Venice, Santa Monica, USC and Dirty Mexican Food.

To recap, this is the morning after drinking and partying in the Koreatown in LA, Chris Bae crashed in our room and I lost my socks. Chris got up around 8 and said his goodbyes and told us that we could stay at his that night and we should eventually make our way over to the University of Southern California (USC) campus. He departed and we got up and made our way out for some breakfast!

The Farmers Market on Third and Fairfax was the location we chose and we were well in the mood for some fish taco’s! The market is alright, a bit small and slightly limited, although I guess coming from Europe our version of farmers markets are much more impressive. Everything is fried! They will take something that is great fresh and stick it in the deep fat fryer, this disappointed me, I wanted some nice fresh fish taco’s besides LA is essentially a seaside city! Where is the fresh fish at?! Nevermind, a slight disappointment, but we found a brilliant hot sauce shop called Light My Fire (check them out http://www.hotsaucetogo.com/) .

Post farmers market we decided that what we needed was some beaches! So we made our way over to the iconic and famously obscure Venice Beach! Brilliantly white beaches, bright glaring sunshine, parking right by the water and all the maniacs and lunatics that you could ever want! I say lunatics and maniacs, but don’t get me wrong, there were also crack heads, stoners, tran-sexuals, homeless and police, a variable who’s who of social outcasts all gathered together as a family on a beach. That being said, it felt very safe and welcoming, everything there was unique, a realy hipsters paradise, locals mixed in with the strange all walking amongst the tourists. This is famously the location of the basketball scenes in American History X and White Men Cant Jump, also the place where Anthony Kiedis, front man of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, grew up. Now I have been here before but that was during the winter back in 2008 so there were not as many people out, this time was much better. A real atmosphere is what I sensed and community. Unfortunatly because we had donned our beach shorts we didn’t have a camera with us so there are no pictures for you amusement, but just know that we both enjoyed it. We got our Tan on and had lunch before heading off back into town to meet Chris Bae.

By now it was 3pm and we had made our way back across town and into the USC campus to meet Chris. Chris Bae if you have forgotten was my room mate last year when I studied abroad and oh how great it was to be back by his side. He is the President of a society on campus and he gave us the full tour with boundless amounts of information (which he tested us on at the end and apparently only Paolo was listening). Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

 

After the tour from my friend Frommer Chris, we had to go back to his office while he finished up some work he was in the middle of. This gave Paolo and I the chance to chill out and get our Facebook on.  We headed back to Chris’s and met his roommate and watched an hour long special of Family Guy. Then the topic of dinner came up, in the end it was decided that we should make our way over to a sushi happy hour that was going on at some random Japanese restaurant in Downtown with a very forgettable name. It was great though and it was $2 a dish, with the whole conveyor belt novelty thingy.

Now Chris is not of age yet but that’s okay because he was going to use my ID, after all we all look alike. Paolo, Chris and I headed over to Santa Monica where we met up with Mike Tran and Abe! This was going to turn into one of the best nights out we’ve had in the USA, so we started in Santa Monica and worked our way from where we had parked and bar crawled it all the way to the beach, stopping at every bar along the way buying rounds, then once arriving at the beach we worked our way back through another road. Fun and frolics and general stupidity was abound! Afterwards we decided as a collective that we should get some food, but not just any food, dirty Mexican street food somewhere back in Downtown, so we made our way over and I for some reason got out of the car before we got there so was slightly lost. Luckily I ran into my friend Baaby Susan who pointed me in the right direction saying she had just seen all the guys in a Mexican place around the corner so I made my way round. They were already sitting there munching away on some taco’s, they had already ordered for me and I sat down for some munch as well. They were crap! But apparently that is the point. It was a lot of fun this place, crappy food, crappy service, but buzzing with people who had just finished a night out. Abe bet Mike $20 drink a container of their super hot hot sauce, which he did! It was bad and you could see Mike’s pain, but that didn’t stop him from downing another one for an extra $5 that Abe offered up again. Mike walked away up $25 but it was definitely worth it to the rest of us to see him do it, I didn’t want to be Mike in the morning.

We headed back to Chris’s and crashed out on his airbed. What a brilliant night!

