Today I want to share my guide to spending a weekend in LA with you. Los Angeles is one of the most vibrant cities in Southern California, and it’s worth a trip to soak up the sun and the scene.
Weekend in LA
I’ve always disliked LA. I can’t help it. Growing up in Northern California, I was taught to think less of my state’s lower half. Teachers made fun of LA in school. Parents warned us against the dual evils of smog and plastic surgery.
Aside from Disneyland, there was no good reason to visit the greater Los Angeles area.
So I didn’t. Because of my cultural distaste for the City of Angels, I went the first twenty-something years of my life without ever really visiting LA.
Save for the obligatory trips to Anaheim for Disneyland and the one day I spent at an honors admit day at UCLA when I was 18, I never set foot in Los Angeles until two weekends ago.
Santa Monica
I would love to say my weekend in LA was precipitated by a change of NorCal cultural attitudes or at least a change of heart. Alas, that wasn’t the case.
The trip was planned because of a new addition to my family, which is to say my cousin had a baby and I wanted to go meet her.
I was already home in San Francisco, so I flew down to LA on Friday night. My boyfriend, who had flown in from London in honor of the four-day bank holiday weekend, met me at the airport.
Too jet lagged to go out that night, we drove to our hotel, Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, and saved our energy for the following morning, which ended up being a beautifully sunny one.
The Getty
We left the hotel to eat a huge brunch of chorizo and eggs, then headed to the Getty to get our cultural fix.
The museum, which was designed by Richard Meier in the late 1990s, was gorgeous. In spite of the sleek yet oh-so-inconvenient monorail that took us from the parking lot to the museum, we enjoyed our time there immensely.
The only strange part was viewing the collections of pre-20th century European art, which would have seemed fitting in London but felt oddly out of place in Southern California.
Hollywood
After exploring the Getty for a while, our weekend in LA continued as we got back in the car and drove through Westwood to Hollywood. We had to make the obligatory trip to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As soon as we got there, I recalled my favorite line from Arrested Development: “I immediately regret this decision”.
Lined with touts and actors dressed in every Disney character costume imaginable, the Walk of Fame reminded me of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
Tacky, crowded, and full of tourists like us, the area wasn’t exactly our favorite place.
After locating and taking a picture with the star of the actress for whom I’m named (yes, I’m named after an actress, but I know three other people with my name who are also named after her, so it can’t be that abnormal), we left as fast as we could weave our way through the Jack Sparrows, Aladdins, tour buses, and gawking tourists.
The Mall in LA
The next stop on our weekend in LA was the mall. As much as I’m not a big mall shopper and as much as I try not to spend my vacations shopping in malls, I needed some new clothes for work.
That said, the more I saw of LA, the more convinced I became that the entire city and all of its suburbs are really just one giant strip mall. So maybe it was fitting that I decided to do some shopping while I was in Los Angeles.
Family Time in LA
After the mall came family time. Needless to say, my time with my cousin, her husband, and their new baby was the highlight of my weekend in LA.
My brother and his wife came up from San Diego, and we had ourselves a little family reunion. My cousin’s husband grilled us some great steaks and we sat outside for dinner, which I haven’t done in almost a year.
The baby was adorable and so content, and it was great to get to meet her on what was only her 10th day of life. Pretty amazing.
Venice Beach
The following day my boyfriend and I woke up and continued our weekend in LA with a walk on Venice Beach. We admired the birds and the inventive LA architecture along the waterfront there.
Afterwards we headed back to Santa Monica for a stroll along the 3rd Street Promenade before meeting up with my boyfriend’s former coworker and his wife for fish tacos.
Malibu
From there we headed up to Malibu and stopped to admire the views from Pepperdine University, a place I’ve heard about a million times from friends but have never visited.
The hills were so beautiful and so little-developed that for a minute I forgot I was in LA.
Manhattan Beach
The last stop on our weekend in LA was Manhattan Beach, where we walked out to the pier and had our first official celebrity sighting: Kevin Nealon.
I had no idea who he was, but my boyfriend assured me he counted as a celebrity. I was happy. LA just isn’t LA without a celebrity sighting.
Weekend in LA: The Verdict
I was less happy an hour later when I had to part ways with my boyfriend and fly back to San Francisco, where it was so cold outside I had to battle a fierce wind all the way home.
But it was good to be home, and while I enjoyed my weekend in LA, all the Malibu sunshine in the world couldn’t convince me that the City of Angels has anything on the City by the Bay.
Well, except for an adorable new baby and her fabulous parents.
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