Firstly, Happy July 4th! I hope you are safe and with dear ones wherever you are. Between my two friends and I finding each other at the airport last night (of course, there were some flight delays - its the rush travel weekend), getting a cab and heading to the hotel, hitting the bed and waking up this morning for breakfast and the day ahead of us - let's just say we had a late start, least of the contributing factors being my jet lag having flown east coast to west. I chose to book our room at the Marriott Manhattan Beach since it was an extended stay property and I am a member with them but our stay wasn't really all that great, and I will detail that in a later post. Our first stop of the day was at LACMA - the LA county museum of arts. Warning - LA is a large city as is the state of Cali and everything in there is equally large as well. LACMA is located on museum row and has a few buildings of its own on the campus, along with a bunch of other museums on the same street. Suffice to say our entire day was spent there. I think we headed in about noon and ventured back out only at 5pm, alloying time for lunch in there. They do have a jazz performance for July 4th for which folks were setting up shop since the morn! Great collection of exhibits and art - I am sure anybody that visits will find something of interest and learn something new as well. The restaurant in there is real neat too. We had just enough time to get back to the hotel, freshen up for the veining and head on over to the Marina del Ray area for some grub and fireworks. The show itself was nothing great though I expected it to be larger, longer and livelier. It did get us to the pier area though and we were lucky to find a spot at the Italian place there for a sit down dinner. Considering it was the July 4th weekend, every place had a huge line. Slow start to the holiday but we have a better plan for tomorrow and hope to get more done. 

So excited to go meet my besties this long weekend in LA, then stay on for some more sight seeing before I head out to SFO for some more friendly visits and touristy stuff. Then the husband joins me as we attend a wedding before we head on back home. This is not my first trip to California but it will be my first to LA. We girls have some grand plans but unsure how much we can get done while there between wanting to catch up and having only just about 2.5 days to get a taste of the Hollywood highs. I am also excited for my time alone there. Not on a media trip so I get to do a few things on my own and at my pace so that's a change. Have not taken a 10-day holiday in a while and excited about the downtime!