Los Angeles

First thing in the morning, we checked out. We left our car in the motel car park as we had the closest possible location anyways. It was around 10 am and we wondered back towards Hollywood Blvd and the Man’s Chinese theatre in order to get ourselves onto a stars homes tour! This was essentially the most tacky Hollywood tourist thing we could think to do, so we did it!

Now I wont bore you with all the stars homes that we saw because essentially it was all of them, but an observation I must make is that the valuations on the homes seemed remarkably low for what they were. You stick the same $2million home in London and you’d easily get £10million! I understand that location is everything but that’s exactly why I was surprised, this was Beverly Hills! One of the most famous locations in the world! Never mind, just gives me more hope of living there someday, after all, they are only $2 million!

I do ofcourse have to mention, we saw the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house!

The tour took us down to Rodeo Drive, the Bond street of Los Angeles, although its crap compared to Bond street. I bought myself a Nike windbreaker that was on sale from $130 down to $40, and I love windbreakers so I was on that deal like ketchup on fries. The tour lasted, in total, about 4 hours, so it was almost lunch time when we decided that we would make our way towards our next hotel of choice. Tonight we were staying at the Rotex in Koreatown, it was opposite Manna, the restaurant I was going to be having my little reunion that night with my friends from LA.

After arriving at our destination we checked in and had a top floor room with a view of the Hollywood sign, very nice, we headed out and wondered around the Korea town for a bit. It was huge! We walked for a good 2 hours exploring before coming back, having a nap and watching an episode of Jersey Shore.

We crossed the road the an all you can eat Korean BBQ place called Manna, here we were going to wait for my friends to turn up and eat, drink and be merry! It was packed! This was obviously a very popular place, they had loads of huge parties of people all cheering and having fun, reminded me a lot of Korea, we sat down with Clara, Kieu, Kevin, Chris Bae, Abe and Mike. I felt bad for Paolo because we were all reminisicing about times we had when we were all studying abroad, these guys all live in LA but they barely ever meet up so they were catching up with each other as much as they were catching up with me, but all was good, such a great group of people that anybody can get on with. The BBQ was all you can eat, so we were there for a good 2 hours of eating. It was a lot of fun and I felt really at home with everybody and it made me realise how much I had missed it.

After dinner we proceeded into the heart of LA Korea town and went for some good old fashion Korean drinking, Soju time. I don’t recall the name of the place, in the LA Korea town there are hundreds of Korean bars, its unreal, in the one in New Malden there is perhaps 1 Korean bar. I gave Chris Bae my ID and but they didn’t even check so it was no issue (sucks being under 21 in the USA). We played a whole array of drinking games, that’s the best thing about drinking in Korean bars is that you order drinks by the bottle and so its easier to play drinking games with shots. Here Baaby Susan had joined us with three of her friends whom only added to the great night we were so far having!

But once again I was disappointed by the fact that the bar shut at 1am, I think I take 24 hour drinking for granted back home, but no worries! Everybody came back to our hotel room and the party continued! The toilet got flooded and someone had picked up about 6 cans of 4loco so you know we were going to have a good time! The night ended with some people crashing and some going home, all in all a bloody brilliant night in LA!

There are not many pictures of the night, which is either good or bad, but I do have a couple so I hope they will suffice.

Travel day to Los Angeles

The night previously was what we would call a late night. And today we were planning on getting an early start towards LA, ye, so that didn’t happen. In fact we decided to take Farah and her room mate out for brunch!

We had tried to go to a place called Hash House a’go go while in Las Vegas but it was closed on the Sunday we went. Luckily there is another branch in San Diego so we went there! It was good, great breakfast food, they serve their food in a skillet and it is literally a pile of food, I got the garlic roast chicken and Paolo had the beef. Essentially the ‘hash’ is a bed of their own mix of roast potatoes with various herbs, it is served the American way with fruit on the same plate as the savoury meal, with a side of scrambled eggs 2 sticks of asparagus, a ‘biscuit’ (which is actually a scone) and a whole sprig of thyme! It was good and oh was it filling! It has been a while since we have had fresh high quality produce, I mean we have had great food, but it hasn’t always been the freshest or the highest of quality, the mastery in the American cuisine is how they process it. Anyways, my point is this was good quality food, it has been such a long time so it was easier to notice that is that the quality here was higher, perhaps it was because we were in California and they are more food conscious, who knows.

