L.A. Travels (Part II)- To read Part I, go here.
I’m finally back in Maryland! California and Los Angeles was a whirlwind of excitement and events including specific highlights like the BlogHer Conference, traveling to the Huntington Library, finding “biker joints” and taking public transportation to Venice Beach.
After flying back this past weekend, I admit that I spend most of it sleeping and taking it slowly at home as I worked on unpacking and reorganizing. Being Monday however, I’m back in action and I wanted to get this trip posted about before it got too late.
First off before BlogHer started on Thursday evening, I spent the day with a friend, visiting various tea spots in LA and then headed outwards to dim sum shops and the Huntington Library. Contrary to what the name might imply, the Huntington Library doesn’t just contain books; it also has a vast collection of artwork and several themed botanical gardens. As we were in a bit of a hurry however, we only traveled to two of them, the Japanese and Chinese gardens.
That evening I checked into BlogHer16 and had dinner with several other bloggers with whom I had been introduced to by my BlogHer roomie, Kait, from Passion by Kait. I quickly found she was much better at meeting people than I so I let her lead the way, as her extroverted skills were clearly superior to mine.
Friday morning was the first official kickoff of the conference and we both attended Vega’s Breakfast event and I was finally able to meet my Vega connection, Trevor! It was a very exciting moment, plus, there were pancakes.
After breakfast we headed off to the different discussion panels and “classes” which essentially summarized the rest of the conference. It was a busy few days, as I wanted to attend and learn from as many panels and discussions as possible so there wasn’t much play or exploration time then. I certainly learned a lot though and met many interesting bloggers!
The conference officially ended Saturday night and early Sunday morning my dad picked me up on the motorcycle and we headed out of town to visit the Rock Store, which as I later learned, did not sell rocks, but was in-fact a hangout spot for motorcyclists to show off and/or talk about bikes. Afterwards we traveled to Neptune’s Net for lunch, which also happened to be a popular hangout for motorcyclists. In the afternoon I went to visit my friend in Encino for a BBQ.
I stayed there the next few days before finishing up the last few days of my trip in Koreatown where I finally had more time to explore LA, check out new restaurants and learn all about the public transportation. After some rage-inducing experiences on the bus and metro and learning that the “city” of Los Angeles could probably make it as a small state, I learned that most everyone uses Uber to travel.
I spent a day in Venice Beach before returning to Koreatown and heading to Little Tokyo for dinner in which I made some friends (and learned about Uber) and was shown to several other popular evening spots including Button Mash in Echo Park. The area reminded me a lot of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn.
The final day of the trip I wasn’t flying out until late so I headed back to Venice Beach and rented a surfboard and wetsuit for a few hours and had lots of fun attempting to catch waves and successfully falling off my board most of the time (it’s been 16 years since I last surfed).
All in all, I learned quite a bit about LA but mainly that it’s much larger than one thinks and that to really learn about it, you could probably spend weeks in each area, which could also be said for California itself. I hope that next time I visit, I can concentrate more specifically on a few areas.
