Bopping Around LA

Continuing our time in L.A., on Saturday we started with some coffee and matcha at Mirakuru, then split up again for most of that day since David had the Final Fantasy Fanfest.

Starting the day with a cloud matcha and a corn coffee.

David met up with some friends and wandered around the convention center for the morning. He caught some talks about upcoming game features before grabbing lunch from the food trucks parked out front. Afterwards, he wandered around the exhibit hall some more and grabbed a few pics before heading back to the hotel for a siesta before the planned group dinner in the evening.

David and the Warrior of Light

Who doesn't love a good chocobo?

Paul hit the road early to drive all the way to Six Flags Magic Mountain, about 70 miles away on the opposite side of the L.A. metro. Luckily since it was a weekend morning, traffic was not horrible. However, apparently everybody had the idea to go to Six Flags that day, as it was quite crowded. Paul ran straight to some coasters at the back of the park and got the three new credits he needed within the first 45 minutes, which was a huge win. But by that point the crowds had filtered in, and some rides had lines over an hour, with X2 having an astounding 3 hour line. Paul hit two more coasters and then left to get lunch. He decided to go to downtown Pasadena, which was relatively cute, and had lunch at Mendocino Farms, which is a chain mostly in California that started in L.A. 

The next stop was the The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, which was also extremely crowded. The slightly cool and cloudy weather on a Saturday brought out throngs of people. Huntington Gardens was delightful. It's a huge site, with several giant areas (e.g. the Australian garden, the palm garden, etc.) and a couple of large museum buildings. Paul's favorite were the desert garden, which had a ginormous variety of cactuses and succulents, and the Chinese garden with its serene buildings. Highly recommend this place!

Ready for Six Flags Magic Mountain! It was overcast, but didn't rain.

Tatsu and Revolution above the iconic entry fountains.

Lines picking up by noon - check out the 180 minutes for X2!

Lunch time.

Huntington Gardens.

The desert gardens.

Interesting plants.

There were a lot of areas like this tucked-in all around the property.

Art work in one of the museums.

The "North Vista" garden.

The Japanese garden.

Boardwalk through the bamboo garden.

The excellent Chinese garden.

View of the bridge from a pavilion in the Chinese garden.

By now it was early evening, and we met up back at the hotel before picking up friends and going in a big group to Mori Izakaya. We had a nice dinner before heading back to the hotel for bed.

Tofu at dinner.

Katsu & takoyaki!

Dinner crew

On Sunday, we planned another full day of L.A. sightseeing. We drove straight to Echo Park and got coffee from Woodcat, which is technically on Route 66. We did a walking loop around the lake, which was a nice relaxing way to start off the day, with great views and pleasant weather. Just watch out for goose poop! We then drove to Exposition Park to visit a few of the museums. There was a big line of cars to get into the parking deck because there was a huge STEM festival, a health event in the stadium, and also a soccer game. Once we parked, we started at the California Science Museum. This is a decent museum, but is a bit lacking since the huge new expansion featuring the space shuttle is not yet open. We did see a creepy temporary exhibit about mummies from around the world. After, we walked to the adjacent natural history museum, which is a large and worthwhile museum with lots of animal and dinosaur exhibits.

Gotta start the day with caffeine.

Homer says welcome to Echo Park, where for some reason Maggie is in an egg.

Downtown LA across the lake.

We've never seen so many goslings in one place!

Paul is ready - oh wait, that expansion isn't open yet.

Creepy modern mummy.

View of downtown behind USC.

An ecosystems exhibit.

The oceans ecosystem room.

The historic building with the modern expansion.

Time to go to the natural history museum.

Dinosaurs are a must.

The grand hall.

The Olympic flame.

After leaving the Exposition Park area, we were starving, so we drove to Culver City and had lunch at Loqui at the Platform. This was a new development near a light rail station that had some shops and restaurants. We walked around a bit as well, stopping in Arcana, a huge bookstore that specializes in big coffee table photo books. We then drove to our hotel for our last night,  the Jamaica Bay Inn, right on Mother's Beach in Marina Del Rey. 

After we checked in and relaxed on our balcony overlooking the beach for a while, we put on some light jackets and took a walk to nearby Venice Beach. We went out on the pier, then walked along the shore. Venice Beach is very lively, and it was packed with people exercising, strolling, and generally enjoying life. We watched some people rollerskating, skateboarding, and playing soccer, and stopped by a bookstore. We then had a cocktail at Townhouse (Del Monte speakeasy), before walking over to the canal section of the neighborhood. This is where Venice got its name, from a housing development that built canals to copy the Italian city. It's a lovely area to walk around, with cute houses and interesting views. Best of all it's mostly car-free, since it's just a sidewalk between the houses and the water. We hadn't heard much about this area but it was really surprising and is more than worth an atmospheric stroll. For dinner, we got some Thai to go and went back to the hotel to pack and prep for our morning flight.

The Platform in Culver City.

Taco time!

Not a bad view from our hotel balcony.

View of the beach from the pier.

Looking toward Santa Monica. Can you spot the roller coaster?

Venice Beach in all its gaudy glory.

The famous Muscle Beach.

There's a big skatepark. An older dude was shredding it.

Rollerskate dance party time!

Cocktail time too.

The canals of Venice Beach are lined with expensive houses.

Here we are!

Canal cats.

A lot of the houses have impressive landscaping.

David on one of the pedestrian bridges.

The next morning we returned our rental car and flew home to Atlanta. We had a great time in LA! There are a ton of things to see and do, and we barely scratched the surface. The main downside is the distance/traffic between things, as several times we spent over an hour driving to an attraction. Yes, Atlanta has bad traffic too, but generally the tourist attractions and cool neighborhoods in Atlanta are more concentrated in the center of the metro. Luckily LA is improving its transit system, and in fact shortly after our visit several brand new subway stations opened. Some of the areas we went to that had cute shops and restaurants, such as Melrose Ave, 4th street in Long Beach, and Route 66 in Echo Park have so much potential but waste so much space on cars. Road diets that widened sidewalks would do wonders for LA.

Something we loved was all of the spring flowers and blooming trees. The jacaranda trees were a cascade of purple across the entire city, and the smell of honeysuckle was everywhere.