I know I kind of owe you all a post since that photo post doesn’t really count. So I think I’ll wrap up this around the world trip with my arrival back in THE United States of America.
I did not take this. This has nothing to do with this post. I just really like it and I had no pictures form LA. Plus, Pats won last night! In Bill We Trust
To say it was a bittersweet trip back would be an understatement. Yes, I had been traveling for a while. Yes, it was nice not to have to deal with language and currency barriers. Yes, I was dead broke, but let’s be completely clear here; there is no possible way on earth I could sit here and type that I was or am happy the trip was coming to an end. I mean, you’ve read what I’d been doing for the last 3+ months, is there any part of it that seemed dull, repetitive, or just not fun? No. No there is not. Not even close. Not even a little bit. If I had unlimited funds I would have no problem continuing this type of travel for many more moons. Although, if I had unlimited funds I may change a few things. However, we’ll save the “this is what I’d change” paragraph for a later post.
Now, on to the City of Angels. Jeff and I landed in LAX and were picked up by some college friends of ours who both had somehow procured excessively flashy cars considering their post grad paychecks. I think the car thing has something to do with living in LA where it’s always sunny and 75 degrees so your car never ages by weather.
At any rate, it was great to have Jeff (or Jash as he will forthwith be called considering the almost overwhelming number of Jeff’s floating around this earth) and Keith pick us up and house us for a few days.
Jeff and I managed to check off most of the major must-do’s in LA. We rode the bus through horrific traffic (yes, it’s the hands down worst in the world), saw Rodeo Drive (and unfortunately failed to try and order a burger and fries at one of the high-end fashions stores’ door buzzer’s [wait, can someone tell me if this is even possible? All I know is that I saw those Mighty Ducks kids do it and wanted to try ever since…]), walked down Hollywood Boulevard, witnessed tourists of all kinds taking ridiculous amounts of pictures, went up to the observatory looking over LA, noticed the pollution covering the city, got into CBS studios through one of Jeff’s friends (and almost got into The Price Is Right), went to Santa Monica and played touch football on Venice beach.
One of my favorite things in LA had to be the giant soft pretzel we got at our happy hour place of choice on Venice beach. It was huge and soft and doughy and delicious. And we got 3 more after the first one… Speaking of food in LA, I really wanted to go to an In and Out (isn’t it a bit sad that the food to look forward to in the U.S. is a fast food burger joint? In France you want wine, bread and cheese, Italy has pizza and wine, Germany has brats and beers, England has fish and chips, Greece has seafood and lamb galore and even Australia at least has kangaroo and meat pies… we stink) and I didn’t end up at an In and Out because of certain situations that arose, the most important of which was there not being an In and Out within walking distance of our temporary abode. WAIT! I almost forgot. I did have a LA food special that must be noted. One-dollar fish tacos! Delicious and cheap. Good call by Ben on that one.
Other than the good ‘ole sites and some food specials here and there, LA was a pretty short trip and I really didn’t take any pictures. For some reason, after walking all over Europe and Australia with my camera out in full tourist mode, I didn’t feel right breaking it out in my home country. In retrospect that was a poor decision. In fact, anytime I have ever decided to not take my camera with me has almost always been a poor decision. One of these days I’ll learn…
Next stop is back in Boulder by the way. I do have pictures form the big event we went to while there; Dispatch at Red Rocks! You’ll have to wait for that though.
-Phil
WalkaboutPhil 