Last stop Los Angeles

LA Day 1 - Sep 17

It took us about like 5 hours via Greyhound to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Greyhound is really an experience in itself, especially when there're only 3 girls, each of us with a humongous bagpack on our backs, a laptop bag and lugging an almost bursting suitcase along. Gotta look out for slim-shady weirdos, make sure that we didnt leave behind any of our belongings, crossing our fingers that our baggage wouldnt exceed the Greyhound limit, on top of the fatigue (mental and physical) we were experiencing in the wee hours of the night. The month-long travel must have taken its toil on us now. 3 of us didnt really sleep well on the journey to LA in case we missed our stop. By the time we finally reached, we took a cab to our hotel and just collapsed in bed for like a few hours till it was almost dinnertime.

Car-handicapped, we took the subway to look for some food around the area. Captured the sunset from the station. The sun was really pinkish red but it's not that obvious from the picture below.

Took the subway down to Chinatown for some good ol Chinese food. It was a pretty quiet and small Chinatown, compared to the biggest-Chinatown-in-the-States counterpart in San Francisco. I say the best one has still got to be the one in New York, the non-stop eating and the great shopping bargains.

Ok this place really looks familiar, like it was the setting in some Hollywood movies/dramas such as Pearl Harbour, 24 and Speed. The interior looks a lot like the Philadelphia bus station setting in the movie Witness where the Amish boy witness the murder in the restroom.

LA Day 2 - Sep 18

2nd day was basically spent at Desert Hills Premuim Outlets at Cabazon, a nearby town. Did some last minute shopping and significant damage to the USbank account. Seriously, after 6 months and 5 factory outlet shopping, they all are the same to me. Most of the time I just end up tagging behind the others by lunch time and looking for chairs outside the shops to sit and space out. Let's do some factory outlet Math in the meantime:

1. Prime Outlets at Lodi, Burbank, Ohio

2. Aurora Premium Outlets, Aurora, Ohio

3. Chicago Premium Outlets, Aurora, Illinois

4. Prime Outlets of Grove City, Grove City, Pennysylvania

5. Desert Hills Premium Outlets, Cabazon, California

LA Day 3 - Sep 19

Probably the most travelled day of our time in LA. We started off driving to Farmers Market at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Ave, which was but a mere 6 miles away from the hotel.

The place to get groceries, eat and shop. The place is a little like an open air Marche, with super lots of food such as bakeries, assorted nuts and candy, seafood, meat & sausages, steak & grill, coffee beans & tea leaves, and icecream and desserts. Amazing. Not only that, there's like heaps of fresh fruits laid out and poultry and everything. Best part - the shopping. Bath & Body Works, Forever 21, Victoria's Secret, so on and so forth.

After an entire morning at Farmers Market, we drove down to Hollywood Walk of Fame at Hollywood Boulevard/Sunset Boulevard. Driving past the mansions at the famous stretch of road, we were like half expecting to see some celeb walk out of one of the houses. As if we were gonna be that lucky, haha.

Anyways, we parked the car and got out to walk around the area.

Turns out that we were just next to a Gay & Lesbian Center. Funny how we didnt see any in San Francisco...

We reached this place in West Hollywood where we could take a really good photo of the trademark Hollywood sign. Ok apparently several decades ago, some actress jumped to her death from the letter "H".

Thereafter, the last stop of the day and the entire US work-and-travel trip. "In Santa Monica, in the wintertime, the lazy streets so undemanding I walk into the crowd. In Santa Monica, you get your coffee from the coolest places on the promenade." Savage Garden.

Santa Monica, coastal city in the western LA county, home to the Santa Monica beach.

Love the beach, love the waves, love the sand, love the sea-tinged breeze.

Trying to give Pat a kick in her head even though she's the elf and I'm the hobbit.

3 happy girls on vacation at Santa Monica beach.

Ok this so reminds me of Cedar Point, except the CP one is much bigger.

This musician really impressed me. How many ppl can multi-task so effortlessly? I think he must've been playing about 5 instruments, plus singing. How cool is that?

The Arthur Nakane one-man band.

The end of summer looms.

Santa Monica, also home to 3rd Street Promenade, an outdoor pedestrian oriented shopping district. Shopping was already like the last thing on my mind then.