We headed back to Farah’s place, packed up and headed off. We had a brilliant time in San Diego, really fell in love with the place, it helped that we had brilliant company, we weren’t even intending to stay with Farah, but she invited us and we accepted, and it was brilliant fun, sometimes the best times are unplanned!

We hit traffic around 30 minutes into the drive towards LA, we however managed to by pass the entire jam (which lasted almost the entire way into LA) because we drove in the car pool lane, which had nobody in it. You have to have 2 people in the car in order to drive in the carpool lane and nobody did! I was checking out the cars stuck in the jam and every car had 1 person in it! Insane that they would sit through all of that when all they would need to do is carpool! The traffic was literally at a standstill, but we just zipped straight past with nobody in our lane.

Arriving in LA we hit the real rush hour traffic, its not so bad, its simply because there is a huge bloody highway plonked right in the middle. We drove down Wiltshire blvd all the way down to Sunset and drove north towards Hollywood blvd. It was around 6pm by now and we settled in a motel 1 block behind Hollywood Blvd and Man’s Chinese Theatre, brilliant location! Or so we thought. It being Hollywood, we expected that there would be bars and clubs somewhere around such a famous area, what with it being the location of the walk of fame and all the stars on the floor, but no! There were no bars. So we just had dinner, which was surprisingly good. We had a bacon covered burger, I had spinach mashed potatoes as a side, it went straight in the top 10 burgers I’ve had, although not near the top 5, that is a hard list to get into after the trip I’ve had.

We headed back after being disappointed by LA, but don’t worry, we watched two episodes of Jersey shore which made up for all the evil in the world!

Sea world, San Diego

I write to you from my humble abode, sitting in my mess of a room in London. The weather sucks, and I am behind on my American road trip posts. Already it seems so far away… because it is, but still, I miss it and now I have to recollect the joys of just a week ago.

As with many days on this trip we had an early start. We were doing the whole out tourist experience today, like we did with Coca Cola world and the Jack Daniels factory, today we were taking in another institution of the American tourist industry. SeaWorld!

SeaWorld is easy to find in San Diego, its sign posted on all the highways and it even has its own road. We drove in, parking was $15, slightly extortionate considering there was only SeaWorld here and nobody was going to park there for any other reason, Disneyland doesn’t charge for parking, Thorpe Park doesn’t charge for parking, SeaWorld on the other hand thinks they are more important.

The price of entry was an astounding $70 each! Incredible! We doubted whether we should enter, but after a bit of deliberation we paid the fare and entered, determined to get full value for money for our tickets!

The first thing we noticed was that there really wasn’t anybody around, we wondered for a bit but really there were few people. We eventually heard screams and roar of applause and headed in the direction of the excited cheers. It was the dolphins show area, and the show was running, we couldn’t get in because it was half way through, however we were able to stand behind and see the dolphins that had just finished performing. They did a couple of back flips and tricks with the trainers for us. It was amazing to see them being so obedient!

The shows are on twice a day, the are numerous shows, there is the dolphin show, Shamu’s killer whale show, the otter and sea lion show and the pet show.

We made our way over to the area where the next show after the dolphin show, that we had missed, was going to be. The Shamu’s killer whale show! It’s what SeaWorld is famous for, and it is supposed to be the most impressive show at the park. We seated ourselves in the splash zone, about 10 seats in, the splash zone did go up to the first 20 rows of seats and we decided to sit in the middle of it.

For such large beasts killer whales move extremely fast, you can see them under water through the piece of glass at the top of the tank as they zip by. Its incredible to think that they can be trained as well as they are. Killer whales are definitely a animal which is impressive, however I would have preferred to have seen them in their natural habitat, I will say however that SeaWorld provided a better photo opp. And yes, we got wet…

The show ended and we slowly made our way out of the stadium with the rest of the masses and made our way over to the aquarium, where there were any number of strange quirky creatures from the deep, there were some really cool fish that changed colour depending on how dark it was (you could press a button to change the light intensity in the tank). Apart from that, a fish is a fish, so we headed over to the Rapids, in which we had to awkwardly sit with a family of Mexicans, their son was petrified and I got on the wrong end of a waterfall.

