After years of watching from afar, we finally decided to head out to the Vegan Street Fair in Los Angeles California. Our kids were on spring break the week leading up to the street fair so we made road trip vacation out of it.
On the way from Tucson we stopped in Palm Springs and had lunch at Chef Tanya’s Kitchen before heading out on a 2-mile hike in Thousand Palms Desert Oasis. After our hike we continued our drive to stopping at the wind mills in Palm Springs to take in the super bloom beneath them. We then Continued on towards Joshua Tree spending 2 nights in Yucca Valley. We hiked a few trails in Joshua tree, had lunch at Natural Sister Café and visited the World-Famous Crochet Museum.
From there we drove to Red Rock Canyon State park, hiked and had a picnic. After lunch, we headed towards Los Angeles and made a quick detour to visit Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park. After walking around for about an hour we headed toward Pasadena we would stay the remainder of our trip. We found the hotels in Pasadena to be more affordable compared to North Hollywood and figured a 20 min drive to L.A. was nothing considering how far we had already driven.
I had planned for another day of hiking in the L.A. area, but the kids really wanted to do some sightseeing. We decided to take them to Hollywood Blvd. We did just about every touristy thing you can imagine. We visited, the Hollywood Wax Museum, Guinness Book World of Records Museum, Ripley’s Believe it or not, Museum of Selfies, and did a Hollywood tour. We had lunch at Trejo’s Tacos and an earlier diner at Veggie Grill.
The Day of the Vegan Street Fair had arrived, and we were beyond stoked. I had studied the vendor list prior to the event and stalked their in Instagram pages to see which one’s I would most like to try. My narrowed down list turned out to be a bit lengthy but at least I weeded out a good portion. I was unfamiliar with the area and was unaware of any available parking for the event.
The event’s page instructed people to part at Universal Studios and take an Uber. We did as instructed and wish we had not. Parking at Universal Studios was $25 and the Uber ride to and from the festival was $12 each way. It pretty much cost us $50 to park and ride. We had decided to get to the festival a half hour early and there was plenty of street parking available.
Arriving Early was a great decision as lines were already forming for some of the vendors. Lettuce Feast was at the top of my list and the line was getting long so I decided to wait in it. I sent Eric down to Avocadamama to get their Mac n Cheese while I waited. We met up to share our food and went straight back to waiting in line for other vendors. Tip: If you are going with a friend, family or significant other, I highly recommend splitting up and waiting in separate lines if you are willing to share and try many different vendors.
There is so much food at this street fair, that it can be overwhelming. The prices are considerably high although each vendor offers a $4 taste. There is an option to buy a fast pass to skip to the front of the line. I considered purchasing this but learned if you go early the lines are not all that bad. We tried about 10 different food vendors, and everything was delicious.
The Vegan street fair had no shortage of entertainment. There were several DJ’s, cheerleaders, hula hoopers, stilt walkers, face painters, chalk artists and balloon artist all along the street. They had a children’s area with a good variety of bounce houses. It was an additional cost to let your children play and we didn’t think it was worth the price considering how much money we had already spent. They also had a beer garden with what looked like games for adults.
Overall it was a pleasant experience and I highly recommend visiting at least once. You may even run into a few vegan celebrities.
Great rreading