Saturday 11th May 2019

This trip is a massive opportunity and something that I booked very early on when I started my Arbonne business in order to lock myself in and really give it a go. It was a little surreal leaving our flat in London alone for once with a giant 23kg bag filled with all sorts of clothing and products for the next 9 days! I was also flying AirNZ which is an absolute treat and it was very smooth sailing over to Los Angeles. I took an Uber from the airport to the apartment in Hollywood where I would be staying with four other Kiwi girls. One being my gorgeous friend Amelia who introduced me to the business and the others being Gina, Loren and Jess who I had only met through Zoom in our online conference calls but not in person! It was such a nice feeling finally meeting them all! We all called it a night when I finally showed up as it was now 10pm!

Sunday 12th May

The timezone change totally got me! I had been up since 5am finishing off the blog from Ireland! Not idea as I was sure we would be having a late night with loads of catching up and exploring to do.

Plans for the day

• Meet up with Katie for a walk up Los Leones Canyon

• Santa Monica Pier & Beach

• Cole Haan store

• The Catch for dinner

• Sur for post dinner drinks

Los Leones Canyon

I had plans this morning to meet up with the lovely Katie who I had actually met at a wedding Lewis and I went to 3 years ago! She is based in LA and we had planned to head up into the hills to get a good view over the city. Food wise we were pretty unprepared in the house so it was a vegan protein powder smoothie with fibre, greens balance and water and thankfully Katie had spotted a local man selling fresh fruit on the side of the the road and I was able to pick up a massive container of freshly cut mango, watermelon, coconut, pineapple and cucumber as we made our way out to Santa Monica Pier and along the coast line to the walk in Los Leones Canyon. It was hot when we begun walking up this dirt track and man was it busy! Katie said hello to everyone which she said was her little social experiment to discover who is from LA and who isn’t. Those who arnt from here say hello - pretty similar to London!! I have to admit it was pretty exhausting speaking to everyone we passed! What a Londoner I have become!! We were 100% getting burnt also! Time went pretty fast as we were chatting away but man was it nice to get out with a local! Katie dropped me off at Santa Monica Pier where I thought I was meeting up with the girls but they had got distracted shopping in Hollywood! 

Santa Monica Pier 

There was a heap of hustle and bustle going on down here with it being a Sunday and Mothers day! The pier was quite the picture with its incredible brightly coloured ferris wheel and rides with old fashioned shops selling food and cheap touristy souvenirs. Locals were standing every few meters selling cold water, churros and more fresh fruit and others were gathering people into a crowd preparing to wow us all with their dance moves and acrobatics! Many families and couples were out enjoying the sunshine on the soft golden sand of Venice beach and children were playing in the cold spring water. I could see why people encouraged you to come here as a tourist! I wandered through 3rd Street Promenade which is where all the shops are located before catching a bus for $1.75 into Century mall to the Cole Haan store. 

Cole Haan

COLE HAAN! Have you guys ever heard of this brand? Well let me tell you now that you NEEEEED a pair of these shoes! I fell in love with them back when we visited NYC in 2012 and searched high and low in Chelsea and Soho for the store after seeing a girl wearing them on the subway and Lewis remembering we had walked past the store at some point - what luck. Now I can get this brand in London but not the ones I had been looking at for months. The mall was incredible and so many people were driving their cars into valet parking, what a dream! It was getting super late for Lewis but I called him just as I got to the Cole Haan store in case in wanted something as he absolutely loves the shoes also. Then it was my turn - I wanted to try on about four different pairs I had been eyeing up for at least 6 months now! Hands down so comfortable and chic! I needed a shoe that would be good for our many trips around Europe as I just didn’t have a comfortable all purpose pair that I could do anything in! I tried on some of the heels just so I had the right size so I could buy them online….oh… what a mistake, or you could say an amazing find? They were like walking on clouds! I has been eyeing these up for a long time and I was amazed when I put them on. I HAD to have them. Girls im sure you can understand me here when you find a pair of heels that are comfortable you need them! Especially when you are reminded of those nights where you have had to remove you shoes just to prevent you feet from being decapitated. Leaving with two giant boxes of shoes I was kinda in heaven - I just wouldn’t look at my bank balance as that would surely bring me back down too earth!

The Catch

Loz had done some research and this was apparently the place to go when it came to celeb spotting and amazing food in LA. I had literally 5 minutes to change before we headed out - covered in sunblock, sand and sweat from the days adventure I was ever so pleased to have may new jumpsuit to throw on. By new I mean from a second hand store in Helsinki last weekend!! When we arrived in our Uber we were allowed up the elevator after we were checked off the guest list. Our mouths dropped when we saw just how stunning this place was with the sun streaming in and the flowers dangling down. We took a lot of photos clogging up the entrance into the restaurant and some of us even went back for more! It is a seafood restaurant but of course they have a lot of different options for allergies and food preferences. The menu is a struggler because you almost want some photos so you can tell how much food your getting and also because everything sounded amazing! Amelia and I decided to share a couple of dishes and we ended up ordering a salad just because the women on the other table got it and it looked incredible! I kid you not the food was off the charts good! London has amazing food of course but this was next level, worth every cent of of it! We had massive FOMO (fear of missing out for all you non millennials out there) when we saw the table next to use get a massive ring of donuts with caramel and dark and white chocolate sauce. There was no way we were leaving without one ourselves! 

The Sur

Once we had finished having easily the best food of our lives the girls didn’t feel ready to go home just yet so we walked around the corner to a bar called ‘The Sur’ that is owned by some celebrity of course. My one glass of wine was plenty so I stuck to the water but it sure was a trendy wee place. Amelia, Gina and I left in an Uber to call it a night but Loz and Jess stayed out to about 3am

Monday 13th May

My body clock was completely out of wack and I was once again up at 5am but with Loz and Jess having just got home and Loz being asleep on the couch I wasn’t able to do much work. Sitting in the bathroom for a bit I remembered Katie mentioned that I was able to run Runyon canyon easily from where we were staying. Sure enough putting it into google maps showed that it was only 3km to get there!! Easy!

