21 November, 2010 – One of my BFF’s is working out of California these days. We’ve been trying to get together for a while but between her work and my school and family schedules, it’s hard to carve out time. We found a short weekend back in August just before school started for me to fly to LA to spend some one on one time with her. I’ve never been to California so it was a very exciting time for me. New sights, girl time, and oh yeah – NO KIDS!! It was wonderful. Except for the fact that I was newly pregnant and still having small bouts of nausea, I’d say the trip was a success. We had just a few days to cover some major landmarks in Los Angeles, so I did my best to write down and take pictures of all we saw.
Airplane rides are always so calming for me. I took these pictures out my window on the way there because it reminded me of Brooke and how she’s always ‘seeing’ things in puffy clouds. The view from the TOP of the clouds is always so amazing. So I took these for her so she could share in what I saw.
The first night there, this is where Steph and I had dinner. It was a pretty chilly evening but we sat outside on the patio and caught up and people watched.
Friday morning we got up and started a VERY full day. The tour began at Sony Pictures – this is the reason Steph is in California right now, her company is doing work with Sony. The Sony sound stages were huge and absolutely amazing.
The weather that day was beautiful, cool and clear blue skies! We headed out to Hollywood Blvd. in the cool convertible Steph had rented and I took some random pictures as we drove through LA.
When we drove up to get a good clear shot of the Hollywood sign, I learned a little history about it. Basically it started as a suburban housing development in 1923 called Hollywoodland, and once all the land was sold, the sign was going to be taken down. But because it had become such a landmark, the citizens fought to keep it. It since has been replaced and the letters have been repaired and the sign itself is protected as “private property” to the city of Los Angeles. I also seem to remember reading something on the landmark about it being lit up at some point in time too. But I think it got too expensive to maintain so now it’s just the unlit wood sign that says Hollywood.
Next was Rodeo Drive baby…
Some night pictures…
Saturday was the trip to the California beaches. Again, what a day it was. The weather was absolutely beautiful! Venice beach was a very interesting place to sight see…to say the least. And we did a LOT of walk. A LOT.
Let me just say how cold the water was….SO COLD!! So this is proof I actually got “in” the Pacific Ocean! The birds did not seem to mind the cold at all.
Our hot convertible we drove around in all day with the top down looking mighty cool, I might add! 
We took a tour of the stars homes (kind of on our own) and this was one of the houses we found. Betty White lives here. We drove BY the driveway that led up to the Playboy Mansion, but they had so much security and it was up on a hill. So we really couldn’t see it. We drove by where OJ Simpson’s mansion used to be (it’s been torn down since the murders and someone else built on that lot). There were so many other houses we wanted to see but because of how they are built and because they are famous and important people, it’s next to impossible to get to them, much less take a picture of the actual home. I guess we were lucky to get this close to Betty’s house.
Next we went down to the Sunset strip and had lunch on Sunset Plaza. Afterwards, we drove over to Forest Lawn Cemetery to try and find Michael Jackson’s grave. We drove around for a little while and never saw it. This is because he’s buried in a mausoleum that’s not open to the public. That information would have been nice to know BEFORE we went to the cemetery. (We Googled it when we got back to the hotel that night.)
Stephanie asked me to take this picture for her. So here it is girl!
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