My USA travel diary, following my adventures in America. Here’s what we got up to when we visited Los Angeles!
After a wild time in Vegas, Briony and I travelled onto the City of Angeles: aka Los Angeles! Technically I arrived in LA when I first flew to America! But I only really spent an evening there before catching a night bus to Vegas. You can read all about our Vegas adventures/the beginning of our American trip here, by the way!
But onto LA!
We spent most of the first day travelling. since I hadn’t had much sleep the prior night, we didn’t plan anything really. We arrived and checked into our hostel: Walk of Fame Hollywood Hostel. This was situated right along the Walk of Fame and in the middle of all the action! I actually really liked this hostel. Despite it being constantly busy outside and ‘performers’ singing/chanting on megaphones until late at night (expected though, really), it was really nice! Everyone was so friendly. I apologize to the night porters who had to deal with Briony and I’s drunken shenanigans all hours of the morning! Plus the central location of the hostel was perfect. It was also really good quality too, despite being a hostel.
Day Four: An LA Welcome
The first night they had a pub crawl on but the organiser didn’t turn up, haha! So the people who worked there gave suggested the first bar to us. They said we would get free entry as long as we mentioned we were coming from the hostel. So after we’d unpacked and got ready, we headed out and to this bar. We first arrived to what looked like a very weird shopping square. But we knew we were in the right place when we saw the line outside. Then we were ushered straight into what looked like another store; a video store with a neon sign reading ‘Adults Only’ above a curtain. Then I realised it was an awesome speakeasy ba! So we pushed behind the curtain where a tiny but heaving club was revealed to us!
If you’re ever in LA, definitely check out this club! Anyway, of course, people kept buying us drinks because everyone digs our British accents over there. This turned out to be another pretty wild night out. It was fun until I was walking through the club and this man sitting at a table on a raised platform had his legs sticking out… I tripped over them and fell straight into the table full of drinks, and knocked everything clean over, totally embarrassed. I was then stuck with a giant thigh bruise for the rest of the holiday and big bruises on my arms. Of course.
We then made our way back to the hostel. Some random man wouldn’t leave us alone so we ditched him at the pizza place and got inside. Then Briony started screaming loudly and drunkenly that she wanted pizza. We waited for an appropriate amount of time for the weird man to disappear and went back for pizza. I then spent the next two hours chatting drunkenly to the night staff whilst we laughed at Briony on the night cameras drunkenly wandering around the corridors for no apparent reason. It was an interesting night, to say the least!
Day Five: Chilling Out
Today we ventured out of the hostel to do a little exploring. We made our way to the beach and spent most of the day there which was really nice as I was glad to get a beach day in! We grabbed some vendor food (I had the most amazing mozzarella sticks which began my love affair for American mozzarella sticks) and on the way back we took a bus halfway and then where we were supposed to swap we decided to get scooters instead. Basically, in LA and Vegas etc we kept seeing these scooters lying on the ground everywhere and it’s pretty much the same idea as London’s bike rentals but with scooters!
We just downloaded an app, scanned the scooter and then we were off! It took a while to get used to using them and of course, mine kept going so slow so I thought maybe I just wasn’t pushing myself fast enough or maybe it wasn’t actually electrical? But Briony was speeding away! Eventually, we realized I must have just had a broken one (typical) and once I swapped I was like ‘oh gosh, okay, now I get why everyone uses them’ as they’re so speedy and nifty!
We then had a walk around the strip and dipped into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! This was fun, but smaller than I expected and we had walked around the entire thing in about half an hour. But we managed to get some cool photos at least.
Day Six: Universal Studios Hollywood
The next day we spent a long, long day at Universal Studios Hollywood. I’ll do a full blog post about this! But we had a lot of fun. My highlight was definitely the Studio Tour, The Mummy ride (because I love The Mummy so much and have actually wanted to go on this ride all my life like the little saddo that I am), and the Harry Potter ride. I don’t think we did anything this night, apart from maybe having a few drinks in the hostel and playing some pool, probably because our feet were killing us after walking around all damn day. We got free entry into Universal Studios Hollywood thanks to our Go LA cards which we purchased from Groupon last year.
I cannot recommend these Go LA cards enough. We purchased the three-day pass for $197 each (about £152) but originally each three-day pass costs $264 – so this was a bargain. Entry to Universal Studios alone is between $109 and $129!
