Road Trip Day #7 - Los Angeles

DAY 7 - Friday, October 24, 2008

I was woken Friday morning by the loud incessant squawking of birds outside. After accepting that I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep again with all that racket, I left the bedroom and found Shea in the kitchen. She led me outside to show me the source of the noise... wild GREEN PARROTS! I'm lucky if I see a cardinal or blue jay back in Cleveland, so to see a huge flock of 20+ brightly colored birds was so cool!

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures and we only saw the parrots that morning. But I found a website for "The California Parrot Project" that has a bunch of good pictures and explains the 13 different parrot species found in California. So, what we saw looked like this:
You should check out that parrot site, it's pretty interesting!

We ate breakfast and then Shea's dad took us on a little tour of Altadena and Pasadena. In Pasadena, there was an art installation where people could write wishes on little notes and hang them from trees. Later, the wishes will be combined with others from all over the world and placed near Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland. It is dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.
While walking around and reading the notes (which I could have done all day long btw), I realized how odd it is that in Pasadena, they can just leave all that paper outside for months and never worry about it raining and ruining them. Back in Ohio, those notes wouldn't last a week.

We had lunch at Le Pain Quotidien... this was my yummy beautiful Gruyère tartine:
We stopped back at Shea's dad's place for a bit and then met Brian at his apartment.
Brian lives really close to the See's Candy factory where the famous "I Love Lucy" episode (with the conveyor belt... you know the one!) was filmed.
Brian gave us a tour of Beverly Hills, UCLA, and Santa Monica.
Brian said that this is the gate to the Playboy Mansion! We couldn't see anything at all though because all the hedges in the area are SO high.
In Santa Monica, we walked on the beach... it was beautiful outside but the water was really cold.
Walked on the pier...
Walked through the park on our way to the Third Street Promenade...
Cool dinosaur topiary-type fountain things along the Promenade...
Dinner at George's Bistro...
I had seafood ravioli... mmm!
After dinner, we found the perfect shirts at Zara for Cory's Halloween party the next night. His party was going to be Wizard of Oz themed and we had no idea what we were going to wear since we neglected to pack costumes in our luggage. But we miraculously happened upon these really cute Wizard of Oz shirts at Zara and each bought a different one! Yay!

We ended the night hanging out back at Brian's apartment. Our college friend Andy, who also lives in LA now, and his three friends who went to John Carroll too and were in town visiting Andy joined us at Brian's. Cory came over too. We all talked for a couple hours, then left, and went to bed. Our vacation was coming to an end... only one more day in California. :(