Last week I was at a conference at Las Angeles. It was my first time in the city and my first time on the west coast! It was an interesting trip, I don't think I loved the city itself, but it was fun for less than a week.
The best part was the food by far. I had some amazing ramen that probably ruined every other ramen experience for me. And we found great takoyaki that made me really sad that I live in an area without a good takoyaki place. I wanted to get a Korean dog from K-town, but never found the time unfortunately. There also was this incredible Lebanese place that we stopped by on our last day. So good!
By far the worst part is the transportation. It's really hard to get to most places by foot since there's so much sprawl, but there aren't a ton of public transit options. I did see a few street cars, and some buses, but not enough where they were convenient. So if you want to get far you have to call a cab. And then you hit the traffic. It takes so long to get anywhere just because of all the cars in the road. There's so many highways, and they are just all packed. You have to plan really carefully in order to get anywhere.
It's also a city that really has not dealt with homelessness very well. There's architecture everywhere designed to deter homeless individuals from staying places, spikes on the benches and things like that. There are usually a few tents on each street corner. It's honestly really sad to see. There were a bunch of COVID-19 testing sites on the street, but I also never saw anyone manning those.
Then there was all the smog. I thought I caught a cold or something while I was there because my throat hurt, but then I went home and recovered pretty quickly. I literally think I just couldn't handle the air! We went up to the observatory and when you look down, you just see it as a blanket covering the whole city!
So it was a fine trip, it was nice to get out of the house. But I doubt that I'll be going out of my way to return to LA anytime soon.
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