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.