My week in L.A

Alas, the week has ended, and what an absolutely amazing one it was at that. Before arriving I had originally only booked this first hostel for 5 days figuring that that would be plenty of time to get my bearings, see the L.A sights, and then probably move on from there. 9 days later I am still here having an absolute blast!

After the adventure that was the attending of the movie premier Tuesday night, the remainder of the week was a lot more subdued.

Manuel is my best friend in the hostel, and awesomely he was too hung over on Wednesday to go to work so he stayed home, sweet! We decided to check out a few places around town, and even went to the L.A Contemporary Arts Museum where we got to see some absolutely breathtaking pieces of art like this beauty!

Behold! The white painted hexagon of wonder!

I guess I just don't get art? This wasn't even the best one too. Thankfully there were pieces that I did understand, these really were breathtaking:

That is absolutely amazing... really, just wow.

It almost looks like a portal to another world! And this picture was about 3m high by 2m across, amazing.

This was outside the museum, I can't quite remember its history but it holds some significance to the city. A rather unique idea.

My other great friend in the house (Jon-Paul) and I hit Hollywood on... some day. But I'll let the pictures do most of the talking:

Hollywood is growing on me of late

The entrance to some kind of shopping mall

Found this awesome 'Harry Potter' imprint on the 'Walk of Fame'. Very cool!

Travel Buddy has sore legs from our big day

Looked important so I took a picture of it

Afterwards we went off to meet our friend Vanessa in a place called Pasadena (although she cancelled on us once we arrived). I'd never heard of the place, had no idea what was there, and after sitting on the train for 40 minutes I was starting to wonder if this place would be worth it (and if it is just going to be scary like Downtown L.A is...). How wrong I turned out to be! Pasadena was one of the nicest places I have ever been, anywhere:

A pretty hip shot if I say so myself, so much style

This is what I thought L.A was going to be like actually. Pasadena almost seemed to be hidden away, it was small, extremely clean and welcoming, it was just a really nice place. After grabbing a beer at a local pub we headed back home.

Sometime during the week I made friends with Mikael (Denmark)... whom I would of sworn was 35 years old but he claims he is only 23. He is extremely dorky, nerdy, has no sense of style or coolness, and has a crazy sense of humour... so naturally we ended up becoming awesome friends in only a matter of hours =D He told me about this amazing old bookstore in Downtown L.A so the next day we went to check it out. Awesomely he has his own car so this was my first time driving the streets, giving me a completely different view of the city which I thought was pretty cool:

It's still a scary place even during the day, but has a pretty sweet style of its own

The bookstore was incredible, it had a great collection, a stage for musicians, and a really great old-school vibe to it. All the books were around $3 each... I bought five, a decision that at the time I thought was brilliant (Moby Dick for $3, the first Lord of the Rings for $3, the second Hunger Games book for $17!), although it was soon a decision I regretted immensely upon return to the hostel, realizing rather quickly that... well, I have to carry all these with me if I want to keep them... idiot.

Will work something out I'm sure.

That night I decided I wanted to have dinner on my own so I figured I'd treat myself with some KFC (I'd been craving it ever since Mikael and I had driven past on the way back from the bookstore), only to step into some kind of bazaaro-world! They only served wedges instead of chips, mac-and-cheese pasta and even peas were on the menu, and they didn't even seem to have just plain normal chicken burgers (instead having all these fancy burgers with bacon or ranch sauce etc). Sigh... I'd been dying for some chips and a burger, but whatever I'll stay while I'm here I guess.

I ordered my meal, sat down, and tried to get through it (I swear it is more fattening over here), the bread roll tasted more like a doughnut! About 10 minutes in is when things really took a turn for the strange:

Notice anything different here?

Do you see it? K-G-C?? G!? What the hell is that? I look around the room and see KGC plastered all over the place... where am I!? I finish my meal and check out the big sign outside... which correctly says KFC on it. No idea...

So today marks my 9th day in L.A thus far, and whilst I am having so much fun with these amazing friends, I do have plans to move on very shortly.

But this post is already long enough so that story is for another day.