Need Travel/Lodging/visit advise for Los Angeles college tour/Spring vacation

Parents Forum
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<p>Ahh, the relief of having the decision made and you can move on to the fun stuff. I'm a big fan of splurging, myself, so I understand your choice. In fact, H and I just got back from picking S2 up from a teen retreat at a camp in upper Malibu and drove home (near the Long Beach area) past the area where the MB/Hawthorne place is and once you leave S.M. and get on the freeway, it's a pretty ugly drive. </p>

<p>I think the must dos for your family are: Rodeo Drive. Venice Beach. Hollywood. (I'd throw in the Getty museum but only if your boys are really interested.) </p>

<p>On Rodeo, you can have fun window shopping, people watching, exotic-outrageously expensive car spotting and there's a fun museum of television right around there to stop in. You can do it in a few hours and then head down to Santa Monica and on to Venice Beach. I think it would be fun to rent bikes on the beach in Venice and ride down to the Santa Monica Pier and just hang out. Take lots of pictures. Shop for funky CA, Mexican stuff for souvenirs. S1 and his friends used to go down there occasionally and he came back once with a woven Mexican hooded pull-over ($10) which he loves. There's an In N' Out Burger joint on Venice Blvd and you really have to eat there. Then you'll know if they ever let the company go public, you should buy stock in it. </p>

<p>Hollywood: A TV show taping. A studio tour. Mann's Chinese Theatre. Pink's Hollywood Hot Dog Stand (an absolute icon). The Universal Studios City Walk amusement area. Some areas of Hollywood are pretty shabby and you would need to be careful at night, so do the sight-seeing stuff during the day and be elsewhere (or you could do City Walk ) at night. B. Hills and S.Monica's 3rd St. promenade area would be okay at night. </p>

<p>I'm sure there are other Angelenos out there with suggestions. Two bad you only have two free days. Have fun!</p>

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<p>Speaking of Pink's hot dogs (I haven't been there yet) we stopped at Randy's Donuts (the place with the big donut on top of the building - seen in a lot of movies) on the way up to UCLA a couple of weeks ago for the same reason. It's not in the most posh area but the donut was good.</p>

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<p>All great ideas- keem 'em comin!! I do recall doing the drive- thru at the In and out burger in Claremont back on '04. </p>

<p>I finally made the housing decision by working backwards-- ie, if one of the options were to go away, which would I be disappointed that I'd missed. That worked! Now onto other aspects of the trip!</p>

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<p>When we toured LA, went to Tonight show taping with Jay Leno. It was the kind of experience to do once.
The Getty museum, hiking in the foothills, Venice, SM pier, etc are things we've done since on visits. The Gene Autrey museum was a fave.</p>