road trip – la and surroundings (mostly surroundings)

we had picked carlsbad as the last city where we’d stay over night. it is roughly 30 miles north of san diego, and even has its own aiport (as hendrik realized with horror, but that’s another story (and deena, i hope you appreciate my correct use of realize)). if you are following this blog, you’ll know that we were driving from oxnard to carlsbad, thus passing by los angeles. during my first trip through california, every american that me and my friend small hendrik (it’s another one than this time) asked, recommended us to rather not see la, cause it’s just huge and ugly. after having seen it now, i wanna say “they were right”, but i should be fair, because we did not really take our time to explore it. we just randomly drove into hollywood and by chance picked a really lame part of the walk of fame (i will refrain from making the obvious joke) and were really annoyed by the immense traffic in these never ending streets. so next time i’ll go there, i will take somebody who knows nice spots in la and i will definitely come with more time!
apart from that, we did see nice places around la: we stopped at santa monica beach (which is not that exciting and very touristy), drove through venice (very pretty) and also stopped in long beach, where we walked a little on the beach, and i got to play around (photography-wise) with the seagulls, hendrik and reflections in the wet sand.