72

“When its 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles.” 

-Neil Simon

Our second stop in California was Los Angeles.  We actually took the train into Los Angeles from San Diego, but we were picking up another friend at LAX, so we got to drive by and sing Party In The USA by Miley Cyrus... 

I hopped off the plane at LAX...

 Sidney really wanted to go to Venice Beach because she had heard of it before.  We looked around and it seemed a bit sketchy; this prompted a very interesting conversation:

Sidney: What is Venice Beach even famous for?

Friend: Weirdos and weed.

So, after we left Venice Beach, we went shopping on Third Street Promenade.  After deciding we only had a few more hours left in Downtown, we went to the Santa Monica Pier.

Our friend's model pose (and the Santa Monica Pier behind us)

Sidney and I on the Ferris Wheel

The next day, we spend the night at our friend's house in the suburbs.  After finding out that he had a pool, we decided to just spend the day having a BBQ pool party.

Such a nice treat!

We were all in the mood for board games, so we decided to play four simultaneously.

Othello, Monopoly,
Jenga, and Risk

It got messy really quickly.

We didn't finish any of the games (except for Jenga; Sidney just volunteered to lose), but it was a lot of fun.  I learned how to play Risk for the first time, therefore solidifying my desire to take over the world.

We had a lot of fun just hanging out in the sun for the days that we were in LA.  Unfortunately for us, Sidney and I had to go to bed relatively early (11pm is relatively early for vacation, right?) that night to get up at 4AM for our 7 AM flight from Long Beach to San Francisco.

Rachel