The Holidays

For the holidays this year I went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. What a hoot!

I flew into Los Angeles on Christmas Day and met Zuimei in the airport. He flew in from Beijing. We rented a car.

This is driving in LA…

And this is driving in LA at night…

Seriously driving in LA is messed up. I won’t say it is hard, just hectic. There are a lot of people on the road and they drive extremely fast. I find that was like a challenge and end up driving faster. Several times I caught myself doing over 90 miles an hour! And it wasn’t like I was whipping past people. Some cars were even passing me! LA is totally a car town and you have to drive to get anywhere so if you are going I would recommend staying someone other than downtown, we made that mistake. It was cheap ($60/night) at the Marriott downtown but they ding you $20/day for parking and $10/day if you want an internet connection! Instead, stay somewhere like a Best Western in Anaheim or something with free parking and internet, totally a better way to spend you money.

Also there isn’t much going on in that area over the holidays; we ended up eating Christmas dinner at Denny’s which isn’t exactly traditional to say the least.

Still every morning we woke up look at the Frank Gehry designed Disney Music Hall which is a stunning piece of architecture.

Of course while in LA we had to do the Hollywood thing, and there really was only one name that stood out for me.

Not that I am a huge fan or anything, I mean I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz, who hasn’t? But to me Judy Garland epitomizes everything Hollywood is. Her life and death seem to roll up everything good and bad about the whole scene and this star is just a sad little reminder of how this city can give you everything and then take it all away.

While we were in Hollywood it was windy and cold. Even I, a Canadian, found it cold! After walking up and down once on the walk of fame we decided to get out of there and somewhere warm.

For dinner we stopped at this place that specialized in fried chicken and waffles. I kid you not, fried chicken and waffles. What on earth is connection there? One is a breakfast and one is a dinner! And I don’t want to sound racist but we were the only non-blacks in the place, but damn was it good! You could even get gravy smothered all over your fried chicken! Mmmmm gravy…

We spent some time in Santa Monica, the whole time I was singing,

“We can live beside the ocean, watch the world go by. Swim out past the breakers, and watch the world die.”

There were some neat buskers out there and the 3rd st. promonade was a great way to spend an afternoon. A lot of time and money was spent shopping, which I think is now our favorite past-time. Zuimei bought a great Burberry suit (photos later) I spent way to much money but I figured since I wasn’t likely to gamble it away, it was okay. We found a Kenneth Cole which had a great sale on and bought new courier/briefcase bags for work. I now own four! LOL, how gay can I be?

more to come…