LA and San Francisco Adventures

Hi everyone,

Last weekend I arrived back in the UK after an amazing holiday to LA and San Francisco. My now fiancee and I had such a wonderful time and both places were fantastic to visit so I thought I would share a few memories from our travels on my blog. 

On our first day in LA we had booked on to a pony trek up Runyon Canyon to get a good view of the Hollywood sign. In the photo you can't really tell how close to it we were as it looks really far away but the views were amazing. I used to have horse riding lessons when I was younger but haven't ridden in years so it was really fun to do the pony trek and see how much I could remember! 

After the pony trek, we went to the Beverly Centre and The Grove for an afternoon of shopping and also to the farmers market next door where I had the best pasties! This one was filled with mushrooms and cheese - so yummy!

For day two in LA we had booked tickets for Universal Studios. I've never really been that into Harry Potter and have only read a couple of the books, but I was still so excited to see the Harry Potter world and try some of the famous Butterbeer. One of my favourite parts of the day though was going on the behind the scenes tour where we visited the set of Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives which is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. 

Ollivanders - The Harry Potter Wand Shop

This was a plane crash set at Universal Studios

We had booked onto a Hollywood tour for day three in LA which I was looking forward to but was a little skeptical about. I have to say though that it was actually really interesting and a great way to see some sights that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.  I was actually surprised at how close to some of the houses you can get and we saw houses belonging to celebrities such as P Diddy, Madonna, Cameron Diaz, Johnny Depp and the Playboy mansion. It was also great to see where the likes of Pretty Women had been filmed which is one of my favourite films.

This is where the scene was filmed in Pretty Women where Richard Gere climbs up to Vivian.

We went back to Beverly Hills after the tour and walked along Rodeo Drive. I also found the cupcake ATM at Sprinkles which was so exciting - we really need to get these in the UK!

In the evening we went up to the Griffith Observatory which had some lovely views over LA as a huge telescope which you can look out to see Jupiter through. Be warned if you go there though as it is difficult to get a signal to call an Uber!

We really wanted to visit Venice Beach and Santa Monica whilst we were in LA so towards the end of the week we hired a car and drove down. We made a bit of a mistake on this day and decided to walk from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and then look around the canals. However, it was a really hot day and by the time we got to the canals we were so exhausted we didn't have the energy to look round them too much, although it was still lovely to see them and take some photos.

Our final day in LA has to be the most special and memorable as my boyfriend proposed in the rose garden at Huntington Gardens :) It was such a surprise and I was absolutely over the moon, I couldn't have asked for it to be more perfect. Huntington Gardens is a stunning place and there is no where in the UK that I know of it that is anything like it at all. I loved how there was different gardens such as a Chinese garden, Japanese garden, Australian garden and of course the rose garden.

On the Sunday morning we got up early and flew to San Francisco. I was sad to be leaving LA as I had absolutely loved it there but was looking forward to seeing what San Francisco had to offer.

Goodbye Hollywood!

 The first day we just spent looking around Union Square and of course doing some shopping but the second day was a little more active as we hired bikes and cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge. There's a strange fog that comes in over San Francisco in the evening and then burns away again by early afternoon but unfortunately this meant I wasn't able to get a great shot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

San Francisco is famous for its hills but there were a few too many for me to cycle up them all!

Visiting Alcatraz on our third day in San Fran was really interesting and I was especially interested in the stories of the escape attempts that had taken place. As far as we know, no one managed to escape successfully, although there were five prisoners that made an attempt and neither them or their bodies were ever found.

This was were the prisoners used to go to work.

We also visited Pier 39 that afternoon and where all the sea lions are.

For our final full day in San Francisco my fiancee had booked us on to a segway tour of Golden Gate Park. I was a bit nervous of this as I thought it would be really difficult and I would end up falling off but I actually really enjoyed it and I think it was my favourite thing that we did whilst in San Fran. The park was beautiful and it turned out that it was just me and Tom booked on the tour which was really nice. We also visited the California Academy of Science during the afternoon which was so interesting and included an aquarium, rainforest, planetarium and penguins!

We flew back home on the Thursday of week two after a morning spent buying some final bits and bobs in Union Square. It was certainly a jam packed holiday and one that I will never forget.

I hope you enjoyed this post and a quick overview of our time in LA and San Francisco. I hope to go back one day, especially to visit Huntington Gardens where we got engaged!

Have you visited either LA or San Francisco? What did you enjoy doing whilst you were there?

Thanks for reading and I hope you are all having a lovely weekend :)

Hannah xx