This article will be a first of its kind for me. I have never done this before, but seeing as how this is an entertainment-themed blog and I have covered theme parks and Hollywood history many times before, I thought it would be appropriate to use this platform to chronicle my recent trip to Los Angeles where I got to see Hollywood in person.

It all started when my girlfriend surprised me with the news that we would be visiting Super Nintendo World to celebrate my birthday, and seeing as how we are both big gamers and Mario fans, this was huge news. So I can’t thank her enough for arranging this trip. Here she was decked out in Luigi gear (her favorite character).

I will be chronicling my trip to L.A. on this blog in multiple parts to let you know what the experience of spending a week in the city was like, from the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Universal Studios and everything in between. And most of the pictures I share throughout this series of articles are ones I took myself, so you will get first-hand knowledge of what I saw when I was there.

After flying in from Sacramento (which was about an hour-and-a-half-long plane ride), we landed in Burbank and called a Lyft to take us to the Hilton, a very nice (and expensive) hotel in Universal City which we booked for five vacation days in advance, giving us plenty of time to do everything we wanted to do on our trip.

The first major thing I noticed on our drive from Burbank to Universal City was that the headquarters of Universal Studios is right next to our hotel. In fact you can literally see it from the entrance.

As you can see, the Sheraton Universal Hotel is right next to Universal Pictures, and the cool thing about staying at the Hilton or the Sheraton is that every 15 to 20 minutes, a free bus circles the area, stopping at the Hilton, the Sheraton and the Universal CityWalk, which is a tourist-filled shopping mall that you cross to get to the theme park Universal Studios Hollywood, and that was one of the first places we explored.

The plaza was amazing, featuring a lot of places that sell clothes, toys, books, hats, sunglasses, etc. Plus there were a lot of places to eat and drink like Taco Bell, Jamba Juice and the diner Johnny Rocket’s (the Peanut Butter Shake I got there is one of the best things I ever tasted), but the first place we went was the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. We weren’t sure what type of place this was, but when we walked inside we realized it was basically a restaurant combined with a gift shop, with not just a chocolate theme but a steampunk theme. This was by far one of the biggest highlights of our trip just for the aesthetic alone.

That top hat with the pipe sticking out of it was fully made out of chocolate. No lie. I loved the vibe of this place.

We also visited Things from Another World, which was full of comics, collectibles and all things nerdy. So basically paradise for me.

IT’SUGAR is a candy department store with an impressive presentation. Featuring figurines of candy mascots, a TV screen at the back of the store playing vintage candy commercials and a timeline of famous candy-related moments through cinematic history. And wait till you see the cast of The Wizard of Oz made entirely of candy.

Celebrity Authentics was a place I found fascinating. They had autographed collectibles on display and for sale (if you can afford them) signed by actual celebrities. A Batphone signed by both Adam West and Burt Ward and an Infinity Gauntlet signed by Josh Brolin were just some of the highlights.

We didn’t get to Super Nintendo World on our first day but we got to the Super Nintendo World Store on CityWalk, which is currently composed mostly of Mario merchandise (my girlfriend made a beeline for the Luigi doll of course).

We got to see the entrance to Universal Studios Hollywood and reluctantly turned back around because we only reserved two tickets to the park for our last two days of vacation, but I did take a quick pic of the famous spinning Universal globe landmark, and luckily there was still plenty to do in L.A. before we got to the parks, which I will begin to tell you about in my next article.