My sister, Hillary, recently moved to Los Angeles.
While I was in California in November/December, I decided to take a long weekend to fly down and visit her. The San Francisco “winter” was already warm compared to Boston’s iciness, but I figured LA would be even better. The first time Hillary lived in LA was summer 2010, and when I visited her, every day was like THIS:
Even though this trip wasn’t during the summer, I figured it would still be lovely outside. Even mild weather in December is wondrous for a Massachusetts girl. Instead, I got this:
This picture is FULL COLOR.
Rain. Clouds. Fog. Gray.
Ugh.
So what could we do? No picnic, no long walks, no hikes to the Hollywood sign.
Luckily, Los Angeles can still be fun to visit and photograph even if the weather is inclement. There are lots of museums to explore—I spent a rainy day at the LACMA, wandering through their special exhibits (Kubrick, Caravaggio), their cultural galleries (a whole floor of Islamic art all to myself!), and their modern art collection. It’s a large museum, so it’s easy to spend a lot of time here and not feel bored at all.
The La Brea Tar Pits are right nearby the LACMA, and while the rain might deter you from staring too long at the endlessly fascinating tar pits themselves, the very interesting and informative Page Museum lets you learn about the tar pits with a roof over your head. The La Brea Tar Pits are actually one of my favorite things in LA–the oozing, burping, bubbling tar is one of the most weirdly hypnotizing things I’ve ever seen–and the Page Museum not only teaches you about the pits, but makes you feel like a little kid on an awesome field trip. The tar has trapped all kinds of animals over thousands of years, so you can see woolly mammoth skeletons, as well as saber tooth tigers, ancient camels, and giant sloths. (No dinosaurs, though– the tar pits formed 65 MILLION years after the dinosaurs went extinct!) Plus you get the see the excavators in action, studying the fossils they’ve found in the tar behind soundproof glass. I imagine it’s strange for them to work in a fishbowl, but as the outside observer, it’s just really cool.
And if the rain lets up at all, or you don’t mind getting a little wet, I highly recommend going to the beach anyway. We took a drizzly trip to Santa Monica and caught pictures of crazy clouds over the pier. There were quite a few people on the beach for such a dreary day, surprisingly!
After all of that, if you need more to do… go see a movie. Listen to local live music in a bar. Try amazing Mexican food. We went to Gardens of Taxco in West Hollywood and it was quite an experience: there is no menu, instead they tell you what is available that day, and the meal comes with lots of complementary appetizers and dessert that change daily. We weren’t expecting any of this, so it was an exciting treat for a rainy night!
See? The city of angels is still an enjoyable destination, even if the sun never comes out.
(Of course, I was thrilled to get back to the San Francisco sunshine!)
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