Long Beach, Universal Studios and Rodeo Drive

This is a catch up post covering 2 weekend outings - continuing with our goal to eventually cover all the beaches within an hour of LA we went to Long Beach and made a quick stopover at Redondo beach on the way back. Long Beach has a lot of attractions such as the aquarium, Queen Mary, a mall and of course the beach itself. We did quite a bit of walking, all the way from the aquarium parking lot to the beach (we decided to skip the aquarium itself since it was perfect weather outside, OK - actually because we were too cheap to spend $20 on a ticket!). Anyway, it's a good thing that Lucas still enjoys all the free things (like sand) more than expensive stuff...that will change so we're taking advantage while we can!

On the way back from Long Beach we decided to check out the famous Pacific Coast Highway or PCH as the locals refer to it (reminds me of Singapore, all the roads there are 3 letter acronyms as well). Unfortunately we chose the section of PCH that is nowhere near the coast. So it was quite a boring drive through a series of strip malls and tire shops until we got to Redondo beach. This takes our "beach count" to 5 now, so we decided to take a break from the beach the following weekend.

Instead we thought it would be time to be tourists and go to Universal Studios Citywalk. Again, we were too cheap to actually go in ($60 per ticket!) but we got our free souvenir photo outside the entrance :-)

Actually we did have a reason to go to Universal Studios without entering the theme park - we collect Hard Rock Cafe shot glasses everywhere we go, and HRC in LA is actually located in Universal Studios Citywalk. So we paid the outrageous $10 for parking (not to mention sitting in a jam for 20 minutes to get into the parking lot) just to get our shot glasses! Well, mission accomplished and next stop Rodeo Drive!

What a fantastic place! While Yean Lin went window shopping, I just feasted my eyes on the road. Ferraris, Bentleys, Jaguars, a procession of luxury cars cruise by. Mercedes are a dime a dozen here. Our Pontiac certainly is out of place and safely hidden from view on a side street (yes - we managed to get street parking!). Anyway, while I'm ogling the cars, a white Range Rover parks right in front of me and a little lady emerges, who turns out to be Paula Abdul! I know this is the real Paula Abdul because it took her 5 tries to park properly and she's tiny! So that's my first LA celebrity sighting!