Come Out To LA

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

It’s taken me nearly a week to get over my jetlag, but now since returning, I’ve gotten a cold. However, despite this, I wanted to write about my experience of travelling and visiting the weird arse city known as Los Angeles.

The beginnings of my holiday didn’t start off the best as the downside of waking up at 3am to get a 6:20am flight is you don’t want to eat and just sleep, which made ill and with three hours to go in the slightly over 10-hour flight is I was sick.

However, I will say Norwegian Air is a decent airline to travel long-haul flights.

What also didn’t help was the piss take of the customs/border control as there was literally about eight people on the desk which meant we (me and my old man) spent an hour and quarter in customs. I’m all for security and the US have the right to be extra safe but 75 minutes and only eight people on the desk is again a piss take.

Now let’s talk about LA itself, we stayed in a lovely hotel in downtown called The L.A. Grand Hotel and the room was lovely and massive (it’s America something I got used to quickly) with two double beds. The plus side for me was the TV had a crap tonne of sports and I actually fitted in both under the shower and in the bath!

IMAGE VIA TRIPADVISOR

This is an important win for me as at 6 foot 5, I can’t normally fit in hotel bathrooms in other countries.

The only thing I’d suggest is trying to get a room on the seventh floor up as the negative I have is was sleeping on the third floor is awful as we slept right next to the freeway. When asking to move to a quieter room in the morning the bloke on the front desk was sell then helpful to the point of being a dickhead.

The female manager, once we returned early evening, was more understandable and helpful but we stayed in the same room throughout the holiday.

So if you do book The L.A. Grand Hotel try and see if you make a request to be put on the seventh floor upwards to hopefully get some good night sleep.

Meanwhile, travel-wise for the first day we stupidly used the hotel taxi to go to Hollywood to pick up our GoLA Cards (more on those later) for a return journey cost us $80, but we made an even costlier mistake by accidentally giving the driver $100.

So throughout the rest of the holiday, we used the metro (tube) and their version of the Oyster card and spent $46. The first day was $9 each spending $2 on the card and $7 for an all-day travelcard and the next two days it was $7 each.

This helped us travel using the underground and buses to get us into Hollywood, Warner Bros, Universal and Union Station and they were brilliant. So if like us didn’t have the Uber app or don’t want to use Uber then Metro is a great way to travel around.

The only negative is you have to keep to yourself as there are a lot of mental people on the train at any time (don’t know at night but it’s probably terrifying) and a lot of homeless people use it too.

To quickly talk about the homelessness in LA, especially downtown, was alarming because most of them are likely veterans and even though you feel for them and in a liberal state as Los Angeles it would’ve gotten sorted. However, it did make you aware and if I was by myself I’d be scared.

The same can be said about Hollywood, which is the biggest, sketchiest areas I’ve ever been around. There are mental people everywhere and would only suggest going if you wanted to check out the Chinese Theatre and El Capitan.

Apart from that, there’s nothing really there.

From Hollywood, we got the Metro bus to Warner Bros for their brilliant Hollywood Tour and if you’re a film/TV fan something to differently check out! We check out costumes and batmobiles from the DC Films with Ben Affleck’s BvS batmobile my personal favourite alongside The Dark Knight motorbike.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

I learnt, thanks to the sorting hat, that I’m a member of the Slytherin house.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

The following day we went to Universal Studios and will say if you’re a fan of theme parks you’ll love this place and stay all day. Sadly we’re not but we did spend a good half the day walking around with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter looking incredible and The Simpsons land impressive.

There was just way, way too many people for me to truly enjoy it, but what I did enjoy was the interactive studio tour which was a great hour to spend an hour.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

We would’ve stayed longer if I knew where the Animal Actors show was and if we got in on time to see Waterworld.

The final full day was the best day as we went up and spent the morning walking around the Griffith Observatory, which apart from the 50 cents for travel, is free to explore and you get to see the whole of LA and it’s awesome.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

Massive respect for the people who hike up there as I’d be knackered and likely dying.

Elsewhere, we got back onto the metro to go to Union Station and we spent an hour walk around the area finding the Chinese-American museum and it was both eye-opening and fascinating by what these people went through and it’s free but I’d suggest making a donation.

Finally, we spent the late afternoon/early evening at the Skyspace in Downtown as we watched the city change from day to night and looking back now the city won me over at the Skyspace at night because it looked beautiful.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN

While at the Skyspace, we saw not only a Chinese wedding (would hate to think how much that costed) but also a marriage proposal.

We were able to do all these attractions and tours using the GoLA Card and I’ll recommend getting one because if you’re there for over three days you get into these places (plus so much more around the city) for free. All you need to do see get there before half five and if you do you can stay there until you want to leave, like want we did with the Skyspace.

As for food in the downtown area, I’d highly recommend if you want a posh, fancy dinner to go to LA Prime but beware of the prices even though the food and view were fantastic.

The other place I’d recommend is Miro in where I had the best Spaghetti Bolognese I’ve ever had that wasn’t homemade (maybe even better than that).

I wanted to end with this. While I was there and maybe this was because I was tired and it’s a fucking long journey (wouldn’t advise taking kids under 12) but apart from the final day there was something about LA I didn’t like and come to the belief I might be more of an East Coast person.

Yet sitting here, looking back at photos and writing about my experience I oddly miss it. LA has found a way to my heart and if I did go again in the future it’s good to know I’ve got this idea of what to do/not to do in my head.

IMAGE VIA SHAUN WREN