Meg's Guided Tour of LA

My sister and brother-in-law decided to visit the West Coast this summer, and luckily I had a weekend in between business trips to take them around and give them the insiders view of LA. We had a lot of fun, got a little sunburn (had to do the tour top down in the EOS, of course!), and got to catch up. They were even nice enough to take me out for an early birthday dinner!

They arrived on Saturday morning just in time for lunch, so we headed out for Mexican. Dave (my brother-in-law) is a picky eater, but he loves Mexican food, and no one doesn't like a margarita in LA, right? So we headed out to Los Compadres on Sunset, home of the flaming margarita.



It was fun to go back there for me too. When I moved to LA 10 years ago (jeez, has it been that long?), Los Compadres was my favorite hang-out with my co-workers Peter and Scott, especially since Peter's house is right around the corner a few blocks.

With our hunger satisfied, we did a little driving tour of Sunset, Melrose and Santa Monica Boulevards so I could point out some stuff for them to check out later. Then we headed to the infamous Hollywood Walk of Fame. Liz promptly ran into the President....



....while Dave hooked up with Marilyn...



...and two of the shortest members of KISS I've ever seen!



Meanwhile, Liz attempted to muscle through the crowd around Michael Jackson's star on the Walk of Fame.



Even this many weeks after the funeral, it's still a madhouse. I wasn't even gonna try to get in there. Luckily I live here, so I can go back on a week day if I ever need a picture.

We were all pretty exhausted at that point, me from the sun and Liz and Dave from a very long trip west that started at 2 AM their time. So I dropped them back at their rental car, and they headed to the hotel and off on their own for the evening.

The next day, Dave had gotten tickets for all of us to the Dodgers Game.



Lucky for me, it was LA Kings Day at Dodger Stadium, and our assistant captain and defenseman Matt Greene was throwing out the first pitch! I shot some video, but our seat location in the left field pavilion meant you can't really see anything. If you want to see Matty's pitch, here's a link to the Kings website that has a much better video.

http://kings.nhl.tv/team/console.jsp?catid=731&id=45125

We did have a quite nice view of Manny Ramirez all day, and boy does he love working the crowd! If only my nephew Will had been here, we might have gotten a ball!



In honor of our famous left fielder, Dave bought himself some replica "Manny-dreds."



It was a great game, although it was hot as Hades the entire day, and the section we were sitting in had NO shade at any point in the day. The air temp per my iPhone was 90 degrees, but if felt like at least 100 in our seats. Needless to say, we downed several of these...



By the end of the afternoon, we had survived the heat, and the Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, aided by a beautiful homer by Matt Kemp. Then it was home to shower and take a break, followed by a trip to LA Live and dinner at the Yard House.

Thanks to Liz and Dave for a great weekend! Unfortunately, this tour guide is off to Florida in the morning...all work and no play this time.