Los Angeles, USA

So far our long trip has been off to a great start. We arrived in Los Angeles the afternoon of April 30 and we're leaving late night of May 3rd. The flight from Calgary to LA took 3 hours.

Kiran, Richard and I have been getting along good. Of course this is only the low stress part of our trip. The real test will take place soon in India.

The City of Angles

The one thing we've discovered is that describing Los Angeles as a city is a bit of a misnomer. While there is a Los Angeles proper, it's more a collections of cities that have grown so big that there is no real border between each other. For example, to get to the "cities of Orange County" one never seem to cross any real borders.

We learned this really quickly trying to get to our hostel. We were instructed to get off our bus at 11th street of Hermosa beach. Us not knowing that that there were going to be several 11th streets got off at 11th street of Manhattan Beach. Luckily it was only a 20 minute walk to the next "city".

Our hostel in Hermosa is perhaps one of the most conveniently located places I've stayed due to the close proximity. There is are bars, supermarkets, beaches and anything else you could possibly need all within a block of our hostel.

One of the first things we noticed about LA is that there is definitely a smog problem. The whole city is covered in a permanently smog. This will be visible in some of the pictures.

The metro system is actually pretty good all things considered. Considering to get around in LA, you literally have to transverse the length of Southern California, it does a descent job. However, it still takes forever.

When travelling the metro one quickly realizes how ethnic most parts of LA is. It is not unusual to be surrounded with people from Latin and African decent. It is also not unusual for sign/announcements or ads to be both in English and Spanish, or just Spanish.

Hermosa Beach

We spent the first night exploring Hermosa beach. There we saw some pretty awesome houses, some awesome fishing and children's swings. We learned pretty quickly through wet shoes that the waves can get pretty damn high. We also couldn't help but notice how ridiculously close an oil refinery was to the beautiful beach. That smog is starting to make sense now...

Universal Studios

The next day we woke up early and headed to Universal Studios. It required a bus and 2 metro line changes. A one way trip took about 2 hours. Not bad considering the distance.

Universal Studios was pretty cool. The rides such as Jurassic Park and The Mummy were good but a bit tame. The highlight of the amusement park is definitely the rides that involve 3D effects such as Shrek 4D and Terminator 2 3D. Terminator 2 was especially impressive since actors interacted with the 3D effects.

The Waterworld show was cool, especially considering it's source material.

The studio tour was also surprisingly entertaining. It was cool to see some of the huge outdoor sets. One also gains much respect for filmography after seeing how those sets look in the movies.

Hollywood

After Universal Studios we headed to Hollywood Blvd. to see the famous walk of the stars. I tell you, there were a lot more stars than I was expecting. Since they give stars to people in film, tv, radio, music and theater, the blvd stretches a long way.

Outside Grauman's Chinese Theater one can find the stars hands and feet in concrete. Turns our Frank Sinatra had surprisingly small hands/feet. My favorite were the foot prints of C3PO, R2D2 and Darth Vader.

May 2nd, we head out to Disney Land. Since Disney Land is located with Orange County, we had to spend 2.5 hours each way on the metro. It was totally worth.

Disneyland

The thing that amazing about Disney Land is that once you enter the park, every single thing has been Disneyfied. The line ups to the rides are a sight in themselves. It's like entering some some crazy reality were everything is squeaky clean and there's a mouse on everything.

My favorite ride was differently the India Jone ride since so many crazy things were happening at all times. Though the animatronics on the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion were out of this world.

Space Mountain was also pretty cool in a retro sci-fi kind of way. It was also incredibly trippy.

It's a Small World ride lived up to the hype. However, if I ever hear the phrase "It's a small world after all" again, they're going to have to send me to an insane asylum.

However, for the "happiest place on earth", we sure saw a lot of crying kids. My favorite was when I was in a store flanked by two groups of kids crying because their parents wouldn't buy them a stuffed Mickey.

Today we're spending our last days in a western country resting up for the madness to come. It was a good idea to stop in LA, but now it's time for the exotic. Check back later for more of our hijinks.