My first 4th July in La: ticking off as many traditions as possible

I can not tell you how excited I was for my first 4th of July.  I think this holiday is very much a friends, family & BBQ day- now we don’t have any of these yet as we are still new, but that wasn’t stopping us! God bless the We like LA emails I get for sending me plenty of suggestions to plan our day

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After putting on our best American looks (purchased late night at target) and dragging ourselves out of the house (celebrated the 3rd July a bit much) we headed down to Pacific Palisades for the parade. I hadn’t been out to the Palisades before, it feels like a small town within the city, really lovely. The streets were lined with people’s foldout chairs ready for the parade- this would absolutely not be possible in London, they’d get stolen for sure. 

I really loved the parade. They had some great marching bands and dancing horses and all sorts. 2 hours of awesome. Here’s some of my favs: 

• A bike dressing up competition! This amazing eagle kid was the winner 

• The old school fire trucks

• Lasoe work! I can only imagine how much I’d hurt myself trying this 

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• Dancing horses!

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• And how could I forget: it started with sky divers!!! Amazing 

• Marching bands looking super cool

After the parade you can go down to the high school for their post parade & fireworks spectacular. We actually ended up changing our plans – primarily because it was 5 hours to the firework display and we did not have 5 hours of chat up our sleeves 😂 

Instead we walked down the beach to Santa Monica. It’s a beautiful walk that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. After a quick hydration and sun break at Plan Check we jumped on the Hulu bikes and headed down to Marina Del Ray for the fireworks display 

I am a big fireworks fan, plus you can’t have a celebration without fireworks! It was a funny display. I’m used to fireworks being put to music which, though this one had music playing, there didn’t seem to be any connection. The other thing that let it down was all the firework smoke. I think there were 2 factors affecting this: no wind/breeze whatsoever  to blow it away and I’m pretty sure they were only launching off 1 barge. As a consequence, by the end, half of them were covered in smoke so you missed them. But as I said, I am a firework fan, so I still really enjoyed it. 

The uber surge was going to have the journey home over $100 which I think was probably 5x the normal price, ridiculous! So we decided to play chicken with Uber and wait them out at Zinque in Venice. 

The prawns here were absolutely delicious, and not just because I was starving. Grilled perfectly and seasoned so well; a tiny hint of chilli, which is my favourite. Probably the nicest prawns I’ve had in awhile 

We also split a burger which was nice but not mind bowing. The best part was the pancetta so absolutely get that added if you order it. I think some of the other things on the menu sounded really good, but I had a hankering for burger besides, it was America day. 

Zinque itself is a European inspired place which I think they have pulled off nicely. The menu and drinks are on theme and the space is beautiful. They were just closing the patio when we arrived but it looked like a great place to spend an evening. If I lived in the area I think it would be a regular wine spot. 

In the end, we won the battle with the uber surge: dinner and drinks were the price of what uber cost and we went home with a bus/uber combo costing $7. Happy Independence Day!