Days 11-13

During these days, we went to Los Angeles, CA. One word to describe this city: HOT. During our stay here, we visited the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball stadium, toured downtown, toured Hollywood, visited Rodeo Drive, and stayed at a really shady motel. Hollywood, CA was an interesting place; the streets were alive and well and the sidewalk was covered with the Hollywood stars and at the famous Chinese theater in Hollywood had the cement blocks with the handprints, signatures, and footprints of famous people. Rodeo Drive was all glitz and glamour; I saw 1 lambourghin, 1 Ferrari, and about 10 Porsche cars, and every store was high, high class. I've been buying T-shirts from all the places we've been to, and I definitely didn't buy the one for LA on Rodeo Drive. My favorite part of LA was the downtown area--it is pure Hispanic. Every store and every person except the 3 of us were Hispanic. The Spanish language was spoken everywhere in the downtown area, great stuff. No matter how long I'm immersed in this language, I can't seem to become tired of it, there is just something so intriguing and beautiful about it. Now about the motel we stayed at; it was the cheapest motel in the area for a reason. It was in a bad neighborhood and it was called the Gibson Inn. We made many jokes about this place. It was operated by some oriental person who constantly walked up and down the motel parking lot the whole night with his shirt unbuttoned, almost like he was ready to pounce on any trespasser, but I appreciate his efforts, our cargo on top of the van wasn't touched nor harmed. Every now and then he would run in place, like he was preparing for a boxing match. I'm telling you, this motel was dangerous, but we saved money. The curtains had small holes in them and the joke was that there were bullet holes. I also encountered a roach in my bed, but nonetheless many priceless memories were made at this motel. We also visited the famous Santa Monica pier, which has it's own amusement park extending into the Pacific Ocean. Next stop, Yosemite National Park...