LA Day 1: Santa Monica and the LA Lakers!

Hi girls!

So as I said in my last post, we had an early morning flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was at 8am, so a very early B.A.R.T ride was required to get back to the airport. I was so excited to get to LA, because of course this is where we would be driving the rest of the trip! It was just an hour flight to LAX and it was fab when we were getting nearer to land, as we could see the whole city under us and we actually saw the Hollywood sign from the plane! I think we were the most excited people on the plane at that point!! 

When we landed the first thing we had to do was go and get the car. Robert and I love Mustangs (me especially), so we were hoping to get a convertible one! We hired through Thrifty and after sorting everything out and getting a GPS (sat nav), we were sent to a specific section of the car park and were told we could choose which ever one we wanted! Hehe, when we walked around the corner there was three convertible Mustangs sitting there!! Honestly, we must of looked like little children trying to decide which one we wanted!! We ended up choosing a black one;

I called him Roo! Also this photo was taken further into the trip.

So on leaving the car rental, we decided we would go to Santa Monica! So I put it into the sat nav and Robert began to follow the route. Now Robert has not driven a left hand drive car before and only driven on the "wrong" side of the road a tiny bit (because of course the UK drive the opposite way round from most other places). So after getting onto the correct side of the road, we were off and Robert was told just to follow the car in front when turning corners! Hehe, only 5 minutes into the drive, of course the sat nav takes us onto an Interstate (or motorway as we call them in the UK). Now Robert and I drive everywhere and everyday, we are not nervous drivers in any way, but that first day the driving was a little cray cray!! When we first got on the Interstate, Robert gave a little yelp of "your making me go on this already?!", to which I replied that I didn't have a clue what route the sat nav was going and he could not turn back now! Hehe, Robert did extremely well though and got us parked up near the beach all ready to explore a bit of Santa Monica! 

Two words; utterly gorgeous! Honestly this place was beautiful! All the little beach houses, which must cost an absolute fortune. Then the beach itself was just amazing with golden sand, hundreds of palm trees and proper lifeguard huts, which went on for miles and miles in each direction.

Then we saw the Pier a little way away from us, so obviously we headed in that direction! For lunch, we stopped at a little beach restaurant and I had a grilled cheese and chips, which was just so good!!!

It was such a gorgeous day! Not a cloud in the sky, so it was perfect walking along the beach and then up onto the Pier, which is actually the unofficial (I think) end of Route 66! I just had to get a photo!!

Oh gosh that place was just so pretty!! Sadly we never went into Pacific Park, due to not having enough time left where we had parked. We had an amazing time and even walked past the famous Muscle Beach!! They were actually filming some sort of work out programme when we were there and later in the week we saw it on the tv!! It was so funny, knowing we had been there! So after getting some Dippin' Dots, which is quite a strange concept of ice cream in tiny litlle ball form. I got strawberry flavour and looked and tasted like I was eating the sweets called Millions! We walked back to the car and headed for the hotel.

Now the hotel, which we were staying in for 5 nights, happened to be in Anaheim (because we were going to Disneyland), but as LA is such a huge city, Anaheim is about 45 miles from the centre of LA and then is obviously more miles away from Santa Monica. So it took us just under 2 hours to get to the Hilton in Anaheim, due to all the traffic. During that journey, we experienced quite a scary moment due to a stupid impatient guy behind us when trying to join onto the Interstate, but this I guess just made Robert more focused. The average motorway here is usually 6 lanes across, well we were on one which was 14 lanes across!! It was crazy! We weren't that bothered by the amount of traffic on the way to Anaheim to be honest, but it was great to get to our hotel room and have a little rest for a while!

Robert had always wanted to go to a basketball game, so he booked us tickets to go and see the LA Lakers at the Staples Centre, which is right in the centre of LA!! So it was back on the Interstate for us! Now this is when we saw huge amounts of traffic and the Interstate was jam packed and moving very slowly!! It took us 2 and a half hours to get parked up beside the Staples Centre. As we were on holiday, the traffic never really bothered us, but I don't know how people can live there!! They must spend half their lives on the roads!! So anyway we were quite excited to get in and see the game!

We had a good view of the whole court and the game was great! The LA Lakers were playing the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Lakers won! I did try to do some star spotting along the front row with my camera, but never really saw anyone! After the game it was back down the Interstate again to the hotel! To be honest Robert and I weren't really bothered by this drive, as we are used to doing longer journeys in the car and plus the hotel was fab, so we were happy!! When we got back to Anaheim, it was 11pm and we had a very early morning, so it was straight to bed! Our second day of LA was a very exciting VIP Experience at Universal Studios!! So stay tuned for that post!!

I am linking up with Helene with her Travel Tuesday segment! Love this idea!!

Hope you enjoyed reading about our first day in LA!!

Love, Jen x