If California is for dreamers, catch me sleeping.

(Continuing on from our last story, where we stopped in Jacksonville, which you can read about here…)

Ever since I arrived to Portland in January, it’s been cloudy and rainy. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to go to California, where the sunshine and vitamin D is abundant.

When visiting a place, I like to see how the locals see it, as well as the tourist areas. So I appreciate that we got to see the good and not so good bits that California has to offer.

We also got to see family and old friends, and make new friends which made the experience all the more enjoyable. Having locals give you suggestions is the best (shout out to our homegirl Chace!), because we wouldn’t have known where to start with the amount of things to do in Los Angeles.

Having grown up mostly watching American TV, I especially enjoyed seeing Los Angeles and realising it’s not all as glamorous as it’s made out to be (while being even more glamorous in certain areas). I’ve heard people refer to Hollywood as ‘Hillbrow’ which is an area in Johannesburg which has become pretty rough in the last few years.

Although walking along the Hollywood Walk of Fame at midnight was fun, it gave me flashbacks of walking down Long Street in Cape Town, with my hand tightly grasped on my purse in case a mugger ran by. I was warned before heading there to lower my expectations of Hollywood. It’s also pretty sad because around all the glitz and glamour there are people sitting on the road along side the stars, with no place to call home.

On a more positive note, it was quite fascinating how it seemed that everyone in Los Angeles is extremely good looking. It’s like the “Zoolander” of cities. There’s this vibe in the air that’s infectious, where everyone seems happy from soaking up the sunshine and all the In-N-Out fries. I especially enjoyed people watching, LA is full of bloggers walking around taking selfies.

I didn’t realise how close all the popular suburbs are to eachother. Despite our limited time in LA, we got to tick Orange County, Long Beach, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Malibu and Calabasas (I secretly keep up with the Kardashians) off my bucket list, all in the matter of a few days. It was worth the sleep deprivation because I’ve been “California dreaming” ever since…