When my sister Marcy and I were planning our trip to LA for the first time, we knew we wanted it to be basic as hell and just full of all the fun things we wanted to do that were maybe not as ‘cool’ as the guides we saw online lol. We were looking for really pretty IG-worthy spots in LA, places to spot celebrities and then a mix of really amazing, healthy food joints and coffee shops. We stayed in Venice right off the beach in this cute & tiny air bnb. We took this trip to LA back in April 2019 (our second trip was September of 2019 and we definitely did LA better the second time lol – I’ll share that post when I finish it!)
Here’s how we spent our days
Our 5 Day Los Angeles Itinerary:
Day 1.
This was a half day, since we flew in. We grabbed our rental car, went to Target and did some shopping and bought snacks and wine. Then we went back to our Air BnB in Venice.
Day 2.
Our first full day! We grabbed coffee & went hiking up Runyon.
Had lunch at Pink Taco. We were hungry and ate at one of the first places we saw – it was okay but I don’t recommend it. There are many more amazing joints nearby but we hadn’t planned out any of the food places we wanted to eat at so stopped at the fist one we saw.
Walked over to Chateau Marmot (Pink Taco is just down the block) & ended up chatting with a TMZ pap lol (more about that below).
Wandered The Grove in West Hollywood, went to Madam Toussad’s wax museum and the Walk of Fame. It was insanely busy here, I didn’t know what to expect but I didn’t expect it to all be smack in the middle of tourism central for some reason lol.
We went to a Jimmy Kimmel show and snagged some free passes to the Hozier concert – definitely a fun experience and we ended up on tv right beside Jimmy LOL!
Day 3.
We had lunch at a boujee little cafe that Gwyneth Paltrow frequents – The Butcher’s Daughter. It is beautiful and I love the whole vibe of the place. The food was delicious too. Highly recommend.
We wandered around Venice a bit, went to Kreation, found a Trader Joes and bought some food and snacks (we don’t have Trader Joes in Canada so this in on par with Target for a must-stop).
We watched the sunset at the beach and snapped some photos of all the pretty lifeguard towers.
Then we got ready and went out to West Hollywood for the night.
Day 4.
Lowkey hungover today so we scootered around Venice, the boardwalk and up to Santa Monica.
Had lunch on the beach and tried to hydrate haha – I hadn’t had a drink in so long before this trip so the night out killed me.
We got dressed and went back to West Hollywood (see – we were always there!) and walked Melrose for a bit, checking out the pretty walls and taking photos.
Had dinner with Marcy’s bf’s brother and his girlfriend at a nice seaside restaurant in Santa Monica.
Day 5.
We drove over to West Hollywood area again for our Warner Bros tour.
Grabbed lunch near Warner Bros studio & POSSIBLY saw a celeb.. I’m convinced it was him but ya’ll over on my IG when I shared it didn’t think so. Check it out below and lmk who you think it was.
Grabbed coffees and spent the afternoon checking out Mulholland Drive and celebrity homes.
This was our first time in LA and we kind of went with a ‘winging it’ vibe. We had so much fun (we always have the best time together though anywhere).
Um, staying in Venice was a mistake…
At least for us it was. I think it’s better to just drive there and spend a day enjoying Venice. Everyone we talked to before booking recommended to stay in Venice and how amazing it was; because we knew nothing about LA or any of the areas around LA, we thought staying by the beach would be amazing. We thought we were chill like that but we weren’t LOL.
Honestly, the air bnb we stayed at was super tiny, but cute inside. It was a nice apartment… however, it was smack in the middle of crack central. There were homeless people and shady guys everywhere (literally a homeless guy sleeping in the bushes right outside our door) and as two women travelling together, we just didn’t feel safe walking around that whole area. Venice is really pretty during the day, we were a stones throw from the beach but would we ever stay in this area again? No.
I don’t even have a picture of the apartment, we could catch a glimpse of the beach from the front patio though (that’s how close we were). There were a lot of pee soaked alleys that reeked during the day and just transients everywhere being shady. For us, the location wasn’t worth the view lol. Here’s a pretty photo we took at sunset though! 🙂
If we had stayed farther right (towards Santa Monica) or a bit more to the left in a touristy area in Venice, where lots of everyday people and tourists were wandering around, we definitely would have felt safer to be out later, checking out the shops and restaurants. Where our spot was, everything was locked and boarded up early and then shoeless transients and tons of creepy dudes were just hanging out everywhere. I definitely don’t recommend this area, honestly, not a big fan of Venice either but I guess that comes down to personal preference and I was definitely swayed by this trip.
