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So I arrived in Los Angeles last Thursday at just after 8pm Pacific Time after a long flight and a stop off in Houston, Texas! The first thing that struck me is that LA is so BIG! All the boroughs (which they call cities here) are connected by freeways which just run right through the middle of the city!
We got back to Dave's apartment and one of his neighbours, a guy called Sami, came down and chatted to us for a while before I went to bed. The next day Dave was at work, but his roommate Will, and Will's parents took me out for my first meal in Los Angeles! That evening we went to a theatre called UCB to watch an improv comedy show which was hilarious - one of the sketches was based around songs off people's iPods, embarrassingly for me they chose Enrique Iglesias' 'Hero' off mine! - and after that we went to play beer pong with some of Dave's friends after a quick stop off at his friend Johnson's house. Johnson works for Disney!
We're about to go for lunch here so I will have to update this later - off to Santa Moncia beach and then Venice beach to check out the sights!
Bye!
...
So Saturday morning we got up reasonably early to check out Dave's girlfriend Amanda's new apartment in a borough called Los Feliz, which was really pretty. She was driving down from Canada as she's living in LA over the summer, and we decided to all meet up in Las Vegas. Cue a road trip! It took us about four hours to get to Vegas and the scenery was just incredible. I never really realised how vast and empty America was! There's just so much space! Arriving in Vegas was surreal, even though I had already been there before. It was a lot bigger than I remembered. Dave and I spent an hour or so walking along the strip and checking out the Bellagio fountains before Amanda and her mum arrived.
We then got some pizza and went for a walk again before doing some gambling! I was very surprised that I didn't get ID'd, and even got offered drinks whilst I was gambling! The next day we got lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the Venetian, before doing some more gambling and having dinner at the Mirage where we were staying. We got some of the infamous 'yard' drinks, adding a 'mickey' (small bottle of vodka) to make them a bit stronger! We then saw Cirque de Soleil Mystere at Treaure Island. It was AMAZING! The acrobats were just incredibly talented, they were doing stuff that I didn't even think could be done! We did a bit more gambling after that, and I even went on a table to play Blackjack! I got a push - the same as the dealer - so I didn't win anything or lose anything, but I decided only to cash in one $5 chip and keep the other as a souvenir.
The next day we gambled a bit again before leaving to go back to LA. Due to traffic our GPS took us on a detour and we ended up going down a very remote one laned road that was so American road trip! We took a few photos and carried on back over the state line into California.
We got back in time to go to the LA Dodger's baseball game that Dave bought us tickets for. It was a bit slow to start off with but got really intense towards the end. Unfortunately the Dodger's lost but this was made up for a really amazing firework show that took place in honour of the 4th of July celebrations. During the 7th inning stretch we all got up to sing songs as well which was very novel given that it was about 3/4s of the way through the game and everyone was getting really into it!
Yesterday Dave was unfortunately back at work again, but Amanda and I headed out for some shopping. Urban Outfitters was visited and much money was spent on both of our parts! We then headed back to the apartment and got very drunk (and maybe a bit high...) with Will. Dave was slightly disappointed that we were wasted when we got back but we all went to the Griffith Observatory which was very impressive. I got my first view of the Hollywood sign and there were astounding views over the whole of LA. We queued up to look through the telescope, but unfortunately it clouded over before we got a chance to see Saturn, which is what it was focused on at that time. They closed it in front of us though, which was pretty cool to see.
Today I accidentally slept in til 11:50! When I finally woke up Amanda and I went down to Santa Monica and had a great lunch at a Mexican restaurant for $10 each! We then did some more shopping at a store called Anthropolgie and I got some really nice shorts to add to the blazer I got the day before... However I'm starting to run out of money now so I'm thinking there will be problems next weekend as we're planning to go to Six Flag's amusement park and Tijuana in Mexico! I'll make it work somehow... We also checked out Venice Beach which was a bit of a disappointment after Santa Monica! SM is really beautiful and Venice was a bit more gritty.
Anyway we've just ordered a Chinese takeaway and are about to go bowling tonight so I guess I'll leave it off here. Apologies for the lengthly entry, I'll try and break it up a bit more over the rest of the trip!
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