Settling In

The heatwave has finally started!

It's been pretty cool here for the last month but the temperatures have risen the last week or so. This came just in time for our first non-family visitor. My brother's and my friend, Jon, came to visit from Toronto. He'd never been to California so I'm glad the weather warmed up to temperatures expected of the Southern Cal!

Before I moved, I'd been to Los Angeles quite a few times. It'd been a while, though, since I did any sightseeing. Jon was the perfect excuse to get out and explore my new city. The cool thing about Los Angeles is how many famous places there are to go to. L.A. isn't a weekend trip by any means. Jon was here for a week so we made plans to hit all the hot spots; downtown L.A. (which used to be pretty bad but has since seen a resurgence with the building of 'LA Live', a shopping and dining area located outside Staples Center and the Nokia Theater), Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Malibu, Venice Beach, Manhattan Beach, and of course, the hottest of all (haha) Hermosa Beach. We rode the famous farris wheel at the Santa Monica pier, took a trip to Pepperdine and ate dinner beachside in Malibu, drove through Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, had breakfast in Manhattan Beach and drove along the Sunset Strip in Hollywood on the way to dinner and a stop at the Hollywood sign. P.S., if you're ever in town and need directions to a great place to see the Hollywood sign up close, let me know! We bought a $5 map of the stars and got great directions that took us up the winding roads of the Hollywood Hills to a small street that has the sign, basically, in the backyard of a few houses. It's a cool drive anyway- at one point, the map wanted us to take a "hairpin" turn on the way up the hills. It was a lot of fun to see all the sites! We swam in the ocean, played some beach tennis and volleyball in Hermosa. We drove south to Newport Beach to whale watch and took surfing lessons in Redondo Beach. Jon wanted the full California experience and I didn't mind seeing and doing it right along with him!


It's fun being a tourist, even in a city you live in. It Atlanta, I tried to do as much "touristy" stuff as possible and I've even been talking to my mom about doing a walking tour of Toronto when I make the trip back in a few weeks. I love getting to know more about different cities and love trying new things and eating at new places. I'm sure there's much more to L.A. than we even touched upon during Jon's visit, so hopefully more people will come on out and give me another excuse to see the sights!

(Let this be incentive for some of you to come visit...Emily Dove and Lisa McKenna I'm talking to you.)