L.A. Weekend Getaway

We've been married four years! To celebrate this year we planned a fantastic four day trip to Los Angeles. We planned and re-planned, and ended up cramming many, many activities into our time there. We also landed some sweet deals thanks to priceline.com and Groupon.

First up: Hotels
We purposely procrastinated booking hotel reservations and ended up with some very nice deals thanks to priceline. The first two nights we stayed at the Hilton in Glendale/Northern Los Angeles. We had to stay in a non-smoking room on a smoking floor which was bearable, but probably only because the hotel was busy with all the Stanford football players! We walked in to the hotel and saw people wearing Stanford shirts, and the hotel staff had tags that said "Welcome Stanford". I was a little confused for a bit due to my complete lack of knowledge about Stanford sports.

Our last night we stayed at the Marriott in Santa Monica. They have some giant furniture in the lobby. After driving through dirty, busy Hollywood this place was so peaceful and clean! We took advantage of the pool and hot tub here. Don't worry, I didn't cook my baby. I sat on the step and made sure most of my body was out of the water and freezing.

Activities
We bought season passes to Universal Studios the last time we were in southern California in March. We got to check out the 3-D King Kong ride during the studio tour, and every show they had playing. We tried to get a picture with Homer and Marge, but the guy taking the picture was iPhone inept so all I have is this dorky picture with Dora I took for Will. We missed Will a ton, but gratefully were able to leave him with Nana and Papa in Brentwood.
We got free tickets to a taping of a new sitcom for ABC called, "Better With You". We had to get there by 4:00 and the ticket said to expect it to take 3.5-4 hours. About 11 PM we were finally dragging ourselves back to our car. That's right it took 7 hours to film a 20 minute TV show. It was actually very enjoyable for the first few hours. They had a stand-up comedian perform to help keep our spirits up, and they fed us pizza. It was really fun to see the different parts of the set, and how all the different groups work together on the set. They were just really slow. But while the security guard was ushering me to the bathroom I walked right by three of the younger stars of the show. My first brush with fame:)
The next morning we headed up to Griffith Park. The movies 500 Days of Summer, and Yes Man inspired my planning for this trip. The girl in Yes Man heads a jogging photography group and they meet at the observatory in Griffith Park. This park is HUGE and was donated to the city by a rich man named Griffith in the late 1800s. It houses the L.A. Zoo, a big cemetary, the Hollywood sign (seen behind us), the observatory, the Greek Theater, and probably many more things I don't know about.
The observatory has some great, free exhibits on telescopes, the Sun, our solar system and galaxy, etc. You could spend a lot of time looking at the exhibits, watching a movie in the planetarium, and enjoying the view from the roof.
Unfortunately we had a great view of some city smog. It was still beautiful although slightly asthma inducing:) Britton thinks L.A. is the next Mexico City.
We headed out to Santa Monica next and enjoyed some shopping at Santa Monica Place, the busy outdoor mall. We got some nice shoes, and watched the crazy street performers.

Santa Monica Pier is not too far away from the outdoor mall. We actually didn't do much here. Just enjoyed the walk, the view, and the lack of smog.
On our way out we stopped by the Los Angeles temple. It's amazing how close it can be to Santa Monica Blvd, and yet SO incredibly peaceful. We got to see the new visitor's center which had been closed for renovations for the last three years! The displays are very high-tech and inspiring. I admit I had to leave the service area because I just couldn't keep the tears in check. Pregnancy hormones... But they had some really sweet stories about people serving their neighbors.

Food!

I love Groupon. We found some gems of restaurants in some of the most unlikeliest of places thanks to Groupon. And at at least 50% off! First up was some really gourmet Peruvian food right in the heart of L.A.

Mo-Chica is located inside the Mercado La Paloma. Britton got the ceviche of the day, I ordered the potato salad of the day, and we shared the Lomo Saltado. It's prime beef fillet with red onions, roma tomatoes, and french fries. I wish I could do the dishes justice, but all I can say is that the presentation was beautiful and it tasted so so good.

We spent one evening at Gonpachi, a Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills. The setting was beautiful. There was a Japanese garden outside, and the rest of the large restaurant reminded me of a Japanese castle.
I ordered the weird food like seaweed salad, which Britton actually tried as you can see below! I like seaweed salad. They had these amazing Japanese skewers which were cooked over a special kind of imported wood giving it a rich smoky flavor.

The last Groupon restaurant was Annisette Brasserie in downtown Santa Monica. I had to try my first pate. It was way better than I imagined, but I think it was mostly enjoyable because I was slightly ignorant of what it really was. Besides that, I had some amazing french toast. I'm not sure if French toast is really French, but they did a gourmet job of it. Britton had a tasty breakfast croissant with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.