4.1.08 -- Los Angeles? It's Okay
A long one peeps so prepare to READ!
Back from Los Angeles, California, and here are the chronicles of my adventure (sounds a little lame, doesn’t it?).
Overall, I’ve just got to plainly say that LA is nowhere near as amazing a place as some others I’ve visited in the past; maybe because I’m Asian but I honestly had far more of a thrill in China or Japan. Now those are two parts of the world I’ll definitely want to go back to someday, should lady-luck smile upon me.
Day 1
"Pack me?"
"I’m going too!"
Aww, sorry Cessy. Merry Christmas everyone! Yup, like I said in the last post, Christmas day was time for that death-long 20 hour (its half way around the world for peace sakes!) flight, all the way from Malaysia’s KLIA to the Los Angeles International Airport.
Packed and ready to go, we boarded the plane once checking-in and immigration was out of the way. If anything, I was still mildly disappointed about not being able to enjoy Christmas (despite not one to celebrate it) locally; but the good news about traveling on the specific date was that hardly anyone was on the flight at all! This of course, meant lots and lots of leg room~ Thank god too – long flights are terribly stressful, even without the serious muscle cramps or the usually sucky plane food. Oh, and I hate, HATE turbulence!
The plane set for the skies at 3.00pm (25th Dec) and touched-down in LA by 4.00pm (25th Dec). Now before you start asking questions, do ponder on the fact that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West – a little hint in case anyone’s really blur. By the time immigrations were cleared it was already dark out (4.30pm) - do remember that it’s winter (Northern hemisphere). As it turns out our flight arrived early and our escort was caught in LA traffic, which is pretty bad so I hear. Miraculously, he made it in like 20 minutes or so and dropped us off at our hotel, the Ramada Plaza Anaheim Resort. Yup, we were in Anaheim. Looks a little like some of those cities in Grand Theft Auto…or something.
Nothing much happened today since it was only the hotel check-ins and scanning the surrounding area for shops and food outlets. Food wasn’t all that hard to find - Subway was only a 3 minutes walk from the hotel itself and a 7 Eleven was just across a nearby T-junction. Most foods there were microwavable, and since the hotel rooms were equipped with microwaves…
I’ll end today with a few shots of the room:
Lovely and comfy queen size beds~ And that’s just for two people.
I’m sorry but…THE TOWELS JUST LOOKED SO NEAT!!
Day 2
Excitement begins here – or so I thought. A bus picked up a couple of families - including mine - at the hotel early that morning, sending us to “Headquarters” (note the air quotations); basically a vacant space of land a sum of other buses were gathering at too. There, things got freaking unorganized as people were scrambling around the lot trying to find their respective tour buses before it left without them (some system, hmph!). With little time to dilly-dally Mom and Dad went and lost themselves in the sea of fellow tourists to locate the right bus while my brother and I guarded the bags. Bored and hungry, we decided to play around with the cameras a bit.
Yeah, I’m eating a sandwich.
Some minutes down the road Mom found the bus and soon enough, began the day-long journey to…*drum roll*…San Francisco! Yeah! It was nominated ‘Most Beautiful City’ of year 2007. For the record, I do think there are better ones, but that doesn’t mean San Francisco wasn’t beautiful. I liked the city. It’s just not Tokyo.
Now the lengthy bus ride hardly bothered me. We had constant stops for restrooms and food (so going to need a major workout to burn those calories – I ate so much cheese!).
Raz, my bag, and his freezing butt, waiting for lunch.
But the one thing that remained an unceasing bother to me throughout the ride was the voice of our so-called tour guide, a Mr. David Fang (or is it Feng?). The guy has “Oh So Brilliant” English~ I barely understood him half the time, and trust me I was far from the only one; other tour members of the bus were grumbling about him too. What was that he said one time? About talking in front and not at the back? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???
Gosh I detested his speech. Here, take a look at some pics while I cool off:
Everything’s always so green back home this sight was actually a welcome change.
Well, this one has a tiny bit of green…
On the same day itself, the bus made a slight (yeah right) detour so us tourists could check out the supposedly magnificent view of this place called Yosemite. And the reason I used the word supposedly? Yeah, well truthfully, I never got to see that magnificent view; neither did anyone onboard the bus or whoever present in the area that day for all I know. There was a huge pile of snow (yes, it was snowing – pretty!) and ice everywhere you turned to look around the area, but snow wasn’t what stole the view from us. As a matter of fact, there was an accident concerning a wild grizzly bear so everyone had to vacate the place A.S.A.P.
In Malaysia, we have tigers. ^_^
I fell asleep for the remainder of the Yosemite area, with a Burger King dinner as the one exception, before finally making it to the Crowne Plaza Oakland South hotel in San Francisco near midnight…phew.