Our second day in LA (first FULL day):
The morning started with grabbing bulletproof coffees from a little shop in Venice and then Marcy and I went for a hike up Runyon Canyon. We did the Fuller Ave entrance and kind of aimlessly drove around trying to find it haha – the streets were extremely small and windy so it was hilarious trying to navigate it all. We made it though! We did a small hike and loved taking in the views, it really was so beautiful.
Afterwards, we went to Pink Taco for lunch, we had no idea where anything was and didn’t plan out where to eat. We tried something new like the cactus salsa and it was so weird. I’m not kidding you it had the consistency of mucus. Marcy tried it though! I couldn’t bring myself too!
Afterwards we were walking to our car, and noticed that the Chateau Marmot was right there (hel-lo messy 2000’s with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton). Ended up chatting with an Aussie TMZ pap and learned that there was potentially a meeting with Brad Pitt happing in the hotel, along with Zendaya and Tommy Hilfiger. We obviously camped out for a little while lol, learned that this particular paparazzi knew the VanderPump girls and Scheana would always call him to set up paparazzi shots of herself plus he went to a party of theirs right before their show blew up and made out with Kirsten. Woof. Just sharing all the details with y’all, no matter how vapid they are LOL. He was telling us his claim to pap fame was being the guy who was trying to pet Jennifer Lawrence’s dog.
He was actually a really nice guy and it was fun to chat for a bit while we waited outside. Trust me, the other paparazzi were assholes, like wouldn’t even say anything to us (in the airport, Marcy had to wait a couple hours until my plane landed and tried to chat with a few – like “hey, how are you? Is anyone famous supposed to be landing” That kind of thing and they were so rude to her).
While we didn’t see Brad Pitt (devastating), I did get surrounded by a bunch of Tommy Hilfiger models and socialites by accident. I was standing by the valet pickup area and they all rushed at me to wait for their car (I had no idea what was going on, it happened so fast and apparently I was standing right by the pick up spot on the sidewalk), they surrounded me and wouldn’t move or ask me to move lol. It was a weird moment. They were super snotty and rude and it happened so fast I had no idea what was going on. Literally makes me laugh when I think about it because you just know they were like ‘who is this loser in our circle right now??’ 🙂 It me.
The one celeb we saw there was the main singer from Earth Wind Fire (the aussie pap told us because we had no idea who he was). He was driving a boujee convertible, had a sleek flat ironed bob and just looked money. He pulled in and valet’d his car then went inside.
^^ I had to take a pic even though I didn’t know who he was (I’ve heard of that group obviously but… if I’m going to be excited about an older celeb it’s gotta be a John Fogerty, a Dolly Parton or someone like that who I grew up listening too lol).
Post paparazzi we went downtown to the Wax Museum and checked out the Grove. We ended up walking by Jimmy Kimmel’s studio and we asked the security guard in front about tickets. The security guard told us to towards the back alley and we could probably get into the outdoor concert. We ended up getting in and saw Hozier plus we were on tv LOL. When Jimmy was introducing Hozier, you can see us right beside him clapping. The most random evening ever.
We were a few rows back from him. Hozier played maybe 9 songs and did the ones that were on tv 3 separate times. Every time Jimmy would reintroduce him and the crowd would have to go crazy (us). It was neat to see behind the scenes.
^^ Sorry for the shitty quality haha, my dad snapped this off the tv (he’s so cute lol). We have the hearts above us.
Our 3rd day in LA:
Our morning started with an amazing breakfast at this little place called The Butcher’s Daughter (ummm ps Gwyneth Paltrow loves this spot – I can tell why because it’s super on brand for her and really nice plus the food was delish!) How cute is it here though!
The Butcher’s Daughter is right on Abbot Kinney (Venice’s famous street) so after breakfast we walked around a bit and bought some juices at Kreation, ate a delicious homemade donut from a cute cafe and checked out a few of the shops.
We drove to Trader Joes (we don’t have them in Canada) and bought all kinds of snacks and goodies plus stocked up on everything but the bagel seasoning #ifyouknowyouknow
The evening was spent at the beach. We were staying so close to the water we had to catch a sunset there! It was literally a 2 minute walk from our place.
