The flight was relatively sleepless, but there were no screaming children and I got to watch The Queen (totally AWESOME). It took us nearly two hours to get through customs and then another hour or so to get to our hostel in Hollywood, so needless to say, once a bed was in sight we totally crashed out.
After a restorative horizontal nap, we headed out to explore our surroundings. Since it was already late afternoon and we were feeling a little jet lagged, we didn't really feel confident wandering too far away from the hostel, which was on Hollywood Blvd:
We decided, since it was "nearby" (Los Angeles has LONG blocks, as it turns out), we'd check out the Elliott Smith memorial wall down on Sunset Blvd. (For those not in the know (Mum?), it's a mural painted on the side of a music shop which is featured on the artwork of Elliott's album, Figure 8, and since his death it has been covered with messages from fans, including the aptly placed, "You're dead lols" above Owen's head.) After an hour or more of supermarkets, car dealerships, homeless dudes and "Payday Cash Advances!" signs, as well as some Thai food that would do King Street proud, we finally made it. Here is Owen being emo:
I don't really want to make any sweeping statements about LA since I really only got to see one part of it, but I was pretty glad to be leaving for Portland. The bits that we did get to see were composed entirely of traffic, concrete, old people at bus stops and bored Latino teenagers sitting on fences. On the way back I think we're planning to stay either in Long Beach or Venice, somewhere away from the icky!
In spite of the gross, there were some amusing and noteworthy sights, namely:
and:
Although I didn't like LA much I'm looking forward to digging out some of the cool stuff when we have a bit longer there in March.
