This trip to LA marks the two year anniversary of Cody’s first airplane flight ever. It was also our third trip this year as a couple. We’ve been able to travel so much this thanks to my new hobby of leveraging credit card offers to get free airline miles and hotel points.
California is always a great place to visit for a few reasons: great beaches, awesome weather, and Cody’s best friend. In that order. Sorry Halleh.
We booked a motel on Hollywood and Western for the first three nights, and then stayed with Halleh and Ian the rest of the time. This gave us some freedom to run around and be tourists for the first couple of days while still being frugal. Here’s a quick breakdown of our first few days:
- Museums
- Beach
- Food
- More food
Onto the pictures!
Day 2
(Day 1 was just sleeping and eating)
Having been to Los Angeles, and specifically Holywood before, Cody and I are masters of the metro lines. We took the red line and then transferred to the expo line to exposition park, which is where several of the museums in LA are clustered. Our first stop(after walking around USC for a bit) was the California Science Center. It was free which I’m always down for, and they have an exhibit with the space shuttle Endeavor. Cody and I both love space, so this was an easy choice.
We didn’t spend much time in here besides walking through the Endeavor exhibits. Actually, we spent more time than we intended because it was really hard to find where they kept the space shuttle itself. We walked through an entire exhibit about the Endeavor with signs pointing “Space shuttle this way!” that ended in an open hallway with no space shuttle. Disappointing.
We found it eventually, and it was awesome.
Next we walked over to the natural history museum to check out some dinosaurs. They have a real fossil of a T-Rex skull, which is cool because most museums just have replicas. There was also supposed to be a spider exhibit, but it wasn’t scheduled to open until the next day, much to Cody’s dismay.
Later that night Halleh and Ian took us to the Santa Monica Promenade, which is just a bunch of shops and restaurants, like Denver’s 16th street outdoor mall. We walked around and saw some pretty lame street performances; I saw way better ones in Central Park when I visited New York this year for work. We also walked by a Tesla store that had an actual Model S inside. They have a Tesla store in Austin but they aren’t allowed to have the car there, or discuss prices, due to Texas’ stupid laws that prohibit car manufactuers from selling direct to consumers.
Cody and I tried our first oysters later on that night. We ordered two different kinds, both were very mild and didn’t have much of an oceany smell or taste. They we actually really good, albeit expensive at $3.50 each. Delicious, yet expensive.
Day 3
I really wanted to go to the beach, and Halleh and Ian couldn’t hang out that afternoon, so Cody and I took an hour and a half ride on the metro + Uber to Long Beach. Long story short we didn’t actually go to the beach, but we saw a decommissioned battleship, the U.S.S Iowa, and had more oysters! We also stumbled upon a Lobster Festival in Ports O’Call, which is just across the bridge from Long Beach
Some fun facts about the USS Iowa - It is 887 feet long, which is four feet longer than the Titanic - It’s height is 175 feet above water line, whichis 24 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty - It has 16 miles of ventilation ducts, and 80 miles of piping.
After gorging ourselves on seafood and tourist traps, we stumbled on a Mustang owner’s rally, and then went back to the room and watched Batman on tv. Vacation rules.
Day 4
Day 4, the day we moved in with Halleh and Ian. The day our lives would never be the same, and theirs would be continually blessed by our presence 24 hours a day for the next 4 days.
Oh yeah, we went to the gun range today and Cody got shot. Sort of.
I was shooting a steel target while her and Halleh were off to the side. Multiple pieces of shrapnel hit them both, but Cody took a hit to the leg that actually embedded in her skin because she wasn’t wearing pants. Check it out.
After getting patched up by Ian with his Army medic skills, Cody got back out on the range and fired some more shots like a boss.
I’ll leave off here; we’ll wrap up LA in the next post and then onto San Fransisco!