Los Angeles (Oct. 20th + 21st)

So from Santa Cruz we took 2 days to get down to LA, staying at Montana de Oro state park near San Luis Obispo in between. In LA we stayed with family friends in Orange, which was good to visit with them, if not a little far from downtown LA. We also visited Zoe Melo near Santa Monica, with whom I had talked with originally about the project I did in Brazil for my thesis http://mattinbrazil.tumblr.com/
From there we walked down to a nice Commercial street, checked out some shops and the oddness at Venice Beach before settling on a slice of pizza and a frozen yogurt to wait for traffic to die down a little before getting out to Orange. It didnt't help much, but I guess I can say I had a taste of the crazy driving and traffic on the LA area freeways. We did a little architecture walk downtown the next day (intending to see some museums...which were apparently all closed on the days we were visiting) but got to see some interesting things in downtown and Little Tokyo.

Pictures below: Venice Beach, the Disney Concert Hall, a giant split Korean lunch, and the sunset from the house we stayed in.