Travel Diary: Los Angeles

The stuff of movies, the loss of Disney magic, and the tourist experience

One week into my vacation — and I’m exhausted. The good kind of exhausted though. Where I feel like I’ve spent my day to the fullest and I don’t feel bad about falling asleep in my hotel room by 9 p.m. This trip will be the longest vacation I’ve ever been on, and it’s being spent on exploring the US West Coast and Alberta, while visiting friends and family along the way. I’ve also been challenging myself to create as little waste as possible, which I’m planning on writing an update on by the end of this trip. So far, it’s been more difficult than I expected, but more to come on that later.

Starting off in Los Angeles, California, my parents and I visited the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was within walking distance of our Airbnb. There was a long line to take pictures with NSYNC’s star, which I thought was weird because there wasn’t a lineup for pictures with anyone else’s star, but I later found out that it was because NSYNC had received their star earlier that day. We wandered along Hollywood Boulevard for a bit longer, but there wasn’t really anything interesting to see once the novelty wore off.

It was cloudy all of the next day when we visited Disneyland, but thankfully it didn’t rain! We arrived bright and early at the park, but it still took almost an hour to get through the lineups and security, which kind of soured the “magic” experience of it. Having been to Disney World in Florida before though, the amusement park seemed redundant (yeah, I know that sounds ungrateful) and a bit outdated.

Many of the rides were the exact same as the ones in the Florida park, and a few of the rides were based on movies I’d never even heard of. I can only speculate that they would want to keep those rides around as a nostalgia factor for the older crowds, including parents, but I still wonder why they haven’t replaced them with rides based on their much more popular and commercially successful movies that kids (probably their biggest target audience) and young adults (like me, who grew up a big fan of the Disney franchise) are more familiar with. Overall, Disneyland was a little disappointing for me.

Next up on our trip itinerary was the beach. I hadn’t been to a proper beach in a long time, so I was excited to visit Santa Monica the following day. Unfortunately, it was way colder than I expected and I didn’t end up going swimming at all. However, the ocean was absolutely beautiful and I wished I could spend all day just listening to the waves crash. We also drove to Malibu to look at all the fancy houses and walked along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, though all of the tourists (including ourselves) didn’t dare to walk into any of the expensive designer stores.

Over the next few days, my parents and I visited popular L.A. neighbourhoods like Little Tokyo, Koreatown, and Chinatown. My mom was most excited about visiting Chinatown, so she was hugely disappointed when we got there and realized that the neighbourhood was largely neglected. There was hardly anyone (tourists or locals) visiting the area and businesses were quiet. It wasn’t anything like Chinatown in Toronto, but we’re hopeful that when we visit San Francisco’s Chinatown we’ll be a little more impressed.

At this point in our trip, my cousins and my aunt and uncle had joined us. We took the Warner Bros. Studio Tour together, and for the first time on the trip so far, I had a tourist experience that felt like it was worth it. Our tour guide drove us around the studio on a stretch golf cart and told us about the many famous movie and TV scenes that were filmed at the Burbank studio, such as Friends and Jurassic Park. We also got to visit the set of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which was unreal because I used to watch the show every day after high school.The most bizarre fact that I learned on the tour was that when they film winter scenes, they pluck every single leaf off of the trees that are seen on camera and pile up fake snow everywhere, and then clip on fake leaves for the next time they need to film a spring or summer scene.

Along the way, we also made a few stops to some iconic movie set locations in the L.A. area like the Bradbury Building (where my favourite movie, 500 Days of Summer, filmed their ending scene) and the Griffith Observatory (most recently of La La Land fame).

My favourite part of the trip so far, however, happened in the following days, so check back soon after I write about looking for crabs and other sea life at tide pools in Laguna Beach, dolphin watching at Dana Point, snorkeling in the marine reserve at La Jolla Cove (right by the local sea lion and seal population), and visiting the Grand Canyon National Park.

*Update May 23, 2018: Click here to read Part 2. 

*Update June 5, 2018: Click here to read Part 3. 

*Update June 15, 2018: Click here to read Part 4. 

*Update July 12, 2018: Click here to read Part 5. 

Photos by Karen K. Tran/The Ontarion