Show and Tell Friday!

Warning...this is a really long post!  

 Last weekend Lauren and I went to Los Angeles for a mini mother/daughter weekend away!  We flew down Friday around noon and got there about an hour later. I love short flights!  We rented a car and the photo above was taken on the 405 sitting in that dreadful LA traffic!  The traffic here in Silicon Valley is bad but LA is even worse!  

We couldn't wait to get here...

Our hotel in Santa Monica, California. We stayed at The Georgian Hotel. It was right across the street from the beach so I got us a room with a view...

We were up on the 8th floor which was the very top floor of this historic (and haunted) hotel!  Our view was breathtaking!

This hotel still has so much of it's old charm which I love!  This was our bathroom.

We could just walk across the street and down the stairs and across that little bridge and be right on the beach...

We were amazed at how far the sand stretched. It felt like a really long walk to the ocean...

It was so nice to get up on Saturday morning and go for a walk on this beautiful beach!

The weather was perfect! 

Here is some of the view when you are on the beach facing the land...

 The sunsets were beautiful too...

Saturday morning we got up and got ready for breakfast on the porch of our hotel. This photo was taken looking into a large mirror in the lobby...

Lauren and I decided to split a breakfast because we had big plans for lunch and didn't want to over-eat!  Yes..this is only my 1/2! 

After breakfast we headed to Beverly Hills. This weekend was more for my daughter but I had only one request! I wanted to eat lunch at Villa Blanca in Beverly Hills.  If you are a Real Housewives fan you may recognize this as Lisa Vanderpump's (The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) restaurant.  Unfortunately, Lisa wasn't there the day we went!  I was really bummed about that!  

Here we are inside Villa Blanca.  We ordered salads which were really good except the plates were warm so the salad became warm...that really wrecked it for me.  The decor in there is absolutely stunning though!  The service was amazing too!  We ended talking to the man that is being served to the left of me and to the couple on my right who is taking this photo.  It's always nice to meet people while on vacation.  We had a good time there!

Here is my salad...

I also had a white sangria that was really good (not sure why I look so sad in this pic!)

We walked around Beverly Hills after lunch and saw some beautiful things...

After lunch we went to Venice Beach.  From Beverly Hills to Venice Beach is like being in two different worlds!  Beverly Hills was more my style and Venice Beach was more Lauren's style.  This is the only photo I took there...

Another place Lauren wanted to visit was The Santee Alley. It's a huge shopping area...again not my type of place.  It was huge, crowded and filled with cheap clothes and knock-off designer bags but I did find a Halloween costume for this year. I planned on dressing up as Marilyn Monroe this Halloween and found the perfect dress for only $28...

It was the last one they had and it was a size Medium. It's actually a little big but I can take it in.  I was so happy to find this for such a deal!  It made pushing through shoulder-to-shoulder people worth it!

We also did a little shopping at the downtown Santa Monica Promenade.  That was fun!

After shopping we headed back to our beach to see another wonderful sunset...

 Sunday we had a plane to catch to come back home so we checked out of the hotel and headed to Hollywood...

It was beautiful weather at the beach but once you drove inland it was hot!  We walked around and looked at the stars....

The only stars we saw were the ones on the sidewalk though!

and I guess this is where the Jimmy Kimmel show is taped.

We walked, and walked and walked...

and finally went to lunch at The California Pizza Kitchen which is chain restaurant that we could have eaten at here at home but it was really good.

After Hollywood we drove to LAX and got on our plane and headed home...

It was a WONDERFUL weekend!  I wish I could go again this weekend!!!

If you are joining in on Show and Tell Friday, please remember that your Show and Tell needs to be something from your home or garden.  If you would like to join in, please enter your name and leave your exact Show and Tell blog post link, not just your blog link and as a common courtesy link back to my blog.