Recently, I’ve returned from the glorious city of Los Angeles. Not that it wasn’t fun, but I’ll be honest, LA is simply not my city. In the end, I’m too much of a New Yorker. Still, it’s an experience I can check off my list. It won’t be the first place on my list of places to visit again, but I wouldn’t be opposed to returning for a few days.
I arrived at LAX with my best friend at around 9 in the morning. The first things I noticed was the palm trees of course. Don’t see those in NY. We checked into this cute little hotel called the Ritz Milner. If you’re looking for a 5 star hotel with room service and a pool and a gym, this isn’t it. However, if you are looking for a quiet place that’s clean and friendly for an affordable price, you’ll love it here. The rooms were nice and clean and they have a continental breakfast downstairs everyday. It’s just danishes, toast, and fruit, but hey, free food! The only think is that you can’t get extra towels. When they clean your room, they basically take your towels, wash them, and return them.
Instead of sleeping and catching up with our jet lag, we decided to power through it. First, we went to the IHOP across the street for some food. We were located in downtown LA and the thing that really struck me was how empty it was. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s almost impossible to walk down any street without some elbowing, swerving, and quick maneuvering. In LA, crowds just didn’t exist.
Anyway, after brunch, we went to Chinatown because I’m Chinese and I have to pay homage, right? Well…I was kind of disappointed. Movies make it seem like such an awesome place, but once there….it’s desolate and empty. The architecture was cool, those Chinese stile buildings in the plaza. But other than that, nothing really. There were plenty of restaurants and souvenir shops. Not much else to do. We did take a picture of the Chinese restaurant from Rush Hour, though. We spent about an hour or two there just walking through and trying to find something interesting. We did discover a bubble tea place called Lollicup which I thought was quaint. Their menu was huge! I got lemon slush with boba and my friend got royal milk tea with yogurt flavored bursting bubbles.
Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel. Did I mention that the metro fare is ridiculously cheap?! Seriously! 50¢ for a Dash bus! Well, we took the subway this time. Union station was nice! So much nicer than NY subways because let’s be honest, NY subways are disgusting. The stations were huge too. There was just so much space and not a lot of people. The platform was about the size of two trains.
When we got back to the hotel, we decided to take a nap. That lasted about…2-3 hours. Then we decided to walk around a bit. We hit the Target and then decided to get dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. First time I’ve ever been there. We had the Jamaican Jerk Chicken pizza and a Chicken Caesar Salad. It was really good. When we were done, we walked around a bit more. My friend wanted to buy flip flops because her feet were tanning weird due to her flats. That’s when we discovered that a majority of the stores in LA close at 8PM. You can imagine my horror when malls over here close at 10PM to 11PM. And restaurants close around 10PM as well! What kind of night life is this?!
Well, anyway, we found a Walgreen that was open. I picked up a few cosmetics and we got a 24 pack of water to sustain us the whole trip. We didn’t manage to drink all of it, but we got through most of it. Then we went back to the hotel and basically spent the rest of the night watching TV shows. The new episode of Perception was on!