On Saturday the 8th April, I woke up and looked outside the window. London’s sky was grey and filled with thick miserable clouds, as usual. After getting back from Italy a few days before, my body was refusing to cope with the lack of sun and joy offered by this no-longer-European island.
I opened skyscanner.com, typed “everywhere” in the destination field and guess what? Same day flights to LA for just £400! My partner and I could not believe it. Just four hours later, we were taking off from Heathrow.
This was my first time in LA, so the trip was a journey of discovery. I have been always obsessed with the whole LA thing but have never had the chance to go. We were there for one week only, which was ok for first-timers. When you visit somewhere so large you don’t worry about FOMO anymore and you let yourself go to some old-fashioned flânerie. You can get an Uber here and there or an electric scooter to prevent your feet detaching from your body at the end of the day.
We spent few days in Downtown LA and absolutely loved it. For an architecture nerd like me, who loves Modernism, it was a visual delight. We stayed at The ACE Hotel, a dreamy gothic revivalist tower. Gagging! We went to Venice, Santa Monica, all around town.
For the second part of of the holiday, we stayed in West Hollywood where we did all the classic, touristy stuff including a super ratchet, open-top bus tour of Beverly Hills with stops outside celebrities’ homes. Here is a picture of Donald Duck’s foot prints at the TCL Chinese Theatre.