Starbucks was a block or so away so we grabbed some coffees and went back to our place before all the crackheads came out (seriously, Starbucks was the only place open, everything else was locked and barred up come sundown).
We took an Uber to Weho and were dropped off at Craig’s. It’s a massive celeb hotspot (I honestly can’t fathom why. It’s very old school and slightly drab inside plus not enclosed with secret celeb nooks at all. Everything is wide open) – so we were hoping to catch a glimpse of someone to quench our thirsty asses. No luck though. Literally freaking Drake, the Kardashians, George Clooney, EVERYONE goes here every day of the week but, we saw no one. Although Larry King was there earlier that night apparently. Not who we were going for lol.
It was too packed for us to grab a seat at the bar (it was about 11pm) so we walked over to SUR instead. Everything was super close so it was easy to check out a few places but I’m pretty sure no one else walks around here lol, they just Uber or something.
TomTom was along the way so we popped in just to see…
There’s Pump too!
Finally, around the corner was SUR.
Sooo SUR was something else…
That decor is a choice. It’s very all over the place (like Buddha statues, western wagon wheels, satin-glam (very Lisa Vanderpump lol) and just… a lot… of everything. We popped in for a quick drink and Jeremy was actually bartending (Ariana’s brother) and I have to be honest, he is much cuter in person than on the show. Taller too. He had his hair in a high bun and we ordered two beer from him.
There was random fabric draped over the trees, I can’t figure out why this was done. They gave the tree a diaper. The bathrooms were okay, very dark decor though and then the lightbulbs were burnt out in one lol. We also saw the manager that Kristen Doute screamed at in the earlier seasons, I can’t remember her name though! She was helping bus off a table beside us and was busy working. Neat seeing the actual spot where they did all this filming and it’s wild how underwhelming SUR was.
We pounded our beer like the Albertans we are and went on to the next spot. Just around the corner was The Abbey. We had no idea it was this amazing famous gay bar, we just wanted a place to dance. We walked in, ordered a couple drinks and immediately got blasted in the face with the smoke machine for like a solid 30 seconds. I’m pretty sure we were standing right under neath it and that’s why that was the only spot open on the dance floor. Whatever it was we were directly in the line of fire and couldn’t see anything while it was going off. The most disorienting and confusing thing that has ever happened hahaha. I felt like my hair was going to be on end from the blast of chemicals and air whooshing at my face. It took a full minute for us to collect ourselves like WTF JUST HAPPENED.
The bar so much fun though, we ended up getting invited to a VIP booth since the people there were leaving and they didn’t want it to go to waste. Literally the best! No fog machine blowing in our face and so much room to dance.
Post-Abbey we went to a very amazing after party of sorts with a whole bunch of fantastic drag queens and men in tiny booty shorts dancing and it was so fun. We literally could not have stuck out more but we somehow got in to this tiny restaurant and danced with them until like 4am.
Day 4 in Los Angeles:
We were slightly hungover in the morning (I don’t know how many years it’s been since I went clubbing y’all) and decided to spend the morning in Venice, exploring, hydrating and carb loading haha. We ate at a little place on the beach, rented scooters and drove them to the boardwalk and back, grabbed some matchas at the cutest little cafe in Venice (Matcha, Matcha) and enjoyed all the warm sunshine.
A quick stop at our place to freshen up and then we drove to West Hollywood to check out Melrose and some of the shops. We also wanted to go to SUR again in the daylight so we could properly check it out like the reality junkies that we are.
Melrose has the best walls for photos – if you want cute photo ops that’s the place to be. I’m sharing all the good walls we found for photos and IG in another post but here’s a couple of the pretty ones we loved this trip:
SUR had a Sunday brunch thing going on, which never even crossed my mind that we would need to call and book a reso. Thankfully the mini tables were available. You know the ones. They’re just as weird and uncomfortable as you imagine they would be LOL.
Lisa Vanderpump… the green chairs, just, why?
So we ordered some drinks at the mini table (we were waiting for a normal sized table to become available) and lo and behold Peter was serving us. So, watching the show, ya’ll know Peter is harmless. He’s super dorky but thinks he’s hot shit and any dates he’s been on on the show have had me doubled over in second hand embarrassment. I didn’t know what to expect from him here lol.
