DAY TWENTY - Wednesday 4 May 2011: GOODBYE!

This post wasn't meant to exist because today would just consist of getting to the airport and flying home.  HOWEVER.... all was going well - sun was shining, we had a walk in the morning after throwing out more stuff that we'd accumulated along the way. All that was left was the trip to the airport and the flight home.  We'd already booked the 'super' shuttle on the internet - $37 paid up front and they would pick us up at 2pm - 2.15pm to go to LA International Airport. All very simple.

waiting for the cab in the hotel lobby... calm before the storm?

 Car arrived and in we jumped.  A couple of miles into the journey the driver said he'd had a phone call to say he'd picked up the wrong passengers. Ha ha... what a laugh we had. Then he got another phone call and he said we weren't the right passengers so we would have to pay $65 for the trip. No question according to him. We explained that we'd already paid and that there had obviously been some mix up. He was supposed to pick up passengers from room 207 and we were room 204.  This is when it started to get ugly!  He insisted we would have to pay $65 or he would take us back to the hotel.  At this point I think I saw Neal's head explode and he turned into somebody with a steely determination NOT to pay any extra money even if somebody ripped out his finger nails.  The driver and Neal were, at this point, eyeball to eyeball yelling at each other. Neal accused him of kidnapping us and we were going to ring the police - the driver swerved off the road and said he was taking us back to the hotel whether we missed our flight or not... obviously time for a sensible person to step in - but where could we find one??  Oh yes... that was me (strange I know). As the driver is leaning into the back of the car shouting to Neal "hit me, hit me" (anybody who knows Neal knows that's the last thing in the world he would do)...and as the driver has a very thick accent and it sounds more like "heat me, heat me" and Neal is looking a bit confused about that but shouting "you are taking us somewhere against our will and that's kidnapping - you'll go to prison for a very long time"... I thought it was about time to ring the cab company (California Express) to see if there were any sane people around.  We finally agreed to pay $20 as a compromise so the driver could stand down without losing face and without being accused of kidnapping his passengers, and Neal could return to his normal colour.  The sulking driver still whined all the way to the airport that he wouldn't make any money out of it. Neal apologised for losing his temper and tried to shake hands but he didn't want to know.  It cost us extra money and we're convinced it's some sort of scam but at least it was $20 and not $65 and we got our flight on time!  Phew...  I thought it was all going too smoothly!

And so goodbye to California - it was a blast (as they probably said in San Francisco in the 70s) .... Over and out x

DAY NINETEEN - Tuesday 3 May 2011: Paramount Studios - Griffith Park and Observatory

Security is very tight on the Paramount Studio tours - you have to book in advance and then when you arrive they can't find your name on the list because they didn't spell it correctly in the first place. That said, it only took about ten minutes to get us through the gate and straight into the cafe/gift shop - where else would a Hollywood tour start?  The day was baking hot again so the aircon in the cafe was a relief even though we weren't in the slightest tempted to buy any Marilyn Monroe tea towels (a highly unlikely item for that particular lady I would have thought) or any Hollywood sign fridge magnets. Melissa, our guide, was obviously new at this lark - she started us off with a round the table introduction - name, country, favourite film and favourite tv programme.  As there were three boys from France who didn't understand what she was talking about, two New Yorkers who wanted to take over the tour for themselves and me and Neal - who refused to answer any questions directly or sensibly - this was rather an unfortunate beginning.  Anyway, following the embarrassing silences, we jumped into our little cart and off we went on a trip into a magical land - or so we thought. It actually turned out to be a little bit on the boring side. Some good initial  information about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz who, at one time, lived on the lot and had the back garden of their home reproduced there so that photo opportunities made it look as if they were at home with the kids rather than working all the time - an important thing for Lucy's reputation in the 1950s.

Lucille Ball's pretend back garden

They promise you'll 'walk in the footsteps of legends' but what we actually got was the sound stage for Glee (but we couldn't go in) and something called Big Time Rush, never heard of it, and a tv show called Dr Phill. Melissa wants a job on Dr Phill so we got quite a lot of information on that!

There were some good sets for New York which are apparently also used for London and Paris - which made the French contingent snigger a bit.

The sky backdrop is used for continuity rather than a 'real' sky

This car park was the scene of the waters being parted in the Ten Commandments and was used in a few of the Jaws scenes - although most of those were actually done at sea.
 

According to Melissa, Tom Hanks still gets dressed up as Forrest Gump and sits on the bench handing out chocolates to the tour visitors - not on our day though....

Following all that excitement, we thought a little trip next door to Hollywood Forever would be in order.  If there is such a thing as a great cemetary, then this is it.  http://www.hollywoodforever.com/.

Douglas Fairbanks and DF Junior

Johnny Ramone

Writers, directors, and performers are buried here - most of which we missed.  Another case of not doing enough homework beforehand. I did try to find Rudolph Valentino but he proved as elusive as ever. Not even a lady in black to follow.

 

The original Jewish part of the cemetary is very social, with people sitting around and spending time by the grave sides and peacocks wandering freely.  Most people have added benches or chairs by the graves and during the summer, movies are screened at the cemetery at a gathering called Cinespia. Thousands of people come with beach chairs, blankets, and food to view films projected onto the side of one of the buildings.

We had lunch at Cafe 101 attached to the hotel (retro diner style)

and then headed off to Griffith Park without any real expectations as we knew the observatory would be closed.  It's an amazing space with beautiful views of LA and the surrounding hills. A true surprise and well worth the visit...



http://www.seeing-stars.com/immortalized/jamesdean.shtml



It's a way off, but there's just no getting away from it

DAY EIGHTEEN - Monday 2 May 2011: LA & Malibu

It grows on you!  The first impressions gained on Hollywood Blvd are not what LA is all about. It's vibrant, full of people rushing here and there - okay, some of them look a bit dodgy, but it's full of life and creativity. Hollywood is amazingly out of this world. Home to the rich and famous.  Home of the good old motion picture. You'll hate it or love it. A magical place where your dreams can be made or broken.

