los angeles zoo and observatory

after the racecar adventure, we headed to the coast of the beautiful place of santa monica. our real reason for going to california was for the racecar thing but we couldn't just stay one day of course. so, naturally, we made it into a whole week sort of vacation. we stayed in a hotel right next to the famous santa monica pier and two blocks from third street promenade. both of those places is where we spent most of our time.

we got to our hotel later that afternoon and spent the rest of the day just relaxing and enjoying the beach atmosphere. we ate lunch at the cutest little cafe right on the beach. our table was literally on the beach. it was awesome. after that we walked around the pier, enjoyed the sandy beaches, and went to bed early. i was sick the whole time we were in cali (thank you flu shot) so our nights ended in the old lady hour. 

the next day we headed into los angeles. santa monica is pretty close to it so it made it fairly easy minus the traffic of course. we first headed to the fashion district to shop around. i always feel like i'm in mexico when we go there. all the people pretty much shout at you in mexican so it literally feels like a swap meet in mexico! it was fun though. they will sometimes have good stuff. i didn't want to stay too long because it can be kinda scary. thank heavens for a tall husband who happened to have a beard. makes him look a little more scruffy (thanks to no shave november). 

we also wanted to do some things we hadn't done before since we've been to this area quite a few times. we read about the los angeles zoo and thought it would be fun to go to. we were right. i had a blast. i could watch the animals all day probably. it is a pretty cool place to go to. we were probably the only adults there without kids. it was kinda funny but oh well. we enjoyed ourselves. the elephant, zebra, and giraffe were my favorites. oh and the gorillas. they were hilarious. i think i literally sat and watched the elephants and gorillas for almost an hour. poor quin. they are just so cool though. they had some other awesome animals that i couldn't even pronounce the names of it. and some animals were endangered or almost extinct. it is sad to think that you could be looking at one of the last surviving one of that species. if only the world were more careful. it started to rain when we were getting ready to go so it was pretty much perfect timing.

the zoo is in a place called the griffith park which is pretty much an awesome place in the middle of a huge city where there is only nature. it is a super pretty place. so once you enter griffith park, you can do all sorts of things. after the zoo, we headed up to the griffith observatory. it is up on a hill and you can see all of los angeles. it was getting cloudy from the rain so our view wasn't the best but we could still see the bustling city down below. 

the observatory is a cool place with all sorts of fun information. they have a pendulum right in the center of the foyer when you walk in. it moves back and forth and shifts while the earth rotates. every like ten minutes it knocks down another peg. it is cool to think about because the pendulum isn't actually moving the earth is. they have all sorts of info about the stars, the sun, day and night, and all of that sort of stuff. pretty interesting. on a clear night, you can look up into their huge telescopes and see consolations. since it was cloudy we didn't stick around until nightfall to look through them. it would have been way cool though.

once we left the observatory our plan was to go see the walk of fame. we have both seen it before but not together so we thought it would be fun. i'm not a fan of cold, especially wet and cold, so we decided against that. we did drive down it and look at the hollywood stars from the car. we were getting hungry at this point so we yelp.comed a cheesecake factory. it took us to this way cute outdoor shopping mall called the grove. we had never been there but it was so cute. they were setting up for christmas so they had a huge tree and santa's workshop all set up, stars hanging from the lights across the walkways. it was so dang cute. the tree wasn't lit up yet but it was stinkin huge. we enjoyed our cheesecake factory and then walked around there for a bit. by then it had stopped raining.

after our little adventure at the grove, we headed back to santa monica and hit the sack. we had a long day of doing touristy things and we were excited to relax for the night. sorry in advance for all the pictures....