GlobeToddles

So you've landed in sunny California on your new adventure on a shiny resident visa, and you've read somewhere that your overseas driving licence can only be used for 10 days. 10 days? Did you read that right? Yep, I'm afraid you did. If you're coming over from another US state you've got until your current licence expires, but if you're from overseas (like me) you need to have a California driver licence if you are considered a California resident. And according to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), this means you do any of the following: - Vote in a California election - Pay resident tuition - File for a homeowner's property tax exemption, or - Receive "any other privilege or benefit not ordinarily extended to nonresidents" See: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/brochures/fast_facts/ffdl05 We moved over here on an L1/L2 visa, which is basically one that global companies use to transfer staff between international offic...

By now I ought to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the animal kingdom. Los Angeles Zoo marked our fourth zoo trip, and this time we identified the animals we really wanted to see, headed in a zig-zag fashion from one to the next, and took in anything else that was interesting along the way. Previously I would plot a nice, logical route which makes sense on the map - if you're an adult. If however you are approximately 18 months old and have that oft-but-not-always-endearing habit of walking in circles / backwards / any direction other than the planned one I've found it helps to direct the party towards the next exciting animal on the checklist and hey, if an ocelot happens to be en route then we'll all stop and look at an ocelot. (True story.) We don't tend to take many photos at zoos, mostly because we're either running after a child each or it's just too hard to capture animal + child in one shot. But if you look closely here you can just see the giraff...

So it turns out L.A. has museums. Who knew? I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I suppose with all the Hollywood associations one has with L.A. it's easy to forget it's a city like any other. And they are quite good museums, too. Our 3-year-old has recently developed quite an interest in dinosaurs, so our first trip in towards the city was to the Natural History Museum , where, most fortunately (or perhaps the clever folks who planned the layout simply know what all kids are most excited about), the dinosaurs were the first exhibit through the door: After the dinosaurs there was still quite a lot else to see, from dioramas depicting bison and jaguars to clear overhead pipes with real live rats running through them. We took a brief saunter through most of the halls but all agreed that the dinosaurs were the best bit. A few days later we returned to the museum part of town (I can understand why museums are often located near each other but who has the men...

The perfectly sculpted physiques. The busy, always-on-the-phone people who power walk their way down the boardwalk. The polite smilers who have enough friends, thank you very much... ... are all conspicuously absent. This is L.A.? Are you sure? We moved down to sunny southern California at the start of November and we are staying in a really quaint little beachy suburb called Hermosa Beach. For anyone who's been to Sydney I'd liken it to a small Manly. There's a lovely boardwalk along the wide, volleyball-crazy beach; a pedestrianised avenue teeming with bars and restaurants that bisects it and leads up to a small shopping district; a bunch of pretty houses; and a curious stretch of bark-covered path a few blocks inland that delights runners and dog-walkers alike (local legend is that it was to be a railway but the tyre companies bought the land to prevent this from happening). So on our first day we took a stroll along the boardwalk and pier and down the avenue (all of...