So we sat at the mini tables, he took our drink order and then we saw Max (Lisa’s son!) over by the bar with two twins who seemed like they were IG famous of some sort haha, I’m old though so I have no idea who the kid’s follow these days.
Back to Peter, first impressions of him:
He was definitely stalkier irl and was wearing extremely tight pants on (why are they so tight Peter?) His hair was in a long straight bob as per usual and his demeanour was very much “all these chicks think I’m hot” – ladies, you know when guys have that vibe.
A table became available and we were moved to the section on the other side of the wall to the right of the mini chairs. Peter was no longer our server, but he was serving the table of older-aged Lisa Vanderpump fans at the table beside us (we could just tell they were Lisa stans). These older ladies were absolutely over the moon with Peter and he was lapping it up and his Peter-but-sounds-like-Kermit-the-Frog laugh was out in full force every time the ladies joked with him. Marcy and I couldn’t stop giggling over the whole thing. So funny!
We ordered some appies (the goat cheese balls obvi) and some lattes as well
The goat cheese balls were good, I mean isn’t fried cheese always good though?
We did a little people watching too and casually did a walk through the restaurant as well. I went to the back bathroom, so by the back bar that Jax always worked at plus the bathroom is right across the door to the infamous back alley.
Seriously what is the decor vibe in this place?
^^ Our server was so sweet, they forgot to bring the lattes we ordered until we were ready to go, no biggie and we didn’t say anything about it. She ended up taking them off the bill though. So nice of her.
So we went back and forth on if we should ask Peter for a picture.
I loathe asking celebs for pictures (I prefer to take a creeper shot from afar and be done with it lol) and honestly wouldn’t ask for a photo normally. Despite me a total celeb fanatic I actually have a bit of chill in me regarding that (kind of) – buuuut we thought it would be fun to get one for my mom (she loves Lisa Vanderpump) and we didn’t want to not ask and then regret it later. Plus Peter was loving that table of older women, laughing, happily taking photos with them – he was literally all about it.
Also I need to note that the restaurant had emptied out and he was kind of hanging around not doing much. We walked up and casually asked him for a pic and OMG I regretted asking immediately. Immediately. You guys… HE WAS SO SMUG. Not the same Peter who was mugging for the older table of ladies beside us 10 minutes ago. He also seemed super annoyed by it. I wish I could have taken back asking lol, he had a whole smarmy vibe about it and he kind of sighed like ‘okay.. sure’. Then weirdly he walked away, Marcy and I were like w.t.f…. it was awkward af and we were thinking to just leave. Peter then walked back to us, motioned for us to follow him and had the host at the front take a photo for us.
I have no idea why I asked this,
I think I panicked because it was so uncomfortable LOL, but I asked if he takes a lot of photos throughout the day. He sighed *SIGHED YOU GUYS* and said “yes, all the time” like it takes so much out of him to be a Z lister on a reality show. Marcy and I both wished we hadn’t asked him. He’s a lowkey douche. Here’s the photo, don’t mistake our smiles for anything other than we still wanted to take a good photo of ourselves LOL.
We peaced out afterwards, I felt like I needed a shower after that exchange…
There was a pretty little flower wall outside, and a couple needed help taking photos so Marcy and I did a mini shoot for them, snapping a few of the couple together, separate, all of that haha. Then they took a photo for Marcy and I.
Day 5 in LA (our last day!):
Today was a fun touristy day – we booked a Warner Bros studio tour for the morning. It took the whole morning until just after lunch, then we had plans to drive Mulholland Drive and do some light celebrity house tours.
The Warner Bros tour was awesome and I fully recommend it. I researched all of the different studio tours offered and this one fit us the best. You were able to tour a working set, visit the famous backlot that’s in all of the movies plus you could see the fully recreated Friends coffee shop! That was the clincher for us to book. In the fall/winter they have the Gilmore Girls set available, which would be so fun to see. The other thing is that this tour switches up all the time depending on what’s shooting and what sets are available.
A bit about Friends and the sets they used…
We drove around to the backlot that’s in a million different tv shows and movies (remember the Porsche episode with Joey, it was filmed in this backlot – all the street clips were filmed here actually). There is a scene in the Mask with an eyeglasses shop, that was one of the shops on this street.
