Parking in Venice is no picnic and you’ll be really lucky to find an available space along the street. You should read the signs carefully because you don’t want to get a ticket, or worse, have your car towed away. We couldn’t find any street parking so we parked at the lot on Rose Ave and Speedway for $4. Interestingly enough, there was a parking lot a few blocks south that was charging $14.

Venice Beach has always been one of my favorite places to visit because there are tons of things to see and do. If you’re looking for some cheap souvenirs or pieces of art for the house, you’ve come to the right place. Another thing you’ll find abundant on the boardwalk are Tarot Card and Palm Readers…about 2-3 per block. Some have their own shops while others are nestled along the boardwalk between the street performers and the animal rights activists.

Eugene (the genius behind PlanJam) is a big fan of psychic readings and I know that he would have been disappointed had I passed up the opportunity. So I picked the one that looked the most professional (he had a crystal ball on the table) and sat down for my tarot reading. His name was RA and he began by explaining how Tarot Card readings work. Basically, you shuffle the deck while thinking about a question you want answered. What essentially happens is that based on your subconscious thoughts, the cards will come out in a specific order that will contain the answer to your question. Without going into too much detail about the reading, let me just say that you won’t find the answer you’re looking for from a Venice Beach psychic. With that said, it was still tons of fun and well worth the $10 spent (about a 30 minute reading). Thanks Euge!

After the reading, we walked over to a cozy little Italian restaurant on Dudley Ave called Piccolo Ristorante. It’s a romantic neighborhood spot that is only steps away from the boardwalk. They open at 5pm and don’t accept reservations, so you’ll have to either come in early or be prepared for about an hour wait (depending on how busy it is of course). If you find yourself on the waiting list then you have a few options. There is a neighborhood bar right around the corner where you can enjoy some drinks and live music. You can also hang out inside the restaurant, but you’ll have to settle for sitting on the steps (with a bottle of wine of course).

Once we got our table (after an hour and a half wait) and ordered, the food came out pretty quickly. The wine list wasn’t particularly amazing, but they did have a good selection of Italian wines. Their signature dish – the Potatoes and Fig Tortellini was excellent, but the rest of the food came out a little too salty (something we all noticed). I’m not one of those people who complain and send the food back, so I did end up eating it all. It wasn’t my first time at the restaurant so this could have just been an isolated incident.

In total, we had a bottle of wine, 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and dessert, which came out to $150 (with tip). Overall, the food was good – but if I could do it over again, I would not have waited that long.

Total Cost: $164

Total Time: 5 Hours

12:00pm – We arrived at the Zoo at Noon and I was surprised that there was no charge for parking. You would think that finding parking would be almost impossible, but there were a ton of open spaces right near the entrance.

At first glance, the line to purchase tickets looks really intimidating, but it does move really quickly. We got to the ticket window in about 25 minutes and the price of admission was a reasonable $10 per person (children get in for $5).

We quickly glanced at the program of shows and there was nothing too impressive…about a half dozen shows centered on birds. That didn’t matter though, I came there to see the Tigers and Lions (btw, I love cats).

Since it was a warm day and we stood in line for about half an hour, we were a little hot so we decided to get a cold treat. Liz went for the Shaved Italian Ice, at $5.95, and I went for the Dippin Dots which were priced at $4.35. Now that we had cooled down a bit, we were ready to go explore the zoo!

As we walked from exhibit to exhibit, we couldn’t help but notice that almost all of the animals were either sleeping or hiding. This made it really frustrating after taking multiple detours around the zoo to get to them. Specifically, we were unable to see the Snow Leopard, Tigers, Bears, and Wolves. The only animal we were actually able to see during our first hour was the Tortoise, which really had nowhere to go. Now I am not sure if you have ever seen a Tortoise in real life, but it’s not that exhilarating.

It may have just been the time we decided to visit, but we were getting really annoyed having to play “Where’s Waldo” at each exhibit. The second half of our visit was a little more fun. They got around to feeding the hippopotamuses which allowed for some great close-up shots. There was also a family of Orangutans which were absolutely adorable and the Koalas were really cute (see pictures below).

We were at the Zoo for a total for 2.5 hours and we weren’t really rushing through it. All in all we had a wonderful time, but the selection of animals was far from spectacular. And no, I didn’t get to see any cats (which was a little disappointing). In the future we will probably take a trip down to San Diego and visit the Zoo there.

If you’ve never been to the Los Angeles Zoo, I would really suggest that you check it out (plus its right next door to Griffith Park where you can set up a picnic). But if you frequent Zoos often, you may get a little bored here.

Total Cost: $30.30

Total Time: 2.5 Hours

Last week we received an email from one of our users, Alan Oratovsky, thanking us for helping him plan his date. Alan works as a paramedic in Riverside, California and he wanted to do something really special and romantic for his girlfriend. He began by taking a 45-minute helicopter tour of Los Angeles at sunset and finished it off with a candlelight dinner by the beach.

Here are some photos that Alan included from his helicopter ride:

If you had a great date and want to share it with others, send us the details and we’ll put it up