5000 Miles of Freedom: LA Funday

March 1, 2009 - After a great dinner at the Ivy and a night out on the town LA style we woke up and saw the sights of the city. The day started with us saying goodbye to Mark and Megan and then organizing a car to take us around to see what we wanted to see. We started the day by visiting the Grove on 3rd and Fairfax. The place is an enormous shopping mall now but the real attraction is the old farmers market out back in the parking lot. I was told that the market dates pretty far back into history so it is kind of cool to visit something with some historical significance in a city that values the "new thing".

I didn't get many good shots of the market because we were focused on breakfast but this is one I thought was worth sharing. The entire store is for hot sauce!!! We think the store is called Light Your Fire but regardless of the name the store had EVER kind of hot sauce one would ever want.

After the Grove we headed out to Santa Monica to see the pier and most importantly to have a caricature done of Sarah and me to memorialize the trip. The Santa Monica pier is world famous and is definitely worth stopping by on a nice day.

Sarah and her parents at the end of the pier, nothing between them and Hawaii.

What a great picture!!!

After the Santa Monica pier we headed up to Ocean Blvd to find some oysters for lunch and low and behold we sat down at Ocean on Ocean. The restaurant was great, the seafood platter for two was truly satisfying, and the roasted beat salad was great. We then headed back inland to so Sarah and her Mom could walk down Rodeo Dr.

When in LA this is a MUST do. The people, stores, and cars you see while walking down the famous strip are amazing. No joke I think we saw 10 Ferrari's and 7 Rolls Royce's in a 4 block span. Not buying anything didn't even matter the experience was still very cool.

We took this picture at the very north end of Rodeo on what I call the Spanish Step of Rodeo. Sarah's Dad was telling me about the RE deal that ended up building this side shoot off Rodeo. It is a pedestrian mall now with tons of stores and these steps at the end. Once you walk down the steps you are at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, another famous LA landmark. One thing I found hysterical was that Jose Eber, the hair stylist from the late 80's mid 90's, has a store on this little off shoot of Rodeo. If you ever watched info-mercials in the 1990's you for sure saw this guys and his products. When I lived in Germany I used to watch all these info-mercials because it was some of the only English speaking TV on at that time.

This is Jose Eber if you don't know/remember who I am talking about. Totally and completely classic!!! Funny what you remember from your childhood.

After Rodeo we were beginning to tire a bit so we got the car to take us up to the hills over looking the city, the Hollywood sign, and the Hollywood Bowl. I had not been up to this lookout point before, mainly because UT is a bad friend and host, so it was pretty cool to see it now. The views of the city, the south bay, Santa Monica (sort of), and the rest of the neighborhood was fantastic. Maybe we caught it on a light smog day.

If you look carefully over Sarah's left shoulder you can see the Hollywood sign up on the hill. It looked way better in person.

Of course we had to stop by the Kodak Theater and Grauman's Chinese Theater. The people that hangout on Hollywood Ave are really weird. There are a bunch of desperate actors looking for work that dress up in famous movie characters outfits and charge you a dollar to take a picture with them. I would have to be pretty desperate to do that...