Los Angeles - part 1

Another adventure begins! (I'll hopefully finish up the old trip after I get back)

I played in the Grand Final match of my football team (losing 3-0) and headed straight to Sydney airport to meet Esther. Flight VA001 carried us over the waters to Los Angeles. Upon arrival we experienced first hand how horrid LA airport is. Lines for everything, bags taking forever, people everywhere. Outside the terminal the first person we saw was a guy trying to scam some money and there were buses and people everywhere. Eventually we found the right bus and headed off.
On arrival at the hostel we put down our things and went for a walk. By this time it was pretty late, so we grabbed some pizza and went down to the Santa Monica pier to check out the craziness that goes on there on Saturday nights. Walking around we saw a LOT of homeless people which was kinda sad.

Day two we got up and went into Downtown LA. We were taken a bit further on the bus than we were expecting but it meant we got to check out the Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. Wandering around Downtown we also came across the Daytime Emmy Awards that were going on in a theatre. Didn't see any celebrities as they seemed to either have not arrived yet or were already inside, but some people had paid money to sit next to the entrance to see the celebrities as they entered which I found kinda weird.
Downtown LA wasn't too interesting so we jumped back on a bus to Santa Monica and wandered around there, looking in shops and watching the sunset from the beach. It was pretty nice just to relax and hang out together as back at home we've both been very busy and haven't gotten to see each other very much lately.

So my main first impressions of LA are: it's just one big crazy smoggy strip of concrete with cars on it.