Gringo Tour 08/09 Part 3

After our meal at a Vietnamese Pho Soup restaurant near the Beverly Center (incorrect American spelling) - we caught some public transport back to some random Metro train stop (where we bought some ice creams - ooh mah) and then caught a train back to Downtown (which is so dead at night) and crashed for the night. Although it was probably about 9pm at night - it had felt like 3am due to the timelag.

The next morning - we woke up and did a bit of US television. Highlights include all of the daft infomercials including a Time Life "I Can Only Imagine" Platinum CD collection ("uplifting" jesus soft-cock-rock CDs for only $9.99 plus postage - my fav song - "God is In Control" (que sound of whip cracking)) and mindless non-stop CNN dribble.

After spending 16 hours on the plane being spoon fed copious amounts of grog and food (of the non-weight watcher variety) - we decided to head down to the gyme on the fourth floor of the hotel for a bit of a workout session. The gyme in the hotel was pretty amazing - brand new equipment with all of the cardio having small screen LCD TVs where you could watch Time Life Eternal Collection ads and mindless non-stop CNN dribble while you worked out.

We did a quickish breakfast (at the latino time of near midday) at Macy's Plaza in Downtown. Downtown felt rather deadish and so did the shops (even though this was the last Saturday before Xmas). We had some sugary muffins and stuff from a so-called bakery (no American bakeries serve bread only sugary cakes) and I had a somewhat half decent Cafe Latte at a Gloria Jeans look-a-like "The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" - although it was better than Gloria and less hard-core Christian-y.

We wandered down a few blocks in the vague general direction of the Downtown markets where we hit the "Jewelry District" on Broadway. It started to feel a lot less like sterile LA Downtown and more like... Mexico! I know I'm sounding like Ja'ime but Ant and I were the only white people in a 10 mile radius around here.... not that it was a problem or anything. We wandered along a toy district - heaps of stores run by Mexicans with cheap trashy toys - and I was getting the distinct de-ja-vous of being in Peru of all places. The building architecture was fairly interesting - a lot of run-down art deco buildings. Some places had a old school Manhattan vibe but in a more spread out LA sort of way.

We hit the markets and it was well worth the walk. It was chock full of people (more so than any other place in the States thus far including the Beverly Centre) - and there was heaps of interesting foods and stuff. There was definitely an emphasis on dinky-dye Mexican food. We couldn't help but think that this is a bit of a pre-cursor to Mexico. There were hardly any tourists - but I would definitely recommend this for a bit of a different LA experience. Until next time...