Santa Monica

Santa Monica is a popular tourist area near Los Angeles. It is known for its beautiful beach and it is only about 30 minutes West of Los Angeles.  Although it is only about 30 minutes away from Los Angeles, it is about 1.5 hours away from Orange County. On this very hot day during the summer, we decided to pay a visit to this famous tourist region to see what it is like.


We left home early and got there around 11AM. We simply took highway 405 and headed North and then took Santa Monica Boulevard down to Santa Monica downtown.  Parking was very convenient at Santa Monica. There are many parking structures around the area with signs everywhere. The first 90 minutes of parking is free too!

We parked our car and headed toward the pier at the beach. As we walked along the walk way toward the pier, we saw many homeless people camping and wondering around. This was unexpected. There was a LOT of homeless people. More than what we have imagined and it smelled really bad.

As we walked down the pier, there were also many street performers who are kind of blocking the walk way. That was a bit annoying. We also saw few people selling snacks and drinks illegally along the pier. When the policy walk by, they immediately cover their stuff with blanket so that they don't look like they are selling stuff.

At the end of the pier at Santa Monica, it also marks the end of the famous historical Route 66. This is where Route 66 ends.

Many on the pier were also carrying fishing rod to try their luck at getting a fish from the ocean.

As we walked away from the beach and toward the downtown area, there were many stores to shop at and many restaurants to dine at. It was incredible. We did not really have the time to visit every single store. Besides, it was so hot on this day, we were very exhausted and did not have the mood to shop around.

Overall, it was a very touristy area. One thing that should be addressed is the number of homeless people. Although the homeless people don't really bother others, but it does make the place stink and lot of garbage being thrown around.

Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is located on the West side of Hollywood and Northwest of Los Angeles. It is known to be the place where the rich people live and known to have a shopping districts with high end fashion products. Beverly Hills also has a high rise down town core area with a huge shopping center. From the top of the mountains on the North side of Los Angeles, one could see the down of both Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.


Beverly Hills is bit far from Orange County. It took about 1.5 hours of driving time to get there and most of the route is on high way 405. We left early in the morning, but it still took at long time due to the traffic. We got there around 11AM in the morning. There was plenty of parking along Santa Monica Boulevard. The parking was cheap. It was $6 for the whole day.

We got off the car and went walking around on the street. The street is very clean with bright colors on the buildings. The architecture of the building seems to be mostly European styled building. To our surprise, there was not a lot of people as we expect. Most stores were empty without any customers. We also saw many vacant rental units for store owners to occupy.

Near the South end of Rodeo Drive, there is a small building complex with paved drive way. It was a mid century European styled drive way with many restaurants along the street. Many people were taking photos there since it seems to be one of the popular land mark.

While we were there, we also saw many high end exotic sport cars roaming around. We did not see any celebrities as we have hoped however.

There was Beverly Hills Park on the North side of Santa Monica Boulevard and that is where the Beverly Hills sign is at. Many tourist stop by the sign to take photos with it.

In general, Beverly Hills was not as interesting as we have hoped. We did not really find any interesting stuff other than lot of high end fashion store to shop at. But then many of these stores are also available in other malls around greater Los Angeles area.