Plan for the day:

• Run Runyon canyon

• Photoshoot on Santa Monica Pier 

• Walk around Santa Monica

• Venice Beach

• Hollywood sign at sunset

• Uber eats for dinner

Runyon Canyon 

The sun was just starting to come up as I made my way down Sunset Boulevard to the canyon. I think I discovered a strange love of running I never knew I had! The air was fresh and it always feels better when your running and you know everyone is still asleep after a big night out - doesnt happen often though. The canyon gave me a stunning view over the city of LA below and the hills were certainly a challenge I wasn’t used to with London being so flat. A botoxed up lady told me it wasn’t a good idea for me to run with my phone next to my heart - she told me to google it as she wasn’t medical but her physician has said something to her. Haha she suggested I move it to under my armpits….Il take yjay advice like a grain of salt and moving it to my armpit isnt much further away from my heart. She took some photos for me anyways which was super kind of her. I decided to run the long loop as I didn’t want to go back to reality and I knew this time would be a nice bit go chill time before conference begins. On the way home I ran down Hollywood Boulevard and sudden looked down and noticed I was running over the famous Hollywood stars on the pavement! So there is about 2,600 five pointed terrazzo and brass star embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard where I was and also three blocks along Vine Street. They are basically just public monuments of achievement for those in the entertainment industry and includes actors, musicians, directors, musical and theatre groups. There was no way I was running all of these streets just to find someone I actually recognise! Only Amelia was awake at this point so instead of going back to the apartment I ran to the nearest grocery store and brought a heap of snacks and breakfast items to get me through the next day or so. I walked home with my goodies catching up on some of my personal development as the sun shone down - perfect way to start the day.

Santa Monica Pier photoshoot

So this is 100% something I would have never thought about doing in my life and to be honest I usually have Lewis and his trusty camera to do this kinda stuff. But lovely Jess had found a photographer though instagram who’s style she loved and hired her for an hour. We met her down by the pier and she first took us to the most gorgeous pink wall of a restaurant called ‘Ivy on the shore’. Jess was the only one who was actually a model so it took the rest of us awhile to get used to this fact smiling & laughing business! Not to mention there were multiple pointers on facing into the sun, pointing your feet towards the camera and your butt out. There are numerous photos of us staring at our feet contemplating the placement of them that are rather funny to look back on! We moved to a few more locations including under the Santa Monica Pier sign, multiple street vendors stalls, the beach and of course the rides at the end of the pier. I learnt a-lot about the kind of backdrops that look good in photos as typically Lewis and I arnt taking pictures quite like this - im usually posing in front of monument or famous town building….with the same pose repeatedly! Once our hour was up we went back and took further photos that we had missed out on getting so by this stage my cheeks really were beginning to hurt and my fake laugh becoming even more…well fake. Thankfully I had had some breakfast - avo on toast post run and supermarket shop but the girls were running on empty poor things! I would have been like a raging bull right now if I hadn’t eaten. I took them to the same place I had been for lunch the day before as they were well beyond the point of choosing something themselves as the hunger had set in. We sat outside having a drink and some well deserved food. How beautiful are these photos below! Thanks so much to Simply Adri Photography for these!

Santa Monica

We explored Santa Monica heading down 3rd Street Promenade like I did yesterday but somehow ended up shopping yet again. Coming from London I had updated my wardrobe a lot with all the new summer outfits being released so that I didn’t have to shop! That didn’t stop me purchasing anything. These girls come from Christchurch and Auckland and I forget how little shopping we truly have at home at times! The outfits they chose for the rest of the trip were absolutely smashing and no doubt we were all going to look fab when we got to Vegas!!!

Venice Beach

Another must do in this area is Venice Beach! We strolled along the footpath with the soft white sand either side with palm trees dotted around randomly. We tried our luck at the monkey bars that a young girl was making look like a piece of cake but all we came away with was some blisters and sore arms. Seems holding your weight and swinging as an adult is not quite as easy. It wasn’t warm enough to be lying on the beach in our bikinis or swimming in the ocean and with it being late afternoon we caught an Uber back to Hollywood.

Hollywood sign

How can we not do this! I had caught a glimpse from afar on my run in Runyon Canyon in the morning but we planned on getting as close as we could during sunset! We has crashed for an hour or so before booking another Uber to get us up there! Gina and Loz had treated us all to matching hats so wearing our active wear and blue Arbonne caps we were dropped as close as we could get by our driver. We found a spot with an incredible view back over the sign and the sun was just starting to cast a pinky shadow over the mountains. We took all sorts of gorgeous pictures and videos whilst we were up there and the sun was indicating our day was almost over. The exciting thing about that was that tomorrow was when we were all heading to Vegas!

Uber Eats

I planned on having a chilled night home, cooking and putting on face-masks with the girls. But clearly that didn’t happen as we got home at about 8.30pm and all the grocery shops were closed. Not to mention we were all shattered! Uber Eats was the best thing we could do and we all ordered in some Thai and sat around like a civilised family grinning from ear to ear as we scrolled back through the photos we had taken for the day. Theres something special about having epic photos that bring you right back to that exact moment of time when the sun was shining, you felt at peace, you are surrounded by friends or family and the joy on your face is genuine. We all know we need these whilst we are on our break at work counting down till the next time we can get back out and escape to live the life we really want to be living!

Catch you next time LA - your way cooler than just your airport.