Sunset Boulevard

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I have just returned from a fabulous week in the Los Angeles area; I did and saw so much in that time. My first day was a travel day, Monday. I took the Coast Starlight Amtrak train along the coast, the slow and elegent way to get to LA. I arrived in style 15 hours later at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. I sat in the dining car for lunch and dinner. Considering it's train food, it's actually quite good. There is modest choice of food, we sit at tables with porcelein plates and metal cutlery, and table service. The food is quite tasty. Because space is quite limited, you sit with strangers and you quickly strike up conversations. At lunch, I sat with an octogenarian actor and his agent wife, and a travelling Dutch professor. At dinner, I sat with a Chinese teacher and an accounting teacher at an LA junior college. Each has a story to tell, and each has their own reason for choosing the train. My reason is that I like trains. I was determined to make this trip to LA by public transportation only, and not to fly to and from LA. And I did this. As it turns out, LA has a great bus and Metro service, provided you use this while the sun is up. After about 9 pm, the bus system collapses to almost nothing. I arrived just after dark and I walked to my hotel in Little Tokyo.

My first morning in LA, I walked and explored the downtown region. I first proceded to Olvera Street, and old Mexican pedestrian street lined with Mexican restaurants serving Mexican food, and vendors selling Mexican goods. I especially liked the Lucha libre wrestling masks. Plenty of tiny guitars, leather sandels, hats, post cards, dolls and other stuff. The street is very beautiful lined with flowers and old buildings. From here I walked to the new Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels. It's newly built in 2002, quite imposing and will hold thousands during a service. I walked on to the Walk Disney Concert Hall. Frank Gehry designed, so you know it's going to be unconventional. No straight lines or right angles. There is one section in front of the building where the metal is concave and reflects the heat and light so intensely that you couldn't stand there for any length of time. The building was reflecting the blue of the sky, I was there near midday. Quite astonshing piece of architecture, and that the building changes colour through the day only adds to its appeal. I walked on past the towering skyscrapers and south to Pershing Square, named for the WWI American General. I walked through the historic downtown and to the market before returning to the hotel to pick up my knapsack. It was time to move on to my new digs in Santa Monica. I took the Metro underground to the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue and waited for the bus to take me to the coast at Santa Monica, the city. Santa Monica Boulevard is the historic end to the old Route 66. After nearly three hours in the middle of the afternoon I got to the hostel on the coast and checked in. I wandered about Santa Monica for the evening watching and listening to the buskers on the 3rd Street Promenade. I walked along the pier at sunset to finished my day.

Wednesday became an excursion out of LA County a little bit north to Simi Valley to visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I took an express bus to Union Station downtown to get the train north. I got to Simi Valley quickly enough considering the distance. But I had to wait for the local transit for some time. I had to take two buses to get to the library, and there was an hour wait for the second bus. This gave me a chance to walk across the street to get lunch. Nearly five hours after leaving the hostel that morning, I got to the Ronald Reagan library. It is perched upon a hill over looking Simi Valley and the rest of the southern California scrub land. It was hot here, pushing 37 degrees Celsius. Rolling hills covered in scrub land went on for miles, as Reagan picked the highest hill to build. The bus dropped me off in front of the grand entrance. The building is a series of ranch style houses. I bought my ticket and entered. This is not a library in the convential sense. A presidential library is more of a museum dedicated to revisionist history, a legacy of the President seen through the best possible lens. And Americans love President Reagan. There is an exact replica in all directions and dimiensions of the Oval Office to admire. The highlight for me, though, is the Boeing 707 in a glass walled hanger overlooking the valley. This is Air Force One, used by a few Presidents and retired some time in the early 1990's. You can walk through the plane and see what life is like onboard. The President doesn't fly coach on Southwest Airlines, he travels in style in his own room onboard Air Force One. There is space for other personal, but much of the plane is separated into sections and the gangway meanders from one end of the plane to the other. In the hanger, there is also a Presidential limousine and a helicopter. The tour continues with a huge model of the White House, West Wing, East Wing, Oval Office, and Rose Garden. There is a room full of gifts given to the President by foreign leaders. Outside, there is a small meter wide section of the Berlin Wall ("Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"), a F1 fighter to show that Reagan believed in peace through strength, and there is the grave site of Reagan himself. It's a fantastic place, and revisionist history at its best. I didn't get a lot of time at the library as I had to time my return with the buses. In order to make my transfer of buses, the first driver phoned ahead to the next to wait for me. You can always depend on the kindness of bus drivers. I got the train back to Union Station, then the bus back to Santa Monica. This made for quite a long but exciting day.

Thursday, and it was time to move again to another hotel on Sunset Boulevard. In the morning, I started my day along the cool beach as I walked from Santa Monica to Venice Beach. This took about 45 minutes as I took photos. Venice Beach is known for its eccentric lifestyle. It was early in the morning, so I didn't see too much of this. I didn't get too far into Venice Beach, and I didn't see the muscle beach, or the canals. I returned to the hostel by bus and collected my gear. I took the bus to my hotel which is on Sunset Boulevard at the corner of La Brea Avenue. It's next to Hollywood High School where Judy Garland, Carol Burnett, Mickey Rooney, James Garner and John Ritter went to school. I got to the hotel a few minutes after 11 am. I couldn't check in until after 3pm. And there was no where to store my knap sack. I had to walk the streets in the heat with my knapsack for four hours. I had some lunch, and walked along Hollywood Boulevard looking at the stars on the street. I hopped on a bus going south along La Brea Avenue to the La Brea tar pit. In the middle of urban Los Angeles is a geologic phenomenon. The smell hits you immediately. An oil seam that is exposed at the Earth's surface has turned to tar. The ouside pit isn't too large, about 30 meters by 10 m. You can see an occasional bubbling at the surface of gas being released. In the museum next door, there are plenty of fossils found in the tar pits dating all the way back to the Pleistocene epoch. I didn't go into the museum, as the pack was getting heavy and it was getting very hot. I returned to the hotel to check in. I showered and changed and set off to the airport by Metro to pick up Kris who was flying into LAX for the week-end. It only took an hour on three Metro lines to get there. The return was not as smooth or quick. Public transit in LA after dark collapses to a poor service. We ended up eating Subway for dinner very late in the hotel room because our return to Hollywood had taken so long.

