Saturday, 8/30 - LA

Day 5

We slept in on the nice comfy sofabed, our first actual 'bed' in six days. After lounging around with the cats a while we went to the supermarket and picked up stuff so Lisa and I (mostly Lisa) could make everyone a kickass breakfast of Denver omelettes with bacon, potatoes, cantaloupe, orange juice, and horchata. After slaving in the kitchen we ate while watching a marathon of Women's Ninja Warrior on G4.

Eventually we managed to push ourselves out the door to go to Venice Beach. This was my first real view of LA, and I decided it was kind of ugly. The apartments near Jen/Juan's place looked like all the LA apartment complexes you typically see in movies, so it was oddly familiar despite having never really been there. The rest of the city was pretty blah - architecture didn't look more than 50 years old..there were some buildings with big murals on the sides, but aside from that they lacked any real character. It had an overall manufactured feel to it. The other major attraction was all the billboards, which were often digitized or three-dimensional - more elaborate than any I'd ever seen.
After spending most of the afternoon just trying to get to the beach, I got a first hand view of everyone's complaints about LA - too hot, too sprawled out, too hard to get around, too much traffic. I would still come back for more time to get a real LA experience, but my lasting impression is that it was like Vegas - something you do once to get it out of your system.
However, the beach was nice once we finally got there late in the afternoon. We had fun wave-hopping for a while, then walked down to the area where the shops and street performers usually are, but by then it was late in the day so there wasn't a whole lot to see.
Thankfully we managed to get back to Jen's faster once we figured out where we were going. After showering/changing we went out for a late dinner. On the way to Korea Town we got a bit more of a whirlwind tour of the city, passing through the famous Hollywood & Vine, past a number of exclusive-looking clubs that were almost too stereotypical - lines down the block of late 20-somethings dressed to the nines, literally all of the women waifishly thin and in short dresses with stiletto heels.
We met up with Lisa's friend Tressie at a Korean BBQ place that was open late, had a filling meal of meat and squid, and after some debate, decided to return to Jen's to sleep instead of driving through the night. Juan was still up watching a movie when we returned, so we wound up sleeping on the floor in our clothes. Still better than the car...