Day Seven: Warner Bro’s Studio Tour & Celebrity Homes Tour
It seemed our time in LA would mostly be spent taking studio tours – not that I’m complaining! This tour saw us divided into small groups and driven around on little golf buddies around the actual sets used in TV and movies. We saw backdrops that had been used in episodes of Shameless and spots where The Mask and Spiderman were filmed (including that famous Spiderman kiss!). Next, we were taken inside some sets and told more about movie-making magic. We took a break to check out some props from things like the Batman and Harry Potter movies, as well as Aquaman.
Next we headed back to the strip for a celebrity homes tour! I wasn’t too sure about this – I didn’t know how protruding it would be. But it was free with the Go LA card and it was a nice day. So we grabbed some snacks and climbed abroad – I imagined a chill drive, snacking on nice food and celeb spotting. Oh how wrong I was. The food wasn’t very nice. Pretty much all of the tour was just driving around the rolling hills of Hollywood so it was freakin’ freezing! We also saw no celebrities (in fact the most famous thing we saw was The Hollywood sign in the distance!) and even some gardeners shouted to us and called us shameless!
Our tour guide was okay, but he spent most of the time pointing at houses in the distance and saying stuff like ‘Katy Perry once lived here. I hear she lives elsewhere now’ or ‘That building way over there is owned by Usher. Get your camera’s ready because at this next turning you’ll get a great shot of the house’ which was surrounded by giant walls!
Also he kept telling us how celebrities always came out and lapped up the attention, how ‘this time three weeks ago Orlando Bloom waved at me’ or ‘six months ago bla bla came out for a chat’, oh and six days before that, and one day before that his wife was in the window. I was like, how can he remember all of that? It was clearly all made up. But whilst waiting for the tour to start, we visited the area where all the famous footprints are at least. At least we didn’t pay for it!
We then spent the evening back at the hostel. We did duck out for some street food though, where we somehow ended up in the Scientology centre for about two hours because they wouldn’t let us leave and kept telling us we were depressed and clearly had had traumatic experiences and needed to spend $100 dollars on three books and a two-day course. Don’t even ask…
Day Eight: Santa Monica Pier, Sony Pictures Studio Tour & Madame Tussauds
The following day we returned to the beach to explore the little theme park on Santa Monica Pier. Although this was aimed at families/a younger audience, we had fun. It all felt like a very typical British seaside day out! We had the most giant and tasty ice creams! It was funny also as we joked about a phantom ride that wasn’t advertised anywhere but at the kiosk desk as extremely thrilling and for adults only! We asked where it was and we were told it was near the end of the pier and that we’d definitely know it when we saw it. To this day I don’t know if this ride even exists. We looked everywhere and the pier wasn’t even big! We also went on the kid’s pirate ship which made us feel super sick and subsequently very old!
Next, we headed over to the Sony Pictures Studio Tour. Technically we went there first but didn’t realise you had to book a lot in advance. Rather than waiting around, we went to the beach and decided to return later. I actually preferred this to the Warner Bro’s tour as it was a little more hands-on. We got to see vehicles from Ghostbusters and Breaking Bad. We also got to visit the sets of Wheel of Fortune, and The Goldbergs. So that was fun.
We then headed back to the strip. We ducked into Madame Tussauds which was a lot of fun and great for some awesome photo ops! They had an amazing horror area which I loved. There was even a bloomin’ ball pit – which was really, really fun of course. Then we chilled back at the hostel for the night.
USA Travel Diary: My Final Thoughts on LA
LA was so fun but again, I feel like I missed out on so much! I really wish we’d had time to visit Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain. On the other hand, Briony really wanted to visit OUE Skyspace (where they have the Skyslide) and to do a whale-watching tour. We also both wanted to see the Hollywood sign up close, but we just didn’t have the time. We debated doing a sunset hike but everyone warned us off doing that alone because of the coyotes! So there are plenty of reasons to go back. LA was so different to Vegas as well. It was just as fun, of course, and so many great things to do. But it was just that bit more laid back and glossy.
More Posts about My USA Travel Diary
Previous Post: Las Vegas
Next Post: San Diego & Tijuana
Review: Universal Studios Hollywood
No Comments