Los Angeles (2025)

Our last day of the trip. How sad. We're gonna make the most of a beautiful sunny day in LA though.

Manhattan Beach is a new one for us, we get the feeling it's going to be nice and a bit suburban and less chaotic than Venice Beach but we don't know what to expect.

We walk down to the main strip of the town and notice how quiet it is for a Saturday morning. Even the cafe we are aiming for doesn't open until 8:30.

There is a 10km (weird that it was done in kilometres?) fun run on today that seems pretty big. We head to the beach front and watch the action while we wait for the cafe to open. The beach looks great and of course everyone is in good spirits. The weather and the endorphins are a good combo.

The cafe opens and we grab a seat and are told there's no hot water so no espresso machine. Luckily the filter coffee is good in the USA. The rest of the breakfast was good and filling.

We walk south down towards Hermosa Beach. There is a steady stream of walkers and runners (not in the comp) and a separate path for the bikes. Lots of volleyball and surfing. This is a nice stretch of beach. Far nicer than Venice and Santa Monica and far less people.

We head back to the hotel via suburbia. The houses are of course beautiful and beachy. Lots of money around here. Seems like families and maybe retirees.

We checkout and get a 40 minute Uber to Downtown LA. We get out at Grand Central Market and wander around. We're still full from breakfast but man, does the food look good. Lots of South American influence.

There is also a small market with people selling their products downstairs. There's also a pop-up tattooist, uh oh. A snap decision later and Courts has a baby goat and Jeff has a palm tree.

We aim for Little Tokyo. On the way we step into "The Last Book Store", a beautiful and big second hand book shop with local artists with their stuff in there as well. The building used to be a bank so has amazing bones and the setup is flat-out cool. You can even grab a coffee and just hang out. Definitely the best book store we've seen. The photos don't do it any justice.

We make it to Little Tokyo via a street which was solely weed outlets. We grab a sweet treat of soft serve in a fish thing the Japanese do. It was brilliant. Courts buys a LA Dodgers/Ghost Face Killer pin.

There are some very Latin American feeling blocks on our travels which added some flavour. There were also a few sketchy blocks. But hey, Pride Square in Newtown has a similar vibe at times.

We turn our attention to the Dodgers play-off game starting in half an hour and aim for a brewery in the Arts District. Neither of the beers did it for us and whilst there were lots of Dodgers fans there and a big screen, we weren't sure how fanatical it was going to get so we aim for 33 Taps.

This is more like it. Soooo many massive screens and it's packed. We manage to get a table and order a pitcher of Modelo, a cheese burger and buffalo wings. The food was average. The beer great, the atmosphere crazy.

It took a while for the Dodgers to get going. Otahni ​opened the batting and was also the starting pitcher. When the runs went in finally, the crowd was insane. As in, lost a bit of hearing insane.

We struck up a conversation with someone originally from Atlanta who was neutral like us. Hard to hear in here and we had to leave, so we couldn't get into the good topics, unfortunately.

We only had about 48 hours in the USA this trip, but even that amount of time hurt the budget. The cost of most things is the same as Australia, expect in $USD, which is $1.50 AUD. And then you add 15-20% for tips on top of that.

We ​get an Uber back to Manhattan Beach to get our bags and then to the airport. We reflect on the pros and cons of LA and America in general. The climate in LA seems to be perfect. The city is a nightmare to get around and it seems to demand a lot of energy. But it still somehow seems liveable and colourful and cool. A fun place to visit, but Australia goes pretty well, we think.

Until next time...