23 Dec LA and Roadtripping

Los Angeles has always been surrounded with an air of excitement; in films it is the place that young people travel to in order to make their dreams come true. It has Hollywood, Venice Beach and the Kardashians, so obviously we just had to go and see it for ourselves. Well. Turns out that LA is not quite like the films, in fact it is quite superficial and dirty with far too much traffic to make driving around worthwhile.

The first day there was spent at Venice Beach which, to be fair, is beautiful, especially during sunset. The sand was gorgeous, the waves were heavenly, and the sun made an amazing change from Karl the Fog’s gloomy presence. Beaches are amongst my favourite places in the world and this was so picturesque, and an excellent place to have a swim or surf or body board. That is until Mathilde got stung with a sting ray and screamed ‘Get out of the water!’ at me, causing us to panic and bolt for the beach. Luckily it turns out that this is quite common and not dangerous, plus it made for an eventful story!

The rest of our trip was spent driving around to various famous parts of LA like the Hollywood Boulevard (bit overrated and crowded), and up to the Griffith Observatory. Unfortunately LA traffic is terrible so that makes things a bit more complicated.

The real highlight of our trip was the drive as we took highway 1 all the way along the coast, passing Big Sur, Monterey, Morro Bay and Malibu. The California coast line is really something else, well worth the 12 hours that it took to actually get to LA. There are many many beautiful photo opportunities and small beaches to take a dip in. It is simply gorgeous. Who doesn’t love a roadtrip, we had Patrick blasting 80s tunes and old school throwbacks the entire time. Hopefully this is the start to many!