It was really cool to me to see eveything up close. Literally everything was fake. The walls weren’t real brick, they were a hard, foam/paper material (obviously not paper but definitely not actual building material). You could easily see the layers of paint from being painted over so many times for different sets and the peeling on the fake bricks to give a lived in city look.
I’ll share more about that and the Friends set, sitting on the couch there and all the behind the scenes stuff in another post (this one is already so long lol).
We grabbed lunch afterwards, since we were in the Burbank area, we had no idea where to eat and there weren’t any restaurants around us. I grabbed Chipotle (so basic but you know it’s good) and Marcy grabbed some sushi and we met on the Chipolte patio to eat. Okay, this is going to sound insane, I know it does, it did to Marcy but hand to god I swear I saw who I saw.
Did I see TWO celebs at Chipotle?? Yes. Well, maybe…
Okay, before you continue, if you’re too cool to gossip about celeb sightings or are above all that, please scroll past before you suffer from aggressive eye rolling while reading this – seriously, I have chill about celebs when I chat with them or meet them but behind the scenes I’m like details, what’s the info, how is their skin, what were they wearing, are they tall – I WANT DETAILS.
Okay, the first sighting was inside
I was standing in line, it snaked around the outer edge of Chipotle and was like 25 people long. In walked someone who just looked like they were famous. She had big sunglasses on, very pretty and stylish and she had a really nice purse. She was also tiny. I know my celebs really well, something of a celebrity aficionado, if you will lol. I immediately was like ‘this is Kate Mara’. Her height, stature, face shape, hair colour, all that was on point. She never took off the sunglasses plus I’m not a weirdo so I was being super subtle about catching a glimpse. She was very slender, short and her facial bone structure was a dead ringer plus she ordered a salad. She got into a really nice vehicle too.
Okay, one celeb at a chipolte is one thing, I get it. But TWO CELEBS at a Chipolte is wild y’all. However, I am like 95% sure it was this guy.
So on the patio, we sat to eat our lunch…
and there was a guy sitting down eating his lunch, like 5 tables away from us. I was sitting facing him and Marcy’s back was too him. He had sunnies and a ball cap on so I couldn’t see his whole face. It was Rob Pattison. I mean, I think it was, I’m pretty sure lol. I also walked by him to go inside and get napkins so I got a better look than Marcy did (I had my sunglasses on and just walked by normally). I did a poll on my insta to see what you guys thought and most of you said no you didn’t’ think it was him! This was right in the Burbank area with lots of film and movie spots so who knows but lemme know what you think (keep in mind this is a discreet phone photo that was taken far away haha) It’s hard to find a similar photo of Rob to compare but here we are and you guys tell me what you think?
Also, he has those exact same sunnies as in the photo I took and up close his nose definitely looked like Robs.
My pic is the top left.
While we were in LA, one of the things we wanted to do was to get coffees and drive Mulholland Drive. It was so nice having our own vehicle and I definitely recommend renting one if you visit LA. It’s a beautiful scenic drive through lots of old Hollywood homes. It was hard to take any ‘great’ photos, the cliffs were insanely high and I’m terrified of heights, so is my sister. Plus any of the really amazing mansions were all obviously in gated communities HOWEVER we did see this which was fun lol!
HEL-LO GARNER!
We’re prettttty sure this was Jennifer Garner’s gate (I said don’t judge!) we may have glanced online which neighbourhoods were which. We aren’t weird, we just wanted to spot some celebrity homes and sip our coffees lol.
We had so much fun driving around and being able to check everything out at our own pace. I definitely recommend doing the drive because it’s very iconic and a really nice way to spend a few hours plus the views are insane.
^^ This was Lisa Vanderpump’s gate to their subdivision. Money.
We grabbed some cupcakes on our way back to our air bnb and obviously had to get Sprinkles. If you don’t take photos while getting Sprinkles cupcakes, did you even go?
The cupcakes were amazing btw, they were so good.
We did so much this trip and had a blast.
If you’re planning a girl’s trip away I say do whatever you want and just have fun. I definitely recommend researching places to eat, there are a lot of gems and really beautiful spots here and there’s some duds too. We read all about the amazing food trucks in Venice but didn’t see a single one lol.
We actually came back to LA for another girl’s trip 6 months after this. We stayed in West Hollywood instead of Venice and did it up! I’ll share that soon and it’s definitely more of a guide with lots of tips (plus we saw more celebrities whaaaat).
Cheers babes!
M
