Travelling for me means experiencing the culture and lifestyle of the place I visit and getting to know how the locals live. I love to really live at the place I travel to by participating in activities and connecting with locals. Just then I feel like I grow through the experience and soak it all in. Fortunately, I had lots of these experiences during my Los Angeles trip last month.

One of many perfect summer mornings during my California travel took place on a Saturday (June 17th, 2017 — one day after we got back from Las Vegas) in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. It included a good exercise, a nice girls’ chat over healthy food and a beautiful walk and sightseeing tour. What more to ask for?

Playlist Yoga

It was a quick drive from Venice Beach to West Hollywood at 7 AM: Traffic at that time is amazing when you have spend a week full of traffic jams… So that 15 minutes drive really stood out! I met with Samantha Lee, actress and fellow blogger from wonderlandsam, and her two friends for an early morning Yoga class at Playlist Yoga. Sam is a not only living my childhood dream by being an actress living in Los Angeles, she also has such great content on her website (one of my favorite blogs!) on living an intentional life — her words and pictures are beautiful and inspiring. Have a look around her blog if you haven’t already, folks! 🙂 She is just as lovely in person as she appears on her blog.

Our session at Playlist Yoga was great: sweaty Vinyasa Flow with great music — just the way I like a good workout to be. I wasn’t exactly used to doing Yoga to pop music but it was fun and something I am continuing to do now that I am back home.

Urth Caffé

After our Yoga session, we had breakfast at Urth Caffé, located on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, and chatted over a yummy coffee. It was great to get to know the ladies and hear about their lifestyles. (Thank you girls for all the great recommendations you gave for the rest of my trip! 🙂 )

Breakfast options at Urth Caffé are diverse: whether you like oatmeal, cake, salmon toasts or yogurt in the morning — they do offer it. And most importantly for early mornings: the coffee is delicious. Their terrace is nice to have a sunny time-out during the day.

Melrose Avenue

Melrose Avenue is great to have a calm shopping spree. Being from Cologne, Germany, I appreciate shopping streets that are not crowded and overpacked with stores. On Melrose Avenue, you have stores to your left and right. People don’t storm at you from every direction. The variety of the stores is great: it makes your shopper’s heart beat faster ♥ — promise.

San Marino

Did you know that Amanda’s house (Cameron Diaz’ character from “The Holiday”) is located in San Gabriel Valley (1883 Orlando Road, San Marino)? Well, it is. And it’s a lovely house and neighborhood — worth a short drive through!

-your tiny woman in a giant world

post scriptum: I love summer, especially summer mornings. Read my article spotlight on morning routines — take 1: the impact of morning routines on us  and take 2: the beauty of seasonal morning routines for a little inspiration for creating your precious summer mornings. Also, if you’d like to read more L. A. Summer Love articles, click here. Happy reading 🙂

Also, make sure to come back to this post as I will upload further pics at a later time.