Tag: sightseeing

Walking in LA – for real!

So yesterday, Ed had to take the car in for its service in Fullerton which meant he’d be carless for the day. So what to do? How about something really novel for us Southern Californians – take the train and use our feet! On top of that, Ed would be walking in a place where walking happens so seldomly that there’s even a song about it – that’s right, LA! Downtown LA, to be exact.

Fortunately, the shop was really close to the Fullerton train station.

And here’s Ed’s train!

Being in the train felt like Europe – not just because Ed was in a train in the first place, but also because half of the people Ed saw were Europeans about Ed’s age or younger!

From Union Station, Ed took the Red Line to Pershing Square in downtown. It’s easy to forget that there’s an increasingly expansive subway system in Los Angeles!

Walking around downtown, you quickly realize that it must have been very glitzy and glamorous back in the day. There are so many intricately detailed facades on the buildings and they must have looked very impressive years ago. But today, much of it is run down and decrepit. Several years ago, Downtown LA began a resurgence of sorts, and there are plenty of signs of it throughout downtown – art galleries, hip shops, restaurants, lofts, etc. Still, there’s some ways to go.

The Toy District: full of discount toy sellers, specializing in knockoffs!

This was undoubtedly the strangest and funniest sighting from the day: Obama dog tags! The funniest part is how the banners advertise them (grammatically incorrectly) as if they’re the hottest thing right now – “YES – We make dog tag!” If nothing else, it shows how happy so many different worldwide communities are about Obama coming to power.

This car was just cool:

Something totally unexpected in LA – an outdoor skating rink?!?

Here’s Ed resting his weary legs – he walked at least 9 miles that day!

You can see the whole album by clicking below.

Downtown LA Walking Tour

Mausoleums and Monuments …

Today we headed out to visit the Cemetario de Recoleta, where there are hundreds of the most ornate gravesites you ever seen – the most famous being the grave of Eva Perón. After our history day yesterday, we felt like paying some respects. These graves are fascinating – they are huge and very old, some going back as far as the 1700s. Walking through the grounds is like walking through a concrete maze. Call us morbid, but there was something kinda magical about it. Either that, or it was the kick we were getting out of humming the Haunted Mansion theme song during the stroll (wait, that’s kinda wrong, isn’t it?).

Kinda spooky:

As we mentioned, this is where Eva Perón has been laid to rest. The aisles are narrow and the monuments are huge, so it was difficult to get good pics of the site, but here is her tomb:

We even got a short kitty fix, as there were lots of cats hanging out at the cemetary …

ThoseScaryKims:

We decided to lighten up and go visit the polar opposite of the cemetery – the Floralis Genérica, which is a monument depicting a living flower. It’s pretty amazing actually, and the severe size and materials of it are akin to a Gehry building. The “flower” actually has built in hydraulics that make it open up in the morning, and close at night – just like a real flower.

It really stands out in the park, as it contrasts with the majority of the classic French architecture in Recoleta. We dig it.

Lucky we caught all this today, as its raining again tonight in Buenos Aires!

Happy to be tourists

Today, we decided to just bite the bullet and go on a guided tour. The tour line we picked was pretty cool – it was a small bus that drove us around, and randomly, we would pull over to the side of the road (or not) and they would show us a video that explained some of the facts relating to the particular area we were in at the moment. This is a HUGE city, divided in many sections, and we just really needed to get our bearings.

So, here we begin with one of the first stops. In America, the president lives in The White House – in Argentina, the president lives in The Pink House (Casa Rosada)! Here is The Pink House:

The area where the Pink House is located holds a lot of history for Argentinians. It was kinda cool getting a mini history lesson about this place. Below is a photo of a large monument in front of The Pink House commemorating Argentina’s independence from Spain. Lots of political turmoil and victories have been celebrated in this place, Plaza de Mayo.

