My traveling experience as a young single female – Part I:  Los Angeles

 

Someone has asked about traveling as a young single female to LA and New York, which prompted me to start writing a series on my traveling experience as a young single female.  This is part I of the series.  It talks about my first traveling experience to Los Angeles, California.  This wasn’t the first time that I travelled alone.  I like traveling.  I will seize any traveling opportunity if I can.  I will talk about the other traveling experience later. 

 

It was about 19 years ago when I travelled alone to Los Angeles for a one-week vacation.  I was fresh out of graduate school and landed a decent job, so partying was all I had in mind. 

 

My plan of the trip started with an AAA ad I saw on the newspaper.  The roundtrip airfare to Los Angeles was about $100.  That was extremely cheap. I bought a travel guide to California. I was cheap then.  I felt that I could reap greater value from a state guide book than a single city guide.  Anyway, I found the cheapest hotel advertised right in downtown Los Angeles.  I believe it was owned by a Chinese.  It was $20 per night, so I only had to pay $140 for a week’s day.  What a deal!  As a single young lady, I was constantly on the lookout for safety.  However, I didn’t always have a clear mind.  It was quite a dangerous move to book the hotel just by reading the hotel information from Fodor’s.  The travel guide did not mention it to be an unsafe hotel, so I just assumed it to be safe and livable.  Fodor’s did point out that it was an old outdated hotel.  Anyway, to me, it was just a place to sleep.  I think that the hotel used to be called “Orchard Hotel” and has been renovated and become “O Hotel”. http://www.ohotelgroup.com/   

 

With the flight and hotel settled, I began my first adventure in Los Angeles.  I wasn’t shocked by the look of the hotel.  It was merely a place to sleep then.  My taste of quality hotel started when I began attending conferences on behalf of my current employer.  That is a road of no return.  Anyway, the first thing I did after I got my key was to look around to see if anyone was following me.  I made sure that I was the only one entering the elevator.   I wasn’t paranoid.  Remember, the hotel was in downtown Los Angeles and I was a single young lady.  The next thing I did was pushing a chair against the door to alert me of any intruder.  I thought how I could escape if someone entered the room.  I could call the front desk right away or throw myself towards the window.  I didn’t think of carrying a whistle or a knife with me or even a pepper spray to fend off any attacker.  My room was on the third floor.  Jumping off from the window wasn’t that appealing.  In addition, I doubted that the window would break with the little body weight I had.  There was not a single curtain in my room.  I thought if something happened, I could shout or make a signal.  That didn't sound like a good tactic either.  Nobody would have noticed me as downtown Los Angeles is a ghost town at night.  Luckily nothing happened.  Alone in an unfamiliar town, I always made sure to get back to the hotel between 5pm and 6pm. 

 

I was having a really good time sightseeing.  The only thing that made me somewhat uneasy was the Korean missionary who moved in days after I did.  He wasn’t a bad guy.  I just didn’t feel comfortable talking to strangers, especially to someone who wanted to know which tour I took and wanted to tag along.  He even called the front desk to connect his call to my room.  I was mad at the front desk for not consulting with me first and assuming that he was my friend.  I couldn’t remember if he managed to knock on my door or not.  If he did, I might have told him that I had to get up early for the tour and had to go to sleep then.  Anyway, he was only able to tag alone once with me to San Diego SeaWorld.  Since I had so much to see, I was always on the run.  I was very good at making a cunning escape, like a well-camouflaged cicada sloughing off its shell.  Another thing that bothered me was the breakfast.  The McDonald nearby was frequented by people you wouldn’t want to associate with.  Downtown LA during weekend is a horrible town.    

 

You must be waiting impatiently for me to reveal where I first visited in Los Angeles as a single young female traveler.  Below is the list.  You can look up the internet for more information on each point of interest.     

Downtown LA, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Hollywood sign, Hollywood Bowl, Chinatown, Mann’s Chinese Theatre, Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Little Tokyo, San Diego SeaWorld. 

 

** 版權所有 – Elisa English

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