 

The turtle area was a sad sight, unless they were rescued turtles (which it didn’t specify) these giants of the oceans were all cramped into a small tank, they were piling on top of each other, even as we were there we could see some of them biting each other, turtles are my favourite creature from the sea’s along with penguins, they just seem fun loving. The penguin enclosure is a different story, they have their own little world going on, and they appeared to love it!

Next we did went to go watch the seals and sea lions being fed, before moving onto the sea lion show, it was a comedy whereby the sea lions enacted out popular American TV shows, like CSI and Pop Idol etc. it was good and definitely entertaining, they looked like they were having fun, my favourite ‘actor’ was the otter though, it kept messing up! Also it has to be mentioned, but sea lions have incredible balance on their nose.

I decided that it would perhaps be a good idea to feed the flamingo’s, what I wasn’t expecting was to be attacked by one of them, I was trying to feed one when another one came over and started trying to eat my hand! It didn’t hurt as they don’t have teeth, but they do pinch! This flamingo then proceeded to attack all the rest of the flamingo’s and a duck! No manners.

The Dolphin show was on the cards and so off we went to go see what we had heard the crowds enjoying earlier. The show was extremely cheesy, with back stories and character lines that spun off into a tangent that really was a non requisite for the show, all I wanted to see was tricks from the dolphins! This show involved doves and a crane (the bird), it was great! We sat in the splash zone again, but didn’t get too wet, the dolphins had decided to focus their attention on another seating section, they spent a good minute continuously splashing one section of the crowd, and they got destroyed.

We then went to go see the polar bears chilling and took in the only real action ride in the park, where we got another good wash down and I did my tribute to Ace Venture (we were in an animal park after all).

Overall we felt like we had got our money’s worth, a great day out!

We returned to meet up with Farah and her roommates, we were going to go to a San Diego food Mecca, Phil’s BBQ! It is the must go place to eat in San Diego, everybody we met who had been to SD recommended we eat there, and definitely for good reason! We had at a time that we had to queue for about 30 minutes, Farah told us this is the shortest time she ever had to wait at Phil’s BBQ. Paolo and I ordered two plates, the taster plate, which had a small selection of ribs with two sides, and their famous pulled pork sandwich. Both were succulent and juicy, even the sides were a class of their own, it brings great sadness that you simply cant get food like this in England! It was great, simply put, it was great, every mouthful was as great and if not better than the last, the ribs just fell off the bone! It was not too salty, not too sweet many times I have come close to saying it, and I will perhaps verge on saying it now, but this is up there with the perfect BBQ, although just trumped perhaps by Salt Lick BBQ in Austin, Texas, but only by a pinch. Here is a picture of the food; there were 7 of us in total, which should explain the sheer amount of food.

There was a place in San Diego that we had to go, Mt Soledad in La Jolla, it is the same place that Ron Burgundy brings Veronica Corningstone in the film Anchorman and explains the origins of the name of the city. A breath taking view, there were only 5 of us by now, and we just sat up on the peak and stared out on the city enjoying the view, the police eventually came along and moved along everybody who was parked up on the peak, we had parked somewhere else and walked up though so we were able to stay, this meant that we had the place to ourselves, we had brought along a bottle of Jameson’s and had a few drinks up there while we simply enjoyed the view. The memory will last a long time and I plan to return.

 

Karaoke time! We then moved the night on by going to karaoke! Paolo had never been to a Korean style karaoke place, normally you have to wait an hour to sing the song you chose, Korean style is you get a room, fill it with your friends, and for an hour you get to sing all the songs you want! Except we were there for way over an hour, and we sang to our hearts content! We had shots of Jack in between songs and beers to wash them down, we had ups and downs, from Take That to Radiohead, Justing Timberlake to Justin Bieber, and we covered all the bases.

Some people just cant handle all the fun though and find it extremely tiring!