Day 3
San Francisco City Tour, well that sounded more like it; time to explore the main city. First, we just had to get there! Once boarded, our group (on bus, duh!) crossed the Bay Bridge – sister to the more famous Golden Gate Bridge.
A view from crossing Bay Bridge. Can’t seem to recall the name of the square-ish Island with the pier but the one behind it is Angel Island.
Bay Bridge’s sister.
The city of San Francisco~
So it was after a Subway lunch when we commenced the real tour; our first stop? Boys and girls, you may recognize this place from watching a number of movies – take George of the Jungle for instance. The world’s most crooked street, Lombard Street! (also, one of the steepest hills I’ve ever set foot on).
The world’s most zig-zag-ish street~
A happy Mom and Dad.
We went even higher!
That car was going real slow.
The…road?
Alcatraz! Now that’s definitely point-worthy.
Wish I could have hopped on.
Um…yeah…
Next stop:
Pretty, ain’t it?
The first pic with all four of us~
Third stop, the one and only, Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently there is a reason for its name being so even though the bridge isn’t exactly gold in color, or has an actual gate. Tour guide David did elaborate but if you think I understood him? THINK AGAIN!!
*Ahem*
Proof we were there.
Raz and the cruise.
The fourth stop of the day - and my personal favorite (just for today) - was Fisherman’s Wharf. Here, a number of us settled for riding the bay cruise from Pier 39, which offered a spectacular view of the city. Most pictures taken while aboard the bay cruise were courtesy of my brother, Raz.
[pic] There’s Raz and the cruise.
An interesting angle…
Alcatraz!! (Don’t know what it is or used to be? Check Wikipedia or something).
Fat chubby chubby cute cute sea lions~ ^_^
After the delightful one hour away from tour guide David, the rest of us were just dying to check out what else the wharf had left to offer. The place looked to have amazing seafood selections but sadly there was no time to eat there. T_T
Pier 39
Who wants to pet the shark?
Bought a couple of souvenirs for the close relatives and that was the end of Fisherman’s Wharf. Other than dinner at an I.H.O.P. (International House of Pancakes) eatery, a boring visit to Napa Valley for wine tasting (which I can’t do) pretty much concluded this day. Not that the whole Napa Valley thing brought me down a good deal but it was a total waste of time. I honestly would have been happier to continue exploring the wharf better and maybe bought myself a yummy ‘Basket of Shrimp’.
Day 4
Thus ends our time in San Francisco. The long drive back to LA was a bit more tolerable than the drive from I guess. Along the way we made one detour to see the Monterey 17 Miles – of marvelous scenery, that is.
The landscape was easily a sight to remember but next to the view, Monterey wasn’t at all exciting. It was a cloudy day too.
This would have been priceless on a sunny day.
Lots of these guys.
That’s Bird Rock.
Gotta love this pic.
Family~
The Lone Cypress.
Missions for the remainder of this day was, fundamentally, to ignore the speech-hopeless tour guide, and catch up on some much needed snoze in the bus till we reached Ramada again.
Results of pure boredom (Raz drew that).
Missions succeeded, thankfully. Good – riddance, I mean - bye David!
Day 5
Was waiting for this day. Why? Cause its Disneyland time! Back in Ramada Plaza Anaheim Resort (what a long name), it was just the four of us once again. What I do love about this hotel by the way, is the 10 minute walk it takes to reach Disneyland. Imagine that? Living 10 minutes away from Disneyland! Too bad it’s a hotel and not a house.
Either way, the infamous theme park opened at 8.00am so we left the hotel by 7.00am to have some breakfast at the gladly discovered, nearby I.H.O.P. restaurant; probably our favorite eating place throughout the whole LA trip. My brother and I ordered a ‘Crab and Shrimp Omelet’ from the menu as it pretty much fascinated us both (it’s probably a rather ‘Jakun’ thing – being fascinated by an omelet stuffed with crab and shrimp - but I’ve honestly never eaten one before!). It tasted really REALLY good.
Once inside the ‘happiest place to be in the world’ (sort of), we kicked things off with the Jungle River Cruise. I can’t accurately remember every single ride we went for but there was the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, the ‘Haunted Mansion’ (which merged with Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’), ‘Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters’ ( a favorite of my Dad’s) and etc. By noon, the waiting times were reaching up to 80 minutes for various rides thanks to the massive hoards of people (one would think they’d be sick of this park by now since they live in the area).
Mom and Dad on Main Street (where the shops are located, incase anyone wants to know).
America…has big horses.
That’s us in front of Cinderella’s Castle – looks prettier at night everytime.
Check out the crowd; that’s only a small portion too.
LUNCH! Those pizza’s were delish~
So following lunch we just hung around random areas of the park; you know, kill time till the parade took place. We headed over to the Pirate’s Lair at one point and Raz found “Captain Jack Sparrow”.
