Ugh, the sinus thing I had going on Wednesday and Thursday was even worse when I woke up Friday! Wah! My right eye kept watering and it was super annoying. At least I slept really well. The Airbnb had a super soft King size bed and I sunk into it and didn’t move much and actually slept past 6:00!

I got up and worked on blog posts (and downloading photos) and Instagram, then we got ready to go. I really wanted to check out this place called All Day Vegan Café but they didn’t open until 9:00… so not all day? Ha. I was annoyed. Steven found a donut place for us to try called Fōnuts. I was sus when we walked in and I saw it was gluten-free (ha) but the three donuts we got were delicious! We tried lemon, chocolate peanut butter, and a black & white.

I also got a hot tea and burned my tongue. Eyeroll.

After that we headed to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour. We had reserved Friday and Saturday for touristy stuff and I was excited (we had talked about going back to the expo but decided not go)!

(On the way we stopped at a Rite Aid so I could get something to help with my runny eye and nose. They recommend Claritin D so I got it, but it didn’t seem to do much. Sigh.)

My sister did the Warner Bros. Studio Tour when she was in LA years ago and recommended it. I looked into it and a few other tours and Warner Bros. sounded the best and it did NOT disappoint! We learned so much and got to see a lot of the backlot!

Can I remember much of what we learned or what the movie slang was? No, I cannot. Ha.

The tour is three hours long and starts with a display area in the lobby while you wait for your tour to start.

Then you watch a short video that shows clips of some of their movies – there were so many of our favorites on there – The Departed, Mad Max: Fury Road, Batman Begin, etc. We were both surprised by how many of our favorite movies were Warner Bros.!

After that you get on a extended golf cart to tour the backlot for about an hour. We found this so interesting! We got to see the outdoor sets (roads, houses, and buildings) that they reuse over and over for movies and TV. We got to go inside of a sound stage and see what the setup is like. We got to see “Central Park” from friends. And we got to go into a house that had the ceiling removed to hold all the lighting and sound equipment. We learned so much. We’re big movie lovers and really loved the peek behind the scenes. (A lot of the tour was television focused – we didn’t get a lot of those references since we don’t watch many TV shows.)

After the outdoor tour you get dropped at a building with a huge Friends shop, Central Perk Café, and a lot of neat interactive displays. We sat in Central Perk,

did a forced perspective (I think it was called that?) Hobbits photo,

and played around with the displays (green screen stuff, dubbing audio) and checked out the exhibits (Crazy Rich Asians costumes, Mars Attacks! costumes, casting, screenplays, etc. There was more that we glossed over since it didn’t interest us – like Big Bang Theory). 

After that section you get onto a golf cart to go back to the main building and see a few more displays and get dumped into the gift shop. We saw Game of Thrones props and costumes, DC stuff, and Harry Potter stuff. We were most interested in the Game of Thrones display!

We checked out the gift shop (and didn’t get anything – we didn’t buy many souvenirs on the trip except for at the national park), I hid a rock, then we headed to lunch. We went to Sugar Taco and got loaded fries, a quesadilla, and three tacos. It was really good!

Then I stopped at a café nearby and got a delicious chai. It was pouring rain and chilly out and it warmed me right up (until I stepped into a puddle to get into the car, ha)!

Did I mention it was raining all day? It rained the last two days of our trip and was such a bummer, since those were our designated sightseeing days. But we made the most of it.

We decided to do some building sightseeing. We went to the building they use for Nakatomi Tower in Die Hard:

Then we went to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It’s architecturally famous and I wanted to see it in person. We accidentally found an open rooftop terrace garden and enjoyed seeing the beautiful garden and building details up close.

Then we headed to the Toretto House and Toretto Market & Cafe from the Fast & Furious movies.

And finally, we had plans to see my friend Tiff for dinner at her house! We were supposed to the night before but I had to cancel because of the expo, then when I woke up feeling so off (you can see how my watering eye made all my makeup come off in the photos) I was worried I would get them sick, but I actually felt better by the end of the day! I’m not sure if the Claritin D finally started working (I don’t have allergies but I thought it might work anyway when they recommended it?) or whatever, but I was grateful for it! (And I had let her know what was up and she didn’t care and said come on over.)

We ordered burger delivery (from Burgerlords) and it was delicious and we had a great time chatting for a few hours!

I’m so glad I got to meet her husband and her kids and that they got to meet Steven. We were both saying how we wished we lived closer together. Our time there was very fulfilling and a huge highlight of our trip!

We got home around 10:30 and my snis had let me know the Shittefly magnet deal was going on so I was up late working on getting those ordered, and then I was wired (from the second Claritin D?) and did not fall asleep until after 2:00. Oops.