Walking through Chinatown to get to the market

Olvera Street Market

Olvera

There are a few places that we wanted to see: the Hollywood sign, stars on Hollywood Boulevard...and that's about it. I was especially excited, to my own chagrin, to see the "Hollywood" things. It is hard to not get amped up about iconic locations in California that you have seen and heard about all of your life.

Driving up to the Hollywood sign was steeper than I imagined and we were right next to houses as we were driving up there. One guy was tending to his flowers on our way up there and I could have easily reached out and touched him. It made you feel like you were entering forbidden lands seeing all of the BMW's, Mercedes, Porsches, and any other kind of expensive car you can think of, as we drove up to the sign. We did finally get there and had a good view of the sign in the mountains.

Ryan is pointing at the sign, but I'm not sure what I'm doing...

The only picture of the stars I am putting up is Reese Witherspoon's. I can't really even tell you why, but I was obsessed with finding her star. I mean, I like her very much as an actress, but I like a lot of other actors and actresses too. Anywho, I was very stoked when I found her star!! We walked around for an hour looking at all of them, but especially for hers; only to find out that it was within a block of where we parked.

Reese Witherspoon's Star :)

The street market was a neat cultural experience and Hollywood was, well Hollywood, but we were ready for some peace and serenity that only the beach can bring. We stayed in Santa Monica our only night in LA and drove through the iconic Beverly Hills on the way there. I assumed Beverly Hills would be like all of the pop songs you have heard it in. It seemed similar to much of Los Angeles as we drove through it though; maybe with a few more trees. There was a large Tea Party event going on when we drove through, which did puzzle me because I never thought I would see a conservative political gathering anywhere near Beverly Hills; but that is what I get for assuming.

Tea Party Meeting

Santa Monica was one of my favorite beaches on the trip. We ate salad and pizza at a little outdoor restaurant near the beach with our feet in the sand :) I wondered why we didn't have more dinners like this, but then I remembered that we lived in Ohio. We were going to rent a tandem bike to ride along the Santa Monica boardwalk after dinner, but we didn't rent it in time. You had to have rented a bike more than an hour before sunset. I was pretty disappointed because we have never ridden one together, but we were in a beautiful place so I couldn't be disappointed for very long! We did another photoshoot by the beach at sunset :)
 

Santa Monica Boardwalk

Sunset at Santa Monica Beach and Pier

Sunset Silhouettes