*Gasp* He’s even taller than him!
Later, we watched this Alladin show which was a real bag of laughs, mostly because audience participation was a must. They used little kiddies of course, but that was the fun part. Show over, we left to find a good seat to watch the parade.
Saw the movie? You’ll know who she is.
Ballerina and the…bear? (where are the toy soldiers?)
Owh…
Donald, Daisy, Pluto and…erm…
Genie, Jasmine and Alladin.
Minnie and Mickey.
Goofy and Max.
Disney Princesses.
Chip and Dale.
The 7 Dwarves.
Dancing reindeers!
And last but not least, Santa himself.
Parade was fun, but once again, Japan’s was more interesting, even with the troublesome language barrier. Oh well, shopped for a couple other souvenirs for those at home and even bought a cool bag to use for college (my old one’s strapless now).
Dinner was Fish and Chips, something we’ve been eating one too many times over the past few days but hey, gotta eat to survive. We would have stayed on to see the Disneyland fireworks – not a sight to be missed if it’s your first time in one of these fantasylands – but everyone was so tired we decided to head back for the hotel room and the comfort of its spacious beds. However, not before catching one last bit of magic…
Behold, Cinderella Castle at night time - pretty~ (before).
Snow!! (after).
Day 6
Another place that was, beyond doubt, memorable. Unlike with Disneyland, it’s my first time ever in visiting Universal Studios, today’s main event. After the pick up at the hotel, we were once again dropped at a drop off terminal to change buses depending on the precise tour we were taking, this time by bus company Coach America – very much more organized, thank you very much.
We boarded bus 4 under bus driver and tour guide, Starla, who’s English, was fortunately, fluent (I never want to see and especially hear that David Fang guy again). The drive to Universal Studios took roughly an hour or so and Starla’s knowledge in conducting the same tour for 19 years proved very helpful – she narrated a high-detailed plan for everyone on the bus of how to beat the crowds and get the best experience possible. For anyone interested, here’s a shortened version of what one visiting the studios should bear in mind:
Quite simple, isn’t it? I thought so too, and guess what? It really works! We cleared the park so darn fast we even ended up watching shows we’d initially decided to skip!!
The first ride we went on today (yeah, I know it’s a bad shot).
Oooooo….
New York Street (and every other street in the movies).
Yeah…you try taking a picture when King Kong’s rocking the bridge you’re on.
You’d probably recognize this from that movie ‘The Grinch’.
It’s Bruce! (Jaws, in other words).
Earthquake! Just kidding, the set from ‘The War of the Worlds’.
Waterworld! One of the best shows on the top level, not to be missed!
That pretty globe.
A little bit of Vegas outside the studios; some nice shirts they got there.
The bus came back around 7.15pm for the next part of the tour – real time Hollywood. Note people, souvenirs are quite a bit cheaper here than other places so go ahead and buy yourselves an Oscar.
Say hello to the Chinese Theater.
Kodak Theater! (where all your American dreams come true – whatever).
Robin Williams, but Raz blocked the ‘R’.
This guy has a star too, evidently.
Now while strolling down the crowded streets of Hollywood, Raz and I came across this troupe of Mexican break-dancers. We didn’t see much on account we arrived near their finale but here’s a little something I caught with the video recording function:
A little boring near the beginning so you might want to forward this to the dancing part.
Tour guide Starla drove us around Beverly Hills next.
Very unfortunately, I can hardly recall anything beyond the point of cruising through Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills since I drifted off to sleep till the bus dropped us back at the hotel. Either way, Beverly Hills? A place for rich people – don’t bother buying anything unless you’re loaded with tons of $$.
Day 7
At last, a free day without the hassles of waking up at 6.00am and the need to rush through breakfast and the like. Of course, that didn’t mean we were all just going to chill in the hotel room all day till it was time to leave for the airport again; oh no, we caught a cab and made for Main Place (supposedly a popular shopping place within the area).
Browsing around, I couldn’t help but feel Malaysia had better options. There was one particular store that caught my eye though, as well as the rest of my family’s. Just take a look:
Massive, no?
Everyone got something by the end of the shopping day. We retired back to the Ramada hotel at approximately 6.30pm. Then, waited an hour or so for when our pick up to the LA International Airport pulled up at the hotel driveway. The rest is pretty much history really. Oh, and one last thing that truly interested me is the fact that I totally missed out on New Year’s day. Think about it, the plane departed LA on the 31st December 2007 at practically midnight, reaching Malaysia on the 2nd January 2008 around mid-noon (keep in mind it was at least a 20 hour flight home). This means, I skipped a whole day!
Well, it’s been fun.
The rest is still unwritten...