We decided to hire a car for a couple of days so we could have a nosey around without the hassle of buses, subways etc.  Monday was another scorching hot day - in the 90s - so an air-condition car was very welcome.  We drove up into the Hollywood hills - along narrow winding lanes skirted by security-heavy, spectacular houses sitting under the Hollywood sign.



Neal in violation of the no hiking sign

We didn't really know where we were going after that as we didn't have a map (clever planning) so we drove in heavy traffic through Universal city, Warner Bros land, until we found ourselves asleep at the traffic lights with people behind us going crazy beeping horns and waving arms!  How embarrassing and how dangerous. Can you imagine us both sitting there in the heavy LA traffic, eyes shut... oh dear! Anyway, we pulled into a car park and went for a pizza. Always a good solution, and this particular place (California Pizza Kitchen) was spraying cold water onto the outside seating area - brilliant idea in that heat! 



is he still asleep?

 Refreshed, and awake, we drove on through cowboy country (it really is on the edge of the desert) until, unexpectedly, we found the ocean.  Malibu!  Lovely place and the pelicans were back!

Back to reality and Hollywood... (never thought I'd say that).



is he alive, is he dead - nobody seems to care!



DAY SEVENTEEN - Sunday 1 May 2011: San Diego to LA

It was hard, but it had to be done.  Squeezing all our stuff into the suitcases was impossible.  Like the bag men and women we'd seen around San Francisco and San Diego, we'd accumulated so much 'stuff' - all we needed was a shopping trolley to push it around in.  Anyway, failing that, we had to ditch a lot of very important things like - about one hundred leaflets from every town on the West Coast of California that we'd visited, paper bags in which we'd had the most amazing snacks and thought we'd keep as a memento, plastic cups, knives and forks (just in case the restaurants ran out of cutlery), paper towels, tomato ketchup, blueberry jam, mustard and half a bottle of wine!  That was the most difficult.

Hotel reception ordered us a cab to the main train station in San Diego.  We'd checked the timetable and there was a Surfliner Amtrak train leaving at 12 noon which would get us into LA at about 2.40pm.  What we thought was our taxi arrived and we jumped in.  We soon realised that the guy was cruising for passengers and that he wasn't the one ordered. Nothing we could do about it so, after searching questions on the fare, we decided to go with the flow. Actually, he seemed like a nice chap - Somalian/Kenyan who was in the US on what seemed to be some sort of grant - working as a taxi driver in the day and studying to be a social worker at night so that he could return to Kenya to work and to be reunited with his mum. Admittedly, he did take us a long way round but we were happy with the fare so we didn't mind and we didn't tip.  I can't believe the expectations on the tip front - 18% - 20% for almost everything!

We arrived about 30 minutes before the train was due so thought there would be no problem. Not so!  They're very bossy these uniformed Amtrak people and they took one look at our over stuffed cases as we were queuing for the ticket desk and told us we should have checked them in and that we wouldn't get on the 12.00 train because we hadn't done it earlier. Luckily, we had the Sunshine boys standing behind us and they complained in loud voices that it was a terrible way to treat visitors to the US. They also told us we could carry our bags on and didn't have to check them in.  We got our tickets and decided to chance it.  The queue was very, very, very long and there was a girl in front of us with two suitcases and two rucksacks so, of course, Neal had to be her knight in shining armour and get her bags onto the train as well as ours. Because the trains are double decker and only seniors (over 62 years old so I didn't quite qualify) and people with health problems can sit on the downstairs deck, he had to haul four very large suitcases, four rucksacks and one shoulder bag up the steep stairs to the top deck.  It was hard working watching him I can tell you.

Not many photos to show because this was all so fraught after the easy ride we'd had so far.  Travelling with Amtrak is like being in a slow moving, fascist, railway state. If you're travelling as a couple and use two chairs in a four chair section, the guards (who are nothing like Tom Hanks) are constantly telling you that if a family gets on the train you will be required to move to other seats. There's no hope for the single traveller.  Loud speaker announcements are made by the minute telling you what you can and cannot do and then, shock, horror, an outraged message that somebody had been reported as smoking in carriage 5.  This immediately threw the loud speaker team into a frenzy of smoke/cancer/passive smoking/you'll be given the harshest penalties type of announcements for practically the rest of the journey. Fortunately for our carriage, they couldn't hear it above the sound of me cough, cough, coughing all they way to LA. I think I'm on to a song title there...

At last we arrived in LA Union Station and then took the subway 8 stops to Hollywood/Vine. Of course, we walked from there to our hotel which turned out to be up a very steep hill! 



Two very large double decker trains either side - very claustrophic!





Hollywood/Vine

By the time we'd recovered, it was around 6pm so we took a timid stroll along Hollywood Blvd to remind us how sane we are. I spotted at least four Johnny Depp look alikes, but only one made a decent stab at Jack Sparrow); three Michael Jacksons; a couple of Darth Vaders, El Cid and Spiderman scaring some kids with his chemically inspired 'this is how I climb a wall' move.  Everybody seems to be on the make and asking for money for some deep seated self delusion - singing, dancing, posing, acting - it's all there - some good, but mostly atrocious!

Where they hand out the Oscars

Chinese Theatre

First sighting of the Hollywood sign - we will try to get closer though!

Paramount Studios tour tomorrow! 

 Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies! - Sunset Boulevard.