Today as I write I am sitting on the rooftop terrace. It’s been a very warm week so far following a couple of cooler, slightly foggy weeks. My weather app says it’s currently 27 degrees – this is the Californian spring I was expecting!
After 2 months here, I finally made it to Downtown LA! It’s not that I had been avoiding Downtown, just that until this week I didn’t have a specific reason to go so hadn’t got round to it. However, on Thursday evening we were invited to a poker game with some of Harry’s friends. I have played poker once or twice, but it was several years ago and I was never completely sure of the rules, so before we went, Harry and I made it our mission to learn how to play. We asked Chat GPT to explain it to us, and it even put together a quiz so we could test each other on the cards you needed for various winning hands. It took about 55 minutes to get there in a Waymo (would be slightly quicker in an uber as you can go on the freeway then, but also twice the price). Once all the players had assembled, we decided that each person would pay in $20, second place would win their money back and first place would take the rest. It was a fun evening and nice to meet some more locals, but a poker game with 7 people does take quite a long time and takes a lot of concentration, so I was ready for bed by the time we wrapped it up – and I even walked away in joint second place with $10 prize money.
On Friday, Harry and I took one last trip to the Farmer’s Market together for lunch and an afternoon pint at our favourite bar, where I promptly spent my winnings from the previous night as a young girl was selling cookies as fundraising for a school project (I picked a chocolate chip one and it was very tasty). Harry rang a few friends whilst we ate and put in place a plan for the evening. We ended up going back to Downtown to a Taiwanese restaurant called Pine and Crane and met up with a few other people. When the restaurant closed we found a rooftop bar serving only organic wines which was a lovely end to the evening, before heading home in yet another Waymo!
On Saturday we went separate ways as Harry wanted to spend more time with his LA-based friends, so Chris and I decided to go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. The format is quite similar to the one in London, with sets you can explore, information about the film making process, and props and costumes on display from various Warner Brothers Productions, however whilst the London one is purely Harry Potter, the LA one covers lots of different shows and movies. My highlights were sitting in ‘Sheldon’s Spot’ on the Big Bang Theory set, getting a coffee from the Friends themed ‘Central Perk’ cafe, and wandering round the streets of ‘Stars Hollow’ from Gilmore Girls. After the tour, we went for a short walk in Wildwood Canyon Park with more great views of the city, followed by excellent barbecue ribs from ‘Ribs Against the Machine’. Sunday was another gloriously sunny day so after going for brunch in West Hollywood, we went up to the rooftop to enjoy the sun and a quick dip in the pool.
Harry departed for London on Monday evening (although he got stuck on the tarmac for about 5 hours before they took off due to a fault with the plane). We had a wonderful two weeks together – as I mentioned in last week’s blog, it was great to reconnect and spend lots of time in each others company again. Since arriving in LA though, I have also learned to enjoy my own company. I’ve not been very good at spending lots of time on my own before; I particularly discovered this when I was working away from home and living along in Swansea during the 2021 lockdowns. But now I’m looking forward to a few more quiet days before Chris’s parents arrive next Wednesday for a week-long stay over Easter.
I’ve started sewing my teapot dress (had a false start with my machine on Tuesday morning as the machine tension was all wrong, but after rethreading the machine again it seems to have sorted itself out so it was most likely user error!). I’ve also been researching Las Vegas as we’re intending to take a long weekend trip in May. I didn’t realise quite how many hotels there were along the Las Vegas Strip, and how many of them have quirky decor and monuments, like the pyramid at Luxor and castle at Excalibur. There’s a lot of information to digest so we haven’t decided on where we will stay or what we will do yet, more planning to follow this weekend.
Tomorrow I plan (finally) to get cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory – photos to follow next week – and we will be going to Long Beach on Saturday evening for a theatre show. We had hoped to spend Saturday exploring Long Beach, but it turns out that the Grand Prix is happening there this weekend so we may rethink that idea!
Signing off now from across the pond,
Rachel x
Adventures in the USA: Rachel's Travel Diary 
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