Los Angeles, CA

Monday 24th June:

Mark headed out early to pick up the rental car from LAX. I tried out the gym and Tom slept in. He woke feeling much better and well able to tackle another day. We weren’t too sure what to do today. San Diego was a choice but at a distance of 2 hrs was just too far to tackle. We thought we might check out ‘Downtown’ so that was the plan. Our ‘Hop On/Hop Off’ bus ticket was valid until 11.15 today and the purple bus route to Downtown was scheduled to leave at 11am so we planned to try and make that.

It was a cool and cloudy morning as we set off for the tour to Downtown LA and I kept giving thanks that I had decided to bring my leather jacket on this trip. I was wearing it today and could have done with it for the last two days actually. I am obviously a very slow learner.Tom noted this tour as being the most interesting and informative of all of the open top bus tours.He was pleased to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, that he had studied in detail at school.

We discovered that LA was initially Settled by just 44 Spaniards to support the many missions along the west coast. The Industry was mostly farming ranching. There was a brief period of Mexican domination before becoming the 31st state of the United States of America in 1850. The movie industry helped to swell resident numbers to 500,000 in early 1900. The population now is about 12 million. Many city buildings are being converted into luxury loft apartments and LA city now has at least 4,000 residents live in LA which has helped to revitalise the city.The Milano loft apartment conversion is just one example of this.

The Downtown tour finished at about 1.30 and left us back up at The Walk of Fame. We had a quick bite to eat before heading back to the apartment. The plan for the afternoon was to take the car and drive down to the Science Centre where the Space Shuttle ‘Columbia’ was on display. We headed out to the Science Centre but LA traffic got the better of us so we ended up heading back to the apartment. Peak hour starts at around 3.30 ~ 4pm here! There just wasn’t enough time to venture anywhere with the traffic the way it was. We were heading out to dinner at 6.30 pm so decided to head back to the apratment and go down to the pool/gym area. The outing wasn’t a complete waste though as we got to see the kind of cars belonging to the residents in our building. They were all luxury European cars….Porsche, BMW, Audi etc. Quite a different sight from the traffic from up on street level.

We headed out to dinner to Koi. This was another suggestion from Chelsea and we were so glad we took her advice. It would be best likened to ‘Sake’ from Sydney’s Rocks area and we had a fun night with great food and great wine. This is another one to note down as a ‘must do’ if ever in LA!

We have an early start tomorrow as we are heading out to The Grand Canyon.