After Plaza de Mayo, we headed to La Boca, which is a very colorful, very old and also very poor part of town. It’s called La Boca (The Mouth), because it was the huge port way back when where all the Italian immigrants lived. They were so poor, they built houses out of whatever found materials they could find, and painted them bright colors with the leftover paint they had from painting the ships that would come in to the port. The guide said sometimes 30 families would all live together in one tiny house! It’s very historic – and pretty cool. There are also tons of tango cafes where people just dance in the street. The place that we stopped was a famous tourist street called El Caminito (the little street) which is very close to the huge soccer stadium La Bomborena (The Candy Bowl). Argentinians are SERIOUS about their love for soccer! We watched an entire video of just how much Argentians love soccer, how important it is to them, and how their soccer heroes have been elevated in the society to almost saints! All this sports information was a little lost on Carrie, who doesn’t give a rip about sports. But we digress …

Here are a few pics of El Caminito:

We also visited Recoleta – a very rich area that basically looks like Rodeo Drive, Puerto Madero – which is an old port that has been recently revitalized and has a famous new modern bridge called Puente de la Mujer:

The architect who designed this bridge says it’s supposed to reflect a couple doing the tango. Um, we don’t necessarily know if we see it or not, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

Our tour guide said that Argentina’s most famous author described people from Buenos Aires as Italians … who speak Spanish …. who were educated by the British … but want to be French!

Anyway, ciao for now – we are off for some empanadas!!!

The Michigan Cousins Meet Los Angeles

This week, Carrie’s cousins Parisa & Sahra came to visit during their spring break. We had an awesome time hanging out, and we had to show them Los Angeles as best we could.

We started things out first with a trip to Sprinkles in Beverly Hills for adorably delicious cupcakes. What’s more LA than paying $4 for a cupcake?

Next, we drove down Rodeo Drive to see the bling in person, and then stopped by The Standard Hollywood (one of our favorite spots) for lunch.

We decided to work off the treats with a lengthy shopping session on Melrose for some cool LA shopping, and then of course we had to hit up Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the touristy stuff!

But … the highlight for ALL of the girls definitely was hitting up Kat Von D’s tattoo shop, High Voltage Tattoo, which is the shop on TLC’s famous TV show, L.A. Ink!



We all were pretty starstruck at the shop, despite the fact that no one on the show was actually working there that day. The shop also seemed a lot smaller in person! We did spot Kat’s sister, but that was about it. No ink for any of us, but we still left happy – Carrie & Sahra bought T-shirts and of course, we got many cheesy pics out front!

All in all, it was a good week, and we’ll be sad to see them go tomorrow. Our last hurrah tonight was at Pinkberry, for stylish frozen yogurt! Good times!

A Brief Distraction from Paradise

Well, we’re back from Miami, and sadly, we didn’t blog as much as we would’ve liked! But we can’t say we thought too much about it…if there was ever a place that could tear us away from the computers and hecticness of everyday life, it was Miami. It’s a beautiful and exciting town – and we made a pact this would be the first of many trips!

This is just a little bit of what we saw once we got out away from The Standard. We wanted to see a little bit of architecture. And that we did. Some highlights…


This crazy “living room” was an art installation that sat on an intersection down in the Design District. Looks like we missed it in it’s glory, as you can see that there’s some kind of construction going on – it looks like items have been removed and there’s a fence around it now, but it is quite something to see. We like that we caught a man walking in front of it, you can get a sense of scale.

Also near the area on Biscayne Blvd., there are old, run-down 1950’s motels with some pretty cool signage. It’s probably better at night, as thy’re neon signs, but you get the general idea (and again, Carrie’s got a thing for cool signage):


After we saw all the poor, sad motels of yesteryears, we saw a classier lady – the Bacardi Building. Pretty amazing:

We weren’t exactly sure what this was right next door to the Bacardi building, but it sure looked cool:

That concludes our mini architectural tour. We could absolutely kick ourselves, as we didn’t capture any of the most amazing parts – and that was the Art Deco! Seriously, South Beach almost seems like a movie set, the buildings are all pastel and colorful – and they are so well maintained that they almost look like facades. They were amazing.

This was by far our favorite though:

This is the exterior of the Standard Miami – it used to be this old spa called The Lido. It’s so cool they kept the exterior unchanged, it’s pretty groovy.

p.s. This one is for the Subcat crew: we caught a shot of the famous tattoo shop, Miami Ink (for those who do not know, Miami Ink has been a show running on TLC for 4 seasons now). No tattoos for us, but the place sure was hoppin’ and lots of people were hanging outside trying to get a peek in: