52 Weeks: Week 51

Week 51: Los Angeles

We're almost to the end of the year. Can you believe that there are only a few days left of 2015?

We've been away on vacation in Southern California since the girl's Winter break started last week and I've gotten a little behind with blogging. Time to catch up starting with last week's installment of my 52 week project.

We started our vacation with a few days in Los Angeles. I'll have a few dedicated posts coming soon about places we visited, but for week 51 I'm sharing our stay at the Ace Hotel in Downtown LA.

In the past when we've visited Los Angeles we've stayed either close to the beach or Hollywood. This time around we decided to skip the regular tourist spots and stay in Downtown with its vibrant art scene. The Ace Hotel was the perfect location. I've been wanting to stay at the Downtown LA Ace Hotel ever since we stayed in their hotel in Seattle over Summer last year. We enjoyed our stay there so much that we now try to book an Ace Hotel whenever there's one in a city we're visiting. The vibe is definitely young and hip, but still totally family friendly.

The Downtown LA Ace Hotel is located in the historic and very ornate United Artists building. The original United Artists sign adorns the front of the building and our room on the 9th floor looked out directly onto the letter E in the sign. I love how rustic the sign is.

Downtown LA is going through a major revitalization at the moment with new construction on almost every second corner. In fact, there is currently a construction site across the road from the Ace Hotel at the moment. That might not sound ideal, but seriously, we didn't hear a thing. Plus our construction obsessed toddler loved looking out at the diggers below our window. I actually found it quite fascinating to watch too. And I must admit, I quite like looking up at the large yellow crane from my bed at night.

Our favorite thing about the Ace Hotel in LA is the rooftop pool. The girls were super excited when I told them about the pool. I had been a little worried that it would be too cold to swim, you know, being Winter and all, but the pool itself was so warm that it was more like a hot tub. Perfect for a dip on a Winter's day. I guess it was still a little cold for the other hotel guests though as we were the only ones in the pool! That worked out perfectly for us as the girls love to splash. Ava and Lola were pretty excited to go swimming with Mathilde and see just how well she can swim on her own now. As Mathilde takes swim classes while Ava and Lola are at school they never actually get to see her swim. They were pretty impressed with their little sister. She's a total fish!

Oh, and yes, I have purple hair in the photo below. You'll be seeing more of that soon, although it has faded a lot while we've been away and I haven't been using my color boost conditioner.

The tower at the top of the building is so pretty. Doesn't it look like part of a castle? I was happy to just lay back in the warm pool and look up at it.

The views over Downtown from the roof deck are pretty spectacular too. Lola liked the iconic "Cheeses Saves" sign as she called it!

Back downstairs on the ground floor we ate breakfast in the cafe. The ricotta pancakes were so good - although little people did steal all of my berries before I could eat any of them!

We all enjoyed our stay at the Ace Hotel and I look forward to staying there again next time we visit Los Angeles.

Lots more from our Winter break vacation coming soon!