My older brother is working in San Francisco, so when he came to visit LA for the first time, it had to be perfect! I asked dozens of people about their favorite things to do in LA and put together a full schedule of things to do during his quick stay in LA.
Hamilton and I 🙂
Hamilton landed at about 7pm on Friday night and headed straight for Five Guys (Burgers n Fries). We started with a nighttime tour of campus and then I let him choose between a number of things happening across campus. Besides the Pop Music Midterms at Ground Zero, there was also a play on campus that my friend was the lead of, and a concert at the underground bar on campus featuring a fellow sorority sister.
Being tourists in front of the Hollywood sign 🙂
On Saturday, we got up early and I dragged him to Jacks n Joes for the most delicious breakfast around and then we were off. We began at Hollywood and Highland, gazing at the Hollywood sign, wandering the streets, taking pictures with the characters on the street, and shopping our way down through the Chinese Theater, Kodak Theater, and Hollywood stars. After Hollywood, it was a tough choice between Santa Monica and Venice, but decided to meet friends in Venice. We drove to the beach to enjoy all the tourist attractions (and people watching) Venice had to offer. We walked down the strip stopping to see artists’ creations before lounging on the beach for a few hours.
Characters on Hollywood Blvd
Once the sun went down, we decided to go to the Farmer’s Market at the Grove for some delicious eatery followed by cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. Once we stuffed full and all shopped out, we had a few hours to kill and decided to see a movie at the Grove because a) the theaters are huge and really nice and b) you pick your seats when you purchase tickets so we made it to a movie ten minutes before it started and knew we were going to have great seats. The movie we chose was Project X because the star, Thomas, is a childhood friend of mine. It was so cool seeing him making it big and kind of strange seeing his face blown up like 400x bigger than normal all at the same time. But, overall the movie was fabulous and ended just in time for us to get ready for a fun fraternity party!
Hamilton is a Kappa Sig from Georgia Tech and the Kappa Sig chapter at USC was having a registered party that was rodeo themed so of course, I got my brother on the list. The bar was a saloon, there were hay bales everywhere and tons of students dressed in their finest Texas attire. We ended the night at Chano’s and his flight left early Sunday morning. What a fun weekend! 🙂
Rodeo party with Hamilton, Sarah, and Kelsey