And then we get to the long day here in Los Angeles. We started the day at Mel's Diner feeding quarters into the jukebox at the table. Only tunes from the 50's and 60's were available. We took the bus down La Brea Avenue to Wilshire Avenue and walked to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA. Here we saw painting by Rembrandt, Rubens, Cezanne, Monet, Kandinsky and the best was the room full of Picasso cubist portraits. I could look at these forever. After a nibble of food we hopped on a bus going north to the Farmer's Market. There has been a market here for 75 years and it's the place most likely to find a Hollywood Star doing a bit of shopping. It's a lot like Granville Island Market. We walked about for a while then sat for lunch. Beyond the Farmer's Market is The Grove, a new shopping development built as a open mall in the style of an old town square. Quite attractive, but just full of mainstream shops. We moved on and took a bus north again to Melrose Avenue. We walked past Fairfax High School where Richardo Montalban, Demi Moore and Phil Spector went to school. Here on Melrose Ave, there were plenty of small independent and trendy shops and tattoo parlours. Not too long here before we took another bus to the Pacific Design Centre, not so much as a tourist attraction as a good looking piece of architecture. We were at Santa Monica Boulevard so we took a bus stuck in traffic to Rodeo Drive. Again, another trendy shopping region and I bought nothing. This has already been a long day, and it was time for dinner. We headed for Sunset Boulevard to the part known as The Strip. Trendy clubs including the House of Blues and The Whisky a Go Go. Trendy restaurants and the enormous billboards advertising movies and scent. We sat outside in a nice restaurant and ate a very tasty meal all while doing a lot of people watching. People come here to watch and to be seen. Our day isn't finished yet. We leave the restaurant to walk a few blocks to the bus stop. We waited and waited. Remember, LA's bus system is practically none existent after 10 pm. Finally after about 45 minutes of waiting, and talking to a man who revealed his life story while making roses out of a palm leave, the bus came. It was full and passed on by - it didn't stop. With exasperation, we gave up on the public transport system and took a taxi back to our hotel. We didn't have far to go, we were already on Sunset Boulevard, but about 15 blocks from the hotel.

Now it's Saturday and time to slow down. We visited only one site this day, and this was the spectacular Getty Centre. We took the bus along Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills until we got to UCLA. Then a transfer to another bus which droped us off in front of the Getty Centre. There is a small electric and ultra modern driverless train which takes everybody up the hill. This is a new building dramatically set on the Santa Monica Hills overlooking LA and the ocean. Few straight lines and right angles, long and sleak lines, painted white and gorgeous. This building hasn't been around too long, and is the place for the art of the Getty Foundation. We planned to get to the Getty Villa the next and final day, but it was booked up full of people. We walked through the galleries and saw ancient hand scribed bibles, paintings by Rubens, El Greco, Titian. We also walked through a temporary gallery of the art of Gerome, a 19th Century French painter and artist. I had never heard of him, he's a contemporary of Manet, but he painted in the old style of the previous century; very precise and historical were his paintings. We had dinner at the fancy restaurant at the Getty Centre. After dinner, we wandered the gardens as the sun was setting. There were many people having a picnic on the lawns, and many people photographing this marvelous place at sunset.

Our last full day in LA, and we were looking for something to do. With the Getty Villa completely booked, and Paramount Studios closed, we went to Pasadena to look around. We took the Metro there, a sleek at ground level modern electric tram. On television a couple of years ago, I saw an interview by a woman who didn't own a car and lived in LA. It's such a car culture here, there are 5 million cars in the region. But this woman claimed that it was actually faster to get around without a car. And I concur, except if you want to travel after dark. And the fares are very cheap. When parking can cost $15 at each place, we got our day pass fare card for $6. It turned out that Pasadena was just a sleepy town without much for the tourist, just shops. JPL is here in Pasadena, but by invitation only. And the Rose Bowl Stadium is here. We returned to downtown LA and walked to Olvera Street for Mexican dinner. I left Kris at Union Station where she got a shuttle to take her to LAX, and I returned to Hollywood for my last evening. I walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard a few times snappnig photos. I had dinner at Mel's Drive In one more time and was served by a Courtney Cox look alike. But isn't that the story of every waiter and waitress here? "I'm an actor serving tables" Only in Hollywood. We saw a pick-up truck with three boxers (dogs) in the back wearing sunglasses. The driver pulled over for tourists to take photos, and it could not have been the dogs' first trip down Hollywood Blvd in sunglasses. We saw a line of at least a dozen cars cruising the Strip all kitted out to do their hydraulic tricks jumping the suspension. I saw four cars with modified doors to lift like a DeLorean. I saw more than one transvestite. And I saw no Hollywood Stars. Only can this happen in Hollywood.

I returned to Sacramento on Monday by bus, train and bus. A much quicker 8 hours up the San Joaquin Valley than the 14 hours down the coast on the train. Field after field of vegetables; orchard after orchard of fruit. After the climb through the San Gabriel Mountains just north of LA there is miles of flatness. Orchards, fields, trucks, cattle, warehouses and cars.

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Photos

Sunset Boulevard
The Strip

Air Force One
At the Ronald Reagan Library

Los Angeles City Hall and its sister cities
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