The next day the girls had tickets for Ellen so I set off towards a coffee shop to post a blog and then headed towards the beach. Erin and Kristen live about 8 blocks from the beach in Santa Monica so after a quick walk I arrived at the beach and then rented a bike to ride towards Venice.
Venice Beach is a cool place. Down the entire boardwalk, there are homeless people taking naps on the beach while creepy guys invite you inside a shop to “become legal, visit the 420 doctor today”.
I stopped at the skatepark for a while and took pictures.
That night we grabbed some dinner and then started drinking wine at the apartment, trying to decide if we wanted to go out or not. The second I found Kristen’s guitar… things changed. We ended up sitting around and singing songs for a while before heading to the grocery store for more Vino, guitar in tote.
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| Rockin! |
The next morning, we woke up and started getting ready to go to the Getty Museum. If you live in LA and have never been to the Getty or are visiting and want a chill afternoon full of culture then I would recommend going. I hear the museum is full of great paintings, sculptures & photographs but we wouldn’t know considering we made it as far as the lawn before we started cracking open bottles of wine with a pocket knife cause we had forgotten the corkscrew. From there we started taking TONS of pictures, I think we took over 1,000 in that few hours alone.
This was the one picture we took inside the museum.
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| Man with a Hoe |
Ashley and Erin had been asked to come back for another taping of the Ellen show so I headed towards Hollywood and Rodeo Dr. Pretty cool but nothing to get all excited about.
That night we went out to dinner and then went out to some bar in Venice. I have heard about LA before but now I understand when people say that everyone in LA is beautiful. The entire time I was there all I wanted to do was go outside and run around.
I did notice something very interesting while I was there, though. In Atlanta, if you are out at a bar and meet someone and you tell them that you wait tables or are a bartender, some people will automatically discount you due to the fact that you don’t have a “real job”. I was out right before I left Atlanta and met a few people who when they asked what I did and I told them that I didn’t do anything (because I had recently quit my job) they started going on and on about how the economy is tough right now and how hard grad school was and bla bla bla… before backing out of the conversation because they were board with sharing their accomplishments with someone whom they barely knew. Gotta love surface level relationships!
The next morning I woke up and drove down to San Diego to visit my buddy Copeland who had just graduated from the Navy Seal Program. I had been told before that the drive was a quick one, but in all actuality that’s a lie. The drive is not bad at all but it was a little longer than the 45 minuets that I had been told.
Once I got down to San Diego, I headed straight for the base to meet up with Copeland. I got to see all the guys running around training and also got to see his bunker where he has been living for the past year. I don’t know how much you all know about the Navy Seals but it is nothing that I would ever want to do. These guys are badasses and hearing the stories about their training was awesome! I went with a few of his friends to get some dinner in Coronado before heading towards La Jolla to meet up with my friend Kelsey.
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| Kelsey and Peanut |
Kelsey just moved to La Jolla from Nashville and loves it! She works for LocalEats which is an online social platform where locals can go in and rate restaurants in their area. It was awesome catching up with her and getting to play with Peanut (her dog). The next morning we walked to breakfast down by the beach before she had to head to an appointment. I went back to her place to hang out with Peanut and get some stuff done. At noon I get this phone call from my friend Malcom telling me that he was in San Diego with our other friend Melanie. Since Copeland had some things he had to wrap up at the base, we went and grabbed lunch before meeting up with him.
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| The Dudes |
It was awesome getting to hang with Malcom and Melanie for a while, I basically regurgitated the tour that Copeland had given be the day before and then we headed to check out the place that Copeland and his Seal buddy’s were going to be living for the next year.
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| Melanie & Malcom |
Their place is completely bad ass, right next to the University of San Diego and on top of this huge hill with amazing views of Sea World and the ocean. Melanie wanted a picture with the Seals (naturally) so after a little photo shoot I took Melanie and Malcom back to their hotel so they could get ready for their function that night.
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| Melanie with the Seals |
I headed back to grab Copeland and take him to the airport for his 1 week leave and then drove back up to LA to go clubbin! My friends Chad and Drew both live in LA and one of Chad’s jobs is promoting clubs. He had gotten me on the list so I went straight there. I wish I had taken more pictures while I was there because he threw one hell of a party. At one point the Cookie Monster came out and got on the bar and was pouring Tequila into everyone’s mouths. I got to go down to the V.I.P. room which was pretty cool before heading back to Drew’s place to spend the night.
The next morning I woke up early to get my oil changed in my car (which took all day) before heading to the beach with Chad and our friend Bethany that also lives in LA. That night I went over to Drew’s to grill out before making the drive to Vegas. LA ROCKED!
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