Chilling in Los Angeles: Baseball tour downtime

A bit of background

This post documents the few days that I spent in Los Angeles in 2012 for a period of downtime on the way back to Australia. I'd been with our son (D) on a Colorado baseball tour in which D played for an invitational team in a tri-state tournament.

This was my third visit to Los Angeles after our initial stopover on the way to London in 1996 and our layover on the way back from Orlando in 2008. Since the Colorado trip, I've been again to LA, in 2016.

Check out the end of this post for my reflections on my third experience of Los Angeles.

First, to the baseball part of our LA adventure with the team and their family members who had joined the tour. I had my second experience of a major league baseball game of that trip when we saw the Angels play at Angels stadium. Again, what a spectacle! The outside of the field alone is pretty amazing, with the giant Angels cap at the entrance.

I'm not sure why we didn't do an Angels stadium tour seeing as we went to a game there. Instead, we toured Dodgers stadium. Like the Coors Field tour in Denver, we were able to see behind the scenes, learn about the team's history, and touch the hallowed turf. The stadium opened in 1962 and is the third oldest in the US, after Fenway Park in Boston (1912) and Wrigley Field in Chicago (1914). It's the largest baseball stadium in the world by seating capacity.

One of the best things about the location of the stadium in Elysian Park is its hilly location, affording fabulous views of LA. Even on a smoggy day, it was pretty cool.

Baseball things aside, the boys had the chance to spend a day each at Disneyland and Universal Studios. This was my second visit to both parks so it wasn't new for me and D had been to Disneyland on the way back from the Cal Ripken tournament the year before. That said, the second Disney park had opened since my first visit in 1996 and it was amazing to see the expansion.

I hung out with the parents from D's team and we mostly stuck to the original park, going on some of the more sedate rides, including the famous teacups, something I hadn't done the first time around. D and his mates spent most of the day lining up for ages for the big ticket rides in the new park as it was super busy during the summer season.

Our experience at Universal Studios was better as the coach had gotten us skip-the-line passes and that gave us easy access to rides. We did the backlot tour first, as I'd learnt from my first visit that it's best to get on early before the crowds. It was nice to see some new special effects on the tour from the one we did in 1996, although some of the old favourites remained. For a film buff like me, Universal Studios is the ultimate theme park!

Some of the shows we'd seen in 1996 had been replaced, but Waterworld was still going strong. Even though I'd already seen it, the stunt show was still spectacular the second time around. We only had time for one show as we we had tickets to an Angels game later that day.

I'm terrified of heights and I don't do rides, but peer pressure got me on the Jurassic Park one again (the first time was in 1996) and the new Mummy and Transformer rides. I hate that feeling of a sudden drop but I got into the spirit of things. I was rather proud of myself, actually!

The highlight of the Universal experience was the caricature that D and I had drawn by the resident artist. I had it framed when we got home and it still hangs on my wall to this day. In the photo below, you can see the artist at work, drawing D's teammate, L, and his mum, L. That's D on the right in the second shot, with our caricature.

It was a fun day and kind of a shame that we had to leave to go to the Angels game. That said, the skip-the-line passes made the most of our time. I looked up the tickets, and at the time of writing this post, they were $109USD for single admission and $199USD for the express pass. I think it's worth the extra cost if you are visiting during the busy season and have limited time.

There were firsts for me during our LA sojourn and I was thrilled to add these to my list of LA wanderings. One of the firsts was a visit to Venice Beach. It felt like when we went to the Santa Monica Pier in 2008 - an iconic place that I'd seen in film and TV that I finally had the chance to experience firsthand. As you can see from the below photos, the weather was glorious. Venice has a massive stretch of sand and it's super flat. It was so nice to see D carefree after the stresses of the tournament.

Venice Beach certainly lived up to its eclectic reputation. The beach is pretty, but the boardwalk is a bit dodgy in places. We were approached by some dude wanting to sell us CDs (yes, back in the days when they were a thing!) so one of the Dads stepped in to politely shepherded us away. Then D and I went into an art shop next to the place where we had lunch to buy two canvas prints. Total stoner vibe in the store!

If you've read my 1996 post, you'll know that I was disappointed that we missed our Beverly Hills tour on that trip. This time I had the chance to walk down Rodeo Drive, see a bit of Beverly Hills from the bus, and experience Sunset Boulevard.

Rodeo Drive is just a street, but it's iconic, and it was kind of awesome just to wander down such a famous piece of real estate. Of course we didn't buy anything! The boys enjoyed checking out the posh cars, though.

Here's a sample of what we saw of Beverly Hills. I think the house in the bottom right-hand photo was owned by Marilyn Monroe and is where she died, but I know the house is in Brentwood, so perhaps we drove there, too. I can't remember, but I must have taken that photo for a reason! I was a little underwhelmed by Beverly Hills, to be honest, but the palm trees are pretty.

Sunset Boulevard was a complete bust. D and I didn't like it at all. It's very crowded and touristy and just not that nice. It was cool to see the Hollywood sign, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but we'd had our fill after an hour of wandering around.

A cool view of the Hollywood sign! Check out my post on our walk up to the Hollywood Sign on our 2016 stopover.

We liked Olvera Street in the historic El Pueblo de Los Angeles neighbourhood. It is LA's oldest district, where 44 Native American, African and European settlers travelled across the desert from the present-day northern Mexico to establish a farming community in 1781. Olvera Street now has a Mexican marketplace and hosts several traditional Latino events during the year.

Again, after missing out on eating at Bubba Gump on a previous visit, I had the chance to experience the themed restaurant this time around. I have to admit that the food is expensive and pretty meh, but the restaurant itself is awesome, full of film memorabilia. You can see our photos taken at the front of the restaurant on Forrest's bench. I bought a few things in the souvenir shop, including a Lieutenant Dan shirt that D eventually passed onto me that I still wear.

My (third) Los Angeles experience

Los Angeles is...Los Angeles. I recommend keeping your expectations in check. Sure, there are loads of cool places to check out and it's heaps of fun. I'd describe it as a "Destination Experience" as it feels like being able to say you have been there is more meaningful than the actual being there, like ticking off a list of famous places. There's almost an overwhelming amount of things to see and do and LA isn't an easy city to navigate. If you're into theme parks, you can base yourself in Anaheim and see the Disney attractions fairly easily. Being on a bus tour this visit with D's baseball team definitely meant we could see a lot in the space of a few days.

If you haven't already done so, check out my post on the baseball part of that 2012 trip in Colorado. I warmed to the vibe of Denver and I loved the stunning Rocky Mountains, and the Royal Gorge Bridge.

I know I'd been to LA three times at that point, but two of the three were by accident rather than be design, as stopovers on the way back to Australia from somewhere else. I'm pretty much done with LA now, although not so done that I didn't return - check out the post I made on my 2016 visit.