55 LA CAR DAY

i am stuck in LA and i have no car. NOT COOL. so i decided to rent one because that's the thing to do.

i love driving a car in LA or in amerika in general.. that automatic system is just so easy and the signs and streets are easy as well. i can drive on the middle lane and nobody thinks i am a bad driver which is the case in belgium where they hate middle lane drivers...

i picked up my car at my hotel and took off to the southern cities of the LA area... it was raining of course as is typical for my days off here in the states... i stopped at manhattan beach (boring as it was empty but must be nice when the sun shines), hermosa beach, redondo beach, san pedro and long beach... i went to see the aquarium in long beach and the queen mary, the biggest passenger ship of the previous century.. that ati shirt (of my company) does wonders sometimes.. i still get reduction, which is cool of course.. .i am sticking to that shirt... the aquarium was okay but they have this part where you can see jelly fish in the dark.. that is SO cool.. .i spend more than 20 in there and wanted to take a lot of pictures... jelly fish are so incredibly cool... why is it that poisonous or dangerous animals look so much cooler than the other ones... the queen mary is this big ship that was made in the 30s and sailed the seas until end of the sixties... the ship is no a hotel docked in long beach and yuou can visit the ship as well... i really had to think about titanic and with some magination you can really see yourself be a passenger on the ship... i loved the way the ship looked from the inside.. very 30s and 40s with the music from those days in the halls... i did not get to see a hotel cabin, i am not sure it is a good a hotel but i loved the shops and just walking around in that ship....

then i drove to the getty museum which i always wanted to visit. trust me, it is worth a visit.. i am not saying it is a very good museum but it is just worth visiting as there is nothing else in LA to visit... if you like gardens, architecture, art and just views over LA than you have to get to the museum.. you leave your car at the freeway parking and then you take a tram up the hill... the entrance is free.. .parking is 7 dollars but if you arrive late (which i did) and give them a puppy look they let you park for free

there was only one rubens and too many rembrandts... haha.. but it is just a nice afternoon out... i prefer modern art museums though

i have been chatting with this LA artist for a while who likes brussels a lot and we decided to meet... he lives in downtown and i drove up there. i love downtown but in the evening it looks dead and dangerous... i had spent too much time at amoebe so i arrived late in downtown... the artist lives on the edge of Skid Row, one of the most talked about neighbourhoods of LA. there is actually a series in the LA TImes about skid row ( a name that i only associated with bad heavy metal from the eighties).. it's third world country area with nothing but homeless people on the streets smoking crack...

so that's where i hung out and guess what? i did not feel less safe than at anneesens where i live in brussels!!!!! we even went eating at this nice italian restaurant where i had a delicious mushroom pasta thing...

the drive back to el segundo was just about half an hour without traffic jams that i had encountered during the day... yes, los angeles is that city where you have to drive distances like from ghent to brussels if you want to meet friends... and people just do that here