We got everybody home, it was late, around 2am, we continued to chat and sit around drinking until about 3am when someone suggested we got to Wal-Mart! Paolo being the only sensible person decided it would be better to sleep than to head to Wal-Mart, the rest of us clearly thought otherwise and we went! There was nobody there, it was open but we were the only customers that were stupid enough to go, when we got there we it clicked, why were we there? We wondered around the isles for a bit, but really there was no reason for us being there, I was trying to teach everybody how to Dougie in flip flops and I made a right royal fool of myself by slipping up, luckily the ground was there to break my fall. We headed back home for a bit of sleep, but once again we ended up on a tangent and the next thing I knew I was telling the girls ghost stories, and right at the end of one of them, a water pipe burst outside sending gushing water into the air, it was terribly loud and was a big shock! It was so loud that we had to go round closing all the doors and windows. The night still wasn’t over because Farah stuck on ‘The Princess and The Frog’ Disney movie, and I fell asleep watching that.

Lets go Padres! Lets go!

This day essentially was a travel day to San Diego from LA, we checked out of our hotel and hit the road, straight onto the 15 and headed south west. We did hit some quite severe traffic on the way and once again got into a predicament as there were a lack of petrol stations. We did finally come across one and low and behold who was there filling up his car? Lou Ferrigno! From 'I Love You Man' , we didnt manage to get a photo or say hi as he was just getting into his car to leave, i have to mention that we say him earlier in the Mandalay Bay casino two nights before.


The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, we stopped at a Chipotle for a bite to eat then finished the 5 hour drive to San Diego.


We were staying at my friend's place in UCSD, we got there around 5pm and sat around and chatted with my friend (Farah) and her room mates, but we had to leave again as we had tickets to a San Diego Padres baseball game that night which started at 6.


Go Padres!

Now this was a must-do for us in America, go to a baseball game! It was alot of fun, even though it was just a weekday match it was still buzzing, the stadium was barely full, but it was big and i thought that everything about it was alot of fun. I decked myself out in all the gear, the Tshirt and the cap, and we sat there with our soda's and hot dogs while shouting out for the Padres to go win! I think I have finally got to grips with what is going on in the game. Its really quite slow, we sat there for around 2-3 hours watching and it went surprisingly quick to be honest, which I wasnt expecting, i was really worried that it would be a drag, but it definately wasnt, the Padres went 1 down around the 7th innings and never recovered, but the final innings had an incredible atmosphere and everybody was on their feet screaming and cheering. Im definately a big Padres fan now!

After our disppointing defeat at home to the Cubs, we headed back to Farah's place and we had a good fun night of drinks and chat! A great first few hours in San Diego.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas

a Man vs Food location, called Hot'n'Juicy crawfish

Colorado!

Travel day to Las Vegas,

Today was a big day, we attack the Rockies! Our first stop involved taking in The Garden of the Gods which was about 20 minutes outside of Colorado Springs, it was a vastly impressive place, I was driving today and I got quite a bit of fun out of driving up dirt tracks in our huge Ford Explorer along the side of a mountain to get some great views and photo’s.

 

The views driving into the Rockies got perpetually greater, like a drum roll of natural beauty culminating with a 14,000ft climb up a slow winding road that clung to the cliff face, sometimes narrowing down to a single lane, this was the best drive of my life, we went through valleys carved by glaciers of old and lakes spanning large plains that appear out of nowhere. We went through numerous temperature ranges, mountain ranges and huge baron plains of nothingness. These pictures unfortunately do not do it any justice but hopefully they can give you a taste of a place so beautiful and so unexpected that perhaps one day you will find your way there.

Aspen! Aspen was a big stop for the sole reason that this was the place that Dumb and Dumber’s epic journey culminated. Unfortunately Dumb and Dumber was not actually filmed here! According to the tourist information lady there, people are always coming in asking questions about that film, so she couldn’t tell us any places that were in the film! Which is the only reason we came here! Apart from that Aspen really doesn’t have anything to offer, it’s a boring place with boring people, and it was expensive (still cheap compared to London though).

At Aspen Paolo and I swapped the role of driver, today in total we would have driven almost 10 hours, by the time it was dark we were having major problems dealing with the amount of bugs on our windscreen. By now we were in Utah where there is NOTHING apart from bugs, we would go 200 miles between gas stations, although seeing the moonlight of a crisp clear night sky light up the cliffs of the back end of the Rockies was incredible, I couldn’t get a photo of this as it wouldn’t show up, you will have to go and experience it for yourself.

We stopped 2 hours outside of Las Vegas and settled in for the night ready to hit Vegas in the daylight!

States so far:

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona,