Aloha from Los Angeles!

Here I am in L.A ! Today is a very sunny day with nice cooling wind blowing outside my window. The holiday has been Goooooodddddd. Weather is supportive, Places I've been too are just amazing, and some little shopping won't hurt too! ;-)

So here's the summary of the places I've been to:

Los Angeles:

I am staying in West side of LA in my auntie's house. It is a really nice peaceful neighbourhood with just a 10 - 15 mins stroll to the nearest shopping centre - Westside Pavillion. It is not far from Santa Monica too, only around 15 mins drive (depending on traffic though - Santa Monica Boulevard can be really packed on peak hours).

Our neighbour is a really nice lady, she sent her son once to help us with gardening when she saw us trimming the garden. The son came and told us "My mom asked me to come and help you guys, or else she won't feed me lunch" Lol !!!

Santa Monica - We went to Farmer's Market held in Santa Monica last week, which is held once a week, every Wednesday morning. Fresh vegies, fruits and nuts are sold here. I heard that a lot of chefs from nearby restaurants come by really early to get the best and first pick of the vegies and fruits to be used in the restaurants! After buying a lot of fresh strawberries, mandarins, nectarine-like fruit, eggplants, pistacchios, we headed to Santa Monica shopping area for some window shopping. The place is gorgeous! Everything is outdoor, something like Pitt Street Mall, but longer and more beautiful. And with Santa Monica beach on the other end! I'll post up some photos when I'm back in Sydney!

Ontario Mills Factory Outlet - 1 hour drive from home - Gosh, what can I say about this place beside that this is HUGE! We reached there at 11-12pm, and didn't stop shopping until 9 pm !!! And even that, we didn't finish visiting the whole place! The stores closed before we can even finish visiting all of them!

Hollywood - Went there to take photos. It's full of shops selling souvenirs (which is hard to find anywhere else in LA weirdly!), tourists taking photos (yup, i'm one of them) and people selling maps of celebrity homes! I would love to buy the map and drive around looking at their houses, but my parents were not up for that idea! Lol! I went to Kodak theatre (where Oscars is held annually), Chinese Theatre (walk of fame) and took photos with Darth Vader and Spidey!!!!

Chinatown - Weirdly, this place is really dry and hot! There's so little trees around! We went to Ranch Market (99) - the biggest oriental supermarket in USA. This is muchhh bigger than Thai Kee in Sydney. It sells everything from sauces , snacks, to meat, live seafood (yes live lobster is sold here), and cooked food (bakcang, bakpao, green onion shallot, and a lot of chinese dishes). I say this must be the biggest oriental supermarket in USA because I see these stores in Las Vegas and San Fransisco too ! Powerfuuu!

Westfield Century City mall - Believe it or not, Westfield is the biggest mall developer in USA. The same Westfield that we have in Australia, with the exactly same logo and colour! We went to the one closest to home, it has just been revamped not long ago and it looks really really nice. Only 10 mins drive from home, this mall has Borders, Container store (love this place!), Macys, Bloomingdale, Victoria's secret, Tumi, Coach, LV ,etc etc. You can find almost everything here! :) Don't forget to ask for visitors card where you can get discounts for tourists on quite some stores!

KoreaTown - We went here for dinner in a restaurant called HanYang. It is a really nice korean bbq place. Big and clean, they also have a children room with TV showing cartoons and sofas for the kids to sit and watch. Over here, they don't seem to serve raw lettuce to use as a meat wrapper. Instead, they gave us rice noodle wrapper! The bbq grill pot is nice, it is a bit elevated on one side so that all the oil will go down to the lower level and out via a special hole.

Marina Del Ray - This is just a 5 mins drive from Santa Monica beach. It's very much a parking place for boats. You see boats everywhere, it's neat and nice, but nothing much to do here, so we decided to just drink coffee in a nearby traditional American Diner, complete with jukebox, bars & stools to sit and chat with the waitress.

Westwood - This is where my brother stays. He stays in UCLA housing for postgraduate students. It's located outside the UCLA campus but not too far, maybe just 5 mins drive. This area is lovely, I don't mind living here at all! There's a lot of shops just underneath the apartment, brand names like American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, and there's a lot of cafe to relax and chat, and also a lot of restaurants and cinema (there's like 3 cinemas?). I watched Ocean's Thirteen in one this cinema with my bro. I also tried Pinkberry which is located not far from the cinema. Pinkberry is really famous right now in US, it started in LA, and now it has start opening branches everywhere. The concept is really simple, it's just a plain frozen yoghurt with toppings. You choose your own topping from the selections of : chopped nuts, muesli, raisins, or fruits (mango, kiwi, strawberry, blackberry, or blueberry), and that's it. It's that simple! I guess people love it because it's a really healthy dessert! And they manage to make it look cool too ;-) So all the youngsters are buying this. I reckon this will work great in Sydney since Aussies are getting really health conscious now! I have also tried Diddy Riese Cookies, the best cookies baked in LA until late at nite. These cookies are served with a scoop of ice cream in between them. It's delicious but sooo fattening!

Well, that's it for today, I'll continue next time on my trip to Las Vegas and San Fransisco!

Cheerios!