Let's Revisit Los Angeles

Typical big city, 2-3 days will never be enough to explore Los Angeles. First time I visited Los Angeles was last October with my housemates. We stayed mostly in Santa Monica for 3 days which was outside of the city. Santa Monica has nice beaches but I'm more city girl so being remote in Santa Monica wasn't my first option. We rented a car to get around Santa Monica and LA as we heard from couple of friends that public transport wasn't that good comparing to San Francisco and LA was too big to be explored using bus or metro. Renting the car was fun but again it wasn't really my thing, I was more spontaneous girl, like to jump from one bus to another mode of transportation and just get lost in the city. As we travelled with seven girls, I decided to follow their way to travel this time, staying in Santa Monica, renting a car hmm I could do that and still had fun.

This is LA video from my Travelike episode


During my first visit to LA, we visited Santa Monica Beach, Venice Beach, Universal Studio, and Hollywood Walk of Fame, it was a short visit actually.

Venice Beach

Universal Studio Tour, Singapore doesn't have this!

Traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles has plenty of options, you can take plane that costs you approximately $80 one way, it's probably cheaper if you book the flight in advance. You can take the bus (Greyhound or Megabus), the price is varied, starting $25-$50 one way. Another convenient way to travel is using the train (Amtrak) which is more expensive than bus, not sure about the price though. I took the bus and it costed me $70 for the return ticket, the travel period is about 7 hours from SF to LA.

The second time I visited LA was in winter break. I travelled with my Indonesian housemates and one CCI friend from Panama. LA was my first stop, we stayed in a motel near Hollywood Walk Of Home, it was a very convenient location as it was near to bus stop and you could easily walk to Hollywood Walk of Fame. First thing to do was revisiting Hollywood Walk Of Fame as we didn't have much time when we were here last October.

We walked along the pavement that has many famous stars such as The Beatles, Michael Jackson etc. Then we tried to get closer to Hollywood sign by walking a couple of blocks up to the hills. Roslina and I watched Korean drama The Heirs that inspired us to see the same spot where the actors see Hollywood Sign. There is one scene where Kim Tan (Lee Min Hoo) takes Eun Sang (Park Shin Hye) to see the sign in such a close distance. After walking a couple of blocks, thanks God it was sunny day, we managed to get closer to Hollywood sign and found the spot. We were too happy to take a lot of pictures there, well in the middle of the street hahahah pretty dangerous but we couldn't stop taking pictures. These are the photos that day ;)

Girls and Hollywood Sign

Me and Hollywood Sign #KimTan Fever

The girls

Met John Lennon at Walk Of Fame

First day was about Hollywood, second day was more free-to-do-anything-day, this is what I like when traveling with less people, we could go anywhere we want, one can go revisit Hollywood, one can go to revisit Universal Studio, one can do nothing but stay at hotel room or else. Roslina, Milka and I decided to visit Getty Center, a beautiful park and museum located in the hills. Roslina found this in trip advisor and was listed as #1 place that we should visit when we are in LA.

We rode public transport, you can buy 1 day pass which costs $5, it's a money saver if you move from one place to another place. Single bus ride costs $1,5 but often you have to change the bus to get to your destination, so I suggest you to buy a day pass when you are in LA. From our hotel to Getty Center was almost an hour, but the trip was really nice. The bus passed Beverly Hills neighborhood which mostly big and nice houses stretched along the street, then we passed UCLA, a big and enormous campus which was also beautiful. It was a nice ride, this is the positive side of taking public transport haha you never expected something nice but then it just happened :D

Getty Garden

Getty Labyrinth

Some fall color at Getty Garden

In front of Getty Museum 

We spent almost half day indulging ourself in Getty center, it was really relaxing. From the entrance they provide shuttle train to bring us to the top of Getty center and it's free. We just took a stroll and relax in the Getty garden and enjoyed the scenery. If you are not in a hurry, you may spend a day in this place, explore the garden and museums or just sit down and have a nice lunch with your friends.

LA is not LA without fancy rodeo drive, a branded boutique and nice restaurants scatter every where in this area. Since this is our last day in LA, we made the next stop to Rodeo Drive and probably had dinner around there. Since I'm not a branded girl well I could't afford those thing, better use the money to travel around the world anyway, I found Rodeo Drive pretty entertaining. I didn't check out those stores, I just walked along the street and ofkoors took a lot of photos :D
So yaaah, if you have spare time you may stop by here seeing fancy stuff!

Rodeo Drive

Spadaaa BVLGARI

The thing that I don't like about LA is their downtown. I imagine downtown will be like downtown San Francisco, Seattle or Portland that is really nice to walk around there but Downtown LA is sketchy, I don't recommend people to stay around there. We went to downtown LA at 8pm to eat Chinese Food, it was really scary. It was dark, a lot of crazy people and homeless people, I was fine if they didn't bug me but some are just troubled so a big NO for me staying in Downtown LA. I think typical big cities will be like LA, there is some nice neighborhood and some are sketchy, always do research about places before going and read the reviews will be helpful.

Adios Los Angeles, next stop will be San Diego!