Rose Bowl

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First let me say what an awesome game! Hats off to Michigan fans who made the trip. Michigan has some cool traditions and fans.

We went for the game and found out just why so many people love SOCAL. My wife and I had been to the Los Angeles area before, but had stayed near Huntington Beach and Newport Beach several miles inland. We had a great time, but the flat land and miles of freeways around there didn't do much to inspire us. The area around the Rose Bowl and between Venice and Pasadena was very exciting. Nice drives and vistas and though we had to drive forty miles to the game and parade then back again for parade float viewing the roads were well kept and fast moving for the most part. We stayed in Venice at the Best Western Marina Hotel. An okay place, but my biggest beef was the housekeeping staff's failure to lock the sliding glass doors. The first night we stayed in a room on the second floor where the sliding door would not lock at all. I know several hotels have been sued over unfortunate criminal activities from unlocked patio doors - Very bad practice.

The Rose parade is a must see. The detail and construction of those floats is amazing. We parked in the Parsons engineering parking lot and walked 25 blocks to our grandstand seats - Something I wouldn’t recommend. People camp out overnight to get the free curbside seats, but we saw several good areas along our long walk to our seats were we could have stood for the duration of the parade.

The biggest fiasco was the shuttle to the Rose bowl game and back. We waited into at a ½ a mile long line on the way over, but we cut the line on the way back. We felt justified in cutting after we had waited in line against the fence for forty minuets only to find the security personal directly everyone to the end of another line longer than the line we had just stood in.

Our dinner that night was at the recommendation of a fellow passenger on the shuttle. We had dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in Santa Monica which was good, but not what we had budgeted for on the trip. The meal at Il Merino set us back $110 and could have been more pleasant had we had some fresh clothes. This was the first of the two upscale restaurants we dined in and where I first noticed that the waiter did not server the alcohol. After a great mild Italian dinner we headed back to the room for the evening.

We had early plans for the Rose parade float viewing the next morning.






Adventure Travel

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Photos

Rose Bowl
Great Game