We decided to plan a massive vacation to mark Jason’s milestone birthday. After two years of lockdowns and travel restrictions. We decided that we needed to do something epic. So, we looked at places on our travel bucket list and opted to tick one of those off the list. High on the list was Hawaii. As this was Jason’s 50th birthday having a Hawaii 5-0 themed vacation seemed perfect.
As this was our first long-haul journey in over eight years, I was concerned about flying. It was an eleven hours flight to the West Coast of America and then another five hours to Honolulu. So, we decided to plan an overnight stopover in Los Angeles to break the journey up. Our overnight stays quickly escalated into a few days as we started planning adventures in the City of Angels.
Hollywood
On the way out, we opted to spend our time in Hollywood, doing fun, touristy things there. After a surprisingly good flight, we checked into our hotel and got a good night’s sleep. We woke up early because of the time difference but decided to make the most of the early start and headed out to the Hollywood Hills. On Instagram, I discovered a scenic spot for taking photos of the Hollywood Sign. So in the morning, we drove to Lake Hollywood Park to take pictures of the views.
We spend the rest of the morning at the Warner Bros Studio Tour. (I’ll write another blog post about that adventure). In the afternoon headed over to The Grove. Again, on Instagram, I read about a fun pop-up shop at the shopping centre. I’m used to big shopping malls as we love close to Westfield London. But, The Grove is surreal. They had an old-fashioned trolley bus running around the centre and amazing fountains.
Netflix at The Grove
The reason we went there was for the Netflix at The Grove. A pop-up concept store based on your favourite Netflix shows. The store is a mixture of photo ops and merchandise. The shop sold an array of Netflix-based merchandise, from t-shirts to Pop Funkos. But also, more unusual things like Bridgeton Tea and cushions are based on the original Netflix user icons. As this was our first day, I had to restrain my spending!
We headed down to Venice Beach in the evening to watch the sunset. Venice Beach is one of those places you see on TV, somewhere I had always wanted to visit. After walking around the canals, we found a lovely rooftop bar for drink to unwind after our hectic day.
