4 Days in LA

Before starting our 8-month adventure through Latin America, we decided to check out ‘Murica—because why not?

Our adventure was set to kick off in Lima, Peru, but with the quickest flight clocking in at a nauseating 30 hours, we figured we’d need a pit stop. Enter Los Angeles—a little slice of glamour to break up the marathon of misery in the skies.

We left Perth on November 3 and started our journey with 20 hours of flying (5 to Singapore, followed by 15 to Los Angeles). I know geographically it doesn’t make sense to fly further away from our destination before going to it, but we had some points with Singapore Airlines when we flew to Japan earlier this year. For a one-way ticket to LA, it only cost us $2404 AUD. With it being a world-class airline carrier, we were more than happy to be woken up by a smiling flight attendant asking if we wanted beef or chicken.

Both flights were totally fine—we were well-fed and entertained with movies for hours on end and took back some of our sleep debt on the Singapore to LA leg. After 24 hours of travel, we finally landed at LAX.

Dude, Where’s my car?

As soon as we left the airport we made our first mistake: hopping on the wrong shuttle bus to the car park. I arranged a rental car via Turo, which is pretty much like Airbnb for cars, and way cheaper than classic car hire companies. We were so eager to get outside that our detour cost us another hour before we made it to the right car park where our rental was waiting.

Now for the first challenge: driving on the other side of the road and the opposite side of the car. Luckily for me, I was assigned passenger princess the whole time in LA, leaving Haris to navigate the roads like a born-again driver. The nerves went away by day 2 as Haris became used to driving through different suburbs and taking major highways through peak traffic. Honestly, I couldn’t have done it better!

The only photo I took of Haris with the car—the morning we had to return it!

Straight Outta…

It’s almost midnight as we make it to our Airbnb in…Compton. Honestly, at the time of booking it, I was looking for the cheapest place (LA is NOT cheap) that was within a 30-minute drive to all the hotspots. Looking at it on Google Maps I thought, yeah, this is north of Compton. Well, I was wrong. The Airbnb was a semi-detached unit behind someone’s house, and despite some of the streets and characters looking highly questionable, the overall stay was fine and we felt pretty safe the whole time.

Where We Stayed

Airbnb: check it out here
Price per night: $159
Our rating: 3.5/5

Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Airbnb confirmed that we truly did stay in Compton.

Our Los Angeles Highlights

With the few days we had in such a huge city, we maximised our time by visiting specific areas each day. Here are our favourite bits from our first time in Los Angeles: 

1. Leo’s Taco Truck
   Life-changing tacos; juicy, grilled meat topped with salsas and fresh herbs. The accompaniments were self-serve, so best believe we went crazy on the sauce and onion!

2. Manhattan Beach
   A quaint, beach suburb with beautiful houses perched along the coastline. We went for a run here down to Hermosa Beach and loved the atmosphere of everyone being out and about in the sun—plenty of walkers with cute dogs, people playing volleyball, cyclists, you name it! Of course, we had to get a sweet treat afterwards and had the most delicious Strawberry Einspanner from Offset Coffee.

3. Hiking Runyon Canyon
   No explanation is needed. We hiked, saw the famous Hollywood sign and enjoyed the view of LA at the top. That night we treated ourselves to a week’s worth of calories from Randy’s donuts which was kind of epic.

4. Driving through Beverly Hills
   We were in awe seeing the houses of people who are SEVERAL tax brackets above us—think tree-lined streets with perfectly manicured lawns, leading up to an opulent front gate that gives you fleeting glimpses of a mansion that screams old money. We had fun picking our favourite and worst houses and also drove past the Menendez brother’s house. We ended up having a stupid fight there so I’m going to blame that on bad juju and murder vibes.

5. Santa Monica Pier & Venice Beach
   Not much to say about either of these places except that it was nice to walk along the coast and people-watch. Both areas also had a lot of crackheads doing crackhead things (yelling at people, being schizophrenic, public nudity, using etc.) so we were a little on edge for most of the visit. You can walk from either beach to the next in about an hour, with the path just short of 5km.

We decided to skip out on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Rodeo Drive—must-see spots for some, but not for us. Besides, avoiding them meant dodging the temptation to splurge on things we didn’t need, even though we had been hyping each other up for months to visit the brands we liked. Keep in mind that LA is not a cheap place to visit, so most of the things we did were free and at our own pace.

With 8 months of travel ahead of us, we were pretty happy seeing all the places we did in Los Angeles on a small-ish budget. We spent a bit more than $300 a day between us, which is pretty on track for the average budget traveller according to this source.

Total spent in 4 days: $1293* AUD

*includes accommodation, food, car rental, fuel & parking expenses.