Los Angeles Day 1 and 2

^Welcome to LA.  Picture taken on S. Hewitt Street.

I should preface this with the fact that LA is a little harder than SF to blog about and provide suggestions for anyone.  Everyone’s LA experience will be slightly different!  There is one common theme that comes to mind with LA though - traffic.  Traffic sort of defines your experience in LA.  From the airplane, I could see LA’s main arteries flowing with red and yellow lights, which could only mean one thing - traffic jams on highways.  As soon as I got in the car with my generous host, Chasen, he told me a funny aphorism to describe I-405, the main highway running through LA.  He said, “They named it the 405 because every time you get on it, it takes four or five hours to get anywhere.”  It could also be the case that the 405 was named after the four or five miles per hour that you will average when driving on it.  If you don’t have a friend to drive you around town, you’re definitely going to need to rent a car.  I was only there for 4 days and in retrospect I probably should have rented one.  There is essentially zero public transportation.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  We grabbed a few animal style burgers from In-N-Out and headed home in Calabasas.   Chasen’s family was a blast from the second I met them.  After getting settled in, we mapped out the next day.

^Shops at Rodeo drive.

In the morning we went down to Beverly Hills and walked around Rodeo Drive.  This is the glitzy shopping area where only the wealthiest actually buy something.  We met, Jessica, my friend that lives near LA for lunch and ate at Bibigo.  It was an awesome little Korean joint with delicious, yes you guessed it, bibimbap.  We ate like kings, and walked down the street a little further for green bubble tea at a staple café, Urth Caffe.  By this time, it was approaching late afternoon and my obsession with rooftops sent us searching for a place with a view.

^View from the rooftop of Sixty Hotel as the sun was setting.

^View from the rooftop of Sixty Hotel after the sun set.

As per a local’s suggestion, we found one of the only public access rooftops in Beverly Hills at the newly opened Sixty Hotel.  The rooftop lounge was called Above BeverlyHills and watching Beverly Hills transition from daytime to nighttime is a marvelous site.  After the sun sets, you don’t want to squander all the time you spent on the road to actually get into the city, so you should head to Hollywood Boulevard to have a look at the star studded Walk of Fame.  You can certainly check out a few hotels, and famous landmarks like Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.  But you can also, just do a lap and find a good place to eat.  If you want to keep it moving, walk down the strip toward the far East side, and grab a dangerously delicious hot dog from Dog E Style.  They recently opened (as of January 2014) and have an enormous selection of hot dogs from Kielbasa to snappers to various toppings.  We were still hungry after leaving there, so we had a slice of pizza at Greco Pizza, which quickly reminded me to NEVER have pizza outside of NY.

^Kielbasa with red onions, white beans, and assorted toppings at Dog E Style.

We had plans to go the Supperclub that night, which fell through, so we goofed around for a little while longer, paid some absurd price for parking and hit the road.

^They've got a point.