Cities and Escapes

Funny story at Walgreens haha

*It's been sooooo long! I've been so busy with work and such - but here is Day Two of our LA trip :)


Day Two
Destination – Downtown LA, Staples Center, Santee Valley, Pershing Square, Macy’s Square

   We woke up very early to get ready for a day of exploring around LA. We went downstairs for some breakfast then tried to look for a cab continuously and eventually we found a cab (sketchy, just a little bit) driver. He asked where we were from, what our nationality was, what we were doing here in LA and what our names were (honestly very scared at this point). So then Veronica decide to give the cab driver fake names. Apparently she was Emily but I couldn’t think on my feet so I just told him my real name. We asked him to drop us off at Figueroa St. where the Staples Centre was located. The celebration parade for the Lakers’ championship was held there. We got out of the cab and could not help but notice herds of yellow and purple roaming around the streets causing scenery. People were cheering, honking their car horns, screaming, running around… there was just so much spirit. Always been a Lakers’ fan since I was young so I was super glad we came to the Lakers’ parade (perfect timing to visit LA). After the crazy parade, we had no idea of where to go, where we were going, how to get there – so, we just walked in the direction of the crowd. Somehow, we ended up in the Fashion district in Santee Valley (who knew LA split up downtown into a gazillion different districts  - there was the jewelry district, toy, bank, etc). There were so many cheap finds here and not to mention, an enormous amount of Mexicans and Spanish people. To be honest, this was probably one of the sketchiest areas that we visited in LA. Only because the area was far from what I pictured LA to be (palm trees, sand, and all that jazz). This area was culturally orientated selling different things ranging from foods to clothing. We did manage to find so many good deals. I bought a bunch of rompers and dresses for a pretty good price and we scored big time on the one dollar nail polishes (looove).

        While walking through Santee Valley, we found a frozen yogurt place that we looked sort of maybe like an outcast from the rest of the stores. When we walked in, it was fairly new and looked very modern. It was a self-serve frozen yogurt stand where you could choose from these two obnoxiously large sized frozen yogurt containers (they were huge). After indulging in some delicious frozen yogurt, we decided to stroll around some more and eventually wanted to find a cab to go to Hollywood. But, we ran out of luck – supposedly the cabs were not in the area we were in at all so we were told to walk north to the Jewelry district. So there we were, two Toronto girls who have never been to LA went exploring around downtown. Is that a little dangerous? Lol. Thankfully it wasn’t night time. We stopped for a quick bite at Subway (a familiar store, yay). We were also in search for a washroom and found out that most places do not even offer washrooms for customers (not even at Starbucks in some locations)! But… there was a filthy non-sanitized-portable-outdoor-washroom-with-a-30min-wait-long-line-up that every other citizen used that was available - joy.

       Next stop, we went intrigued by the gorgeous palm trees down at Pershing Square. We went to go camwhore a little (because that’s what girls do when they’ve never seen palm trees in their life before coming to LA. But mind you, this Pershing square we’re speaking of smelled like urine. How disgusting). Afterwards we dropped by Walgreens and met an interesting cashier… very, interesting.  Anyway, then we went over to Macy’s square to do a little shopping. When we got there, Veronica decided to run a little experiment. She went up to a lady that worked at Macy’s and asked where the “washroom” was. Apparently Americans get confused when us Canadians say the word washroom instead of restroom.  I did not know that – and well her experiment was successful because the Macy’s worker did give us a fairly weird look. We did some shopping at MAC – I purchased a new gel liner in black track and Veronica purchased a new lip stick in Vegas Volt (beautiful bright colour). After we left, I bumped into a representative from this charity/organization. I was actually very interested because in my student group I was hoping in somehow working with different charities doing different things so I was talking to the girl for about 15 minutes – sorry Vee haha. We went over to 505 Shops were we found these really interesting backboards for décor in the food court that each had unique quoting on them. We were exhausted and decided to stop for Starbucks and then we took the cab back to our hotel.