Los Angeles - Home of Deb!

12 Jan 08 - After San Fran, we returned to LA for a long stint to catch up with Deb, a very patriotic Los Angelean, always quick to show off the best of the city (I still remember the lengthy debate between Deb and Garry as to whether LA or Perth would be a better place to live, let's just say the debate went on for ages, I dozed off in the car for a while and when I woke up, they were still going on about it and it went on the next day....and the next...of course, I was voting for neither...tried to throw in London as a contender but they just ignored me!!)

My favourite architecture in LA has got to be the Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by world renowned architect Frank Gehry (I think he was also the one who designed the Freedom Tower on Ground Zero in NYC). I love how the stainless steel curves of the Concert Hall shine in the sun. After taking pics of the Concert Hall, we drove to the home of Baywatch (the famous Muscle Venice Beach), Rodeo Drive (saw the hotel where Pretty Woman was filmed - remember the last scene when Richard Gere kissed Julia Roberts on the staircase outside the hotel?) and the Chinese Kodak Theatre (where we saw the famous hand and foot prints of celebrities). A scary accident happened when we were at the Kodak Theatre. A guy fell down from an escalator and was badly hurt, the whole area was closed off and I saw one of the ambulance officers carrying a see through plastic bag filled with bloodstained clothing...it was quite unsettling being so close to the accident.

Celebrated the end of the night with Pinks' hot dogs (a famous LA icon - fresh hot dogs homemade on the spot and stuffed with chilli). We had to queue up for a whole hour and to make it all worthwhile, we ordered more than we could consume. Hands down to Aldo who ordered a cheeseburger, 3 hotdogs, onion rings and fries, all for one person!



LA had an amazing variety of Asian food. The Asian ranch 99 supermarket was as big as a typical coles/woolies. It was so busy in "Din Tai Fung" (Taiwanese chain restaurant that specialises in dumplings) that they had to hire a whole team of Mexican people to hand make the dumplings. We visited the Huntington Library which did not only have an amazing collection of art but the gardens were just great. I loved the Desert Garden. The Library also had a Japanese garden, an Australian garden and a Chinese one which was also under construction. These grounds were all donated by the generous Mr Huntington. Universal Studios was another highlight for us.



We visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels near Deb's office which cost about US$20m to build. It's an unually modern building with a mausoleum in the basement where we saw Gregory Peck's tomb. After the Cathedral, Deb took us to see the Olvera Street Mexican market in downtown LA and the famous Union Station.