Los Angeles - Day 2

Friday, 7/24 - we woke up, of course, trying to find a place to eat. Eating, as I mentioned is a very important part of our daily agenda. :)

It was about 10am at this time, kinda late for breakfast, and too early for lunch. Many of the places around the San Gabriel Valley were still closed. We drove along Valley St and then by chance passed by this Vietnamese restaurant called Banh Mi & Che Cali with tons of people inside. Well, that's a good sign. So we decided to give this restaurant a try. And I must say that it was a very good find! Not only did the food tasted good, it was dirt cheap!

A foot-long Vietnamese sandwich (Banh Mi) for only $2.25!

One of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, Banh Cuon, Pork Rice Roll, was only $3.75. I am sooo in love with this dish! :P

Vietnamese Curry with bread for $4.00. This was my least favorite of the 3 - probably because SQ squeezed too much lemon juice in it, making the curry more sour than it needs to be.

We also got Milk Tea for $1 each. Incredible. No wonder so many people are inside this restaurant. I would definitely recommend this place!

After the meal, we went to the Getty Center. This place is free admission but there is a $15 parking now (used to be $8 a few years ago - inflation). We came here last time, about 6-7 years ago, so don't remember much about the artwork or the place all that much. As we boarded the tram, we were advised by the volunteers there that there would be tours available. There are a multiple of tours, a garden tour, architectural tour, and various artwork gallery tours. Either these were not available last time we came, or we didn't know about them. But this time, we took advantage of these tours and it definitely made a difference!

Garden at the Getty Center

Architecture at the Getty Center

We also went inside the buildings to admire Getty's artwork collection. Maybe because I've already been to the Louvre or the Orsay Museum in Paris, Getty's collection of artwork seems so small in scale. He didn't have many of the more popular works, which I've seen in the bigger museums. So I was not impressed. I guess I'm just biased. But the Getty has much more to offer - it's a very impressive building/center just by itself. The tour guide said it took 1.2 Billion dollars to build and it took 14 years. That's crazy! Only an oil tycoon could afford such a lavish expense.

After 4 hrs at the Getty, we had a hard time leaving there. It was dead on rush hour traffic, on a Friday of course. We wanted to try out this Korean BBQ restaurant in Koreatown called Soowon Galbi Korean BBQ. 202 Yelp reviews with a 4.5 stars rating must be good. And it WAS GOOD! We got there early so no wait. We ordered their signature dish - the Soowon Galbi and Bulgogi. Both were divine. So tender and tasty! SQ liked the meats, but of course got irriated about the smell of the BBQ (like always). Apparently these BBQ charcoal smell sticks to his skin like glue.

We cruised around LA downtown again and were distracted by really loud music and a large crowd in a plaza near the music center. We decided to go check it out... so we parked. When we got to the plaza, we found out that they were offering free dance lessons and this was just one BIG dance party! An outdoor dance party - free admission! How cute! It was Disco night so they were teaching people how to dance the John Travolta dance. Then more music played and people just danced and danced. I couldn't help but to join! So fun! People there were throwing out moves that were so incredible and fun to watch. About an hour into it, they brought out another teacher to go through basic Merengue/Samba steps. I must stay that Samba is hard! I think they have these free dances every Friday. How cool was that?!?

We left around 9:30p or so and wanted to watch the new Harry Potter movie. We wanted to watch it in or near Pasadena so it would be a short ride back to the hotel after the movie. But we got disappointed that none of the nearby theaters were showing Harry Potter. We drove by Fosselman's Ice Cream parlor in Alhambra and got some ice cream. It was about 10pm at this point, but the place was packed. I was surprised to see how many people are out and about so late at night. The good thing was that the weather was so pleasant, in the low 70's... a perfect summer night. Aaaaah, sometimes I so miss those summer nights...

As we drove back to the hotel, I was so sad that our week-long vacation was soon coming to an end. What a great and fabulous vacation! We had such a wonderful time. There were so "bad" moments here and there, but overall, I really enjoyed it. When I said "bad" moments, I meant that there were times when I felt very uncomfortable not knowing where we would be staying for the night. I kept on worrying about that piece of unknown, constantly... but I guess I soon learned to accept that having a place to stay should be the least of our concern. SQ really brought out the spontaneity-fun part to the trip. We REALLY didn't have an agenda and there were lots of unknowns, but at the end of the day, it all worked out, probably for the better. We were able to do a lot of things on the fly. That is also one thing that I learned from the trip - in most of the activities, I, at first, was always hesitant to do or try something (like kayaking, etc), but ended up enjoying it after it was said and done. So I guess the lesson to learn is to have an open mind. Try it, you might like it. I did. This is one memorable trip I will never forget...well, if I ever do, I at least have this blog to remind me.