Los Angeles - California

Last week (from 7 to 14 of August) I spent in Los Angeles, California, with my brother Rodrigo and my sister-n-law Andressa. I stood with them at their place in Culver City, with Jean (Andressa’s brother), Neila (Andressa’s mother) and Roberta (Jean’s girlfriend). I had a good time there, in most part because I was with my brother (I couldn’t remember last time that we spent one week together). LA is a huge city, and everything is far away from. You need car there, otherwise you will stay most of time depending on bus service (a bit better than Lubbock, but still not that good). Fortunately Rodrigo has a car there and we hang out together, so it became easier for me without car.
The first day we went to the Gatty Museum, where there are some paintings from Monet and one from Van Gogh! It’s incredible the color of those paintings. There was an exposition about how to make bronze statues. Step by step. It’s a hard work for those artists. After that we went to Manhattan Beach to watch the sun set. Actually the weather was a bit foggy and we stood there just drinking mate and chatting, because the sun was hidden by the fog.
Another beach that we went was Santa Monica. That was the nicest beach that we went around there. We went to Malibu too, but there is nothing there, besides rocks and a 3 meters sand beach. Indeed I enjoyed it!
I went to downtown too. The place that I most liked was the Staple Center, were the LA Lakers play. It is a big stadium. I tried to walk there, but there is no way to do that. I walked more than 5 miles and I’ve covered less than one third of the downtown. Other place that I went with Jean was the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), where there were some expositions of Greek, Mesopotamian and Indian artifacts and statues. I was surprised by how few we know about Asian culture and arts. I knew something about Indian because of the Yôga classes and the teaching of the instructors there back in Brazil. Unfortunately we covered just 3 floors of one of the 4 buildings of the museum. I left the rest for another opportunity because we were running out of time.
When I was there I bought a new camera for me (a Canon PowerShot SX 10 IS). It is amazing! I love that camera. I took some really good shoots there. I spent I think about 2 hours in a place called The Rose Garden, close to the Olympic Center. There they have 147 varieties of roses and a fountain in the center of the park where there was some kids playing in the water. The colors and the speed of the camera are really good (if you want to check those pictures, go to http://wallau.shutterfly.com and type the password “wallau” to get access).
Other hotspots that I’ve visited were Hollywood sign, China Theater, some of the main streets of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Street (where the most famous brands have stores, like Luis Viton, Victor Hugo, Christian Dior, Ralph Loren…).





Summing up, LA is a nice place, beautiful city with lots of attractions and a place where you can find people from all around, but is not a place for me. Is good to go there and visit, but far too big for me. However I enjoyed it!