A Long Weekend in Los Angeles

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Looking for a family vacation the kids will never forget? Hang out with the stars in a weekend in Los Angeles! See the all the sites in one blog post! For more vacation pics see my Travels page.

 

Every year my husband and I travels somewhere new for adventure! Last Year we spent the holidays in New York City and this year it is summer in Los Angeles! My husband’s home office for his job is in LA and he travels there a dozen or so times a year.

Being a stay at home mom and blogger, I do not get that luxury, so I have been living vicariously through him with his tales of the wonderful place called LA. So I can see just what he has been experiencing the last few years, we decided to take a long weekend in LA by ourselves.

We are notorious for packing in as much fun as possible in a short amount of time and in just four days, this trip did not disappoint! I’m so excited to share it with you!

 We stayed in Santa Monica and the first thing we did was grab some food and check out the Santa Monica Pier! Very neat atmosphere, I was surprised to see that there is a small theme park in the middle of it! Next, we meandered the streets around the pier shopped the Third Street Promenade and relaxed with a few cocktails.

A great view of Santa Monica mountains and Pacific Palisades from the pier.

Later that night we came back and saw Morris Day & the Time part of the Twilight Concert Series they have on Thursday’s! So fun! The crowd was having a blast singing along with those old 80’s hits, even Jerome was there with his mirror! Hilarious!

Had to post this one! Hotel California by The Eagles happens to be one of my favorite songs, seeing this Hotel made me giggle and a little scared at the same time.

We decided to be true tourists and ride the Double Decker tour bus around Hollywood and get all the old juicy gossip about all the crazy places on the strip.

Sadly the bus was too fast for me to get a pic of the Hollywood sign, they were all a blur, darn-it!

We got off the bus a few blocks to the Grauman’s Chinese Theater and walked the Hollywood Walk of Fame gazing at all the golden stars on the sidewalks. When we reached the theater I was amazed at how big it is. It was huge and definitely the most crowded area on the strip!

Marilyn Monroe’s hand and heel prints!

One thing we knew we had to do was go whale watching! So we spent one day in Long Beach just south of Los Angeles. We booked a cruise on a huge catamaran that goes out and around Catalina Island searching for the whales.

We passed this old beauty The Queen Mary, on the way out to Catalina Island. Sadly we didn’t have enough time to do the ghost tour on her. I would have loved to lurk around that ship at night! Spooky stuff!

We saw many many Blue Whales hanging around feeding. They were not in pods and seemed to run from the boat. They were so cool and amazing to see. Everyone on the boat would search the horizon for “blows” and then the boat chases them down so we can get pics and then they dive and run from us, lol.

After chasing Blue Whales for about an hour the main event showed up, a gorgeous Humpback Whale! He was a bit camera shy, but we all got a great pic of his flute!

Our last day we hung out in Venice Beach! What a wild and crazy fun place, a must-see for the brave vacationer! Love all the vintage VW Vans at the beach! Who knew the front windows opened out that way!

Nice view of the Boardwalk at Venice Beach. It was super crowded and the beach itself is so large! Being from the east coast I haven’t seen a beach that wide in decades.

Bike trails around the boardwalk and down the beach. Looks just like so many scenes from movies and tv shows.

And of course, 70’s Roller Skating is still alive and well here!

And right next to the roller skaters and bicyclist are the skateboarders! Venice Skate Park!

And yes we saw the Venice Freak Show! We saw Asia Ray eat fire, Morgue (shown above) swallowing swords and a meat hook! Yikes! Countless two-headed turtles, the smallest man in the world and the bearded lady! Very Bizarre, but good times! As of 2018 this place is sadly now closed.

Pit stop at the Venice Ale House where you can people watch and get a flight of beer on a skateboard! Awesome place right in the heart of it all and the food is fantastic too!

How cool are these Pint Glass Pendant lights! Love!

What a super fun trip this was. I have so many more pics but this post is long enough as it is! We saw so many families from all over the world here on vacation. Not only are there great places and activities to see and do, but there are also many theme parks right in this area to visit as well!

I am definitely going back to Cali! Next time we will bring the kids, I know they will love it as much as I did!! I have plenty more to explore!

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