July 3rd - San Diego to Los Angeles

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July 3

Today we said good-bye to our AirBnB with the fancy bed/bath room and headed to Emma’s in Los Angeles for Breakfast. Although the GPS said we were about an hour outside LA, we discovered the LA tradition of sitting in traffic. Two hours later, we found Emma and a parking spot! Emma and Andrew live on the 6^th floor of a six story building in a nice two bedroom apartment that they share with Dean, the masked wonder dog. They are in North Hollywood, a friendly neighborhood where they can walk to get most of what they need: groceries, pharmacy, pubs, and most other necessities of Southern California life.

After feasting on yummy treats from a local bakery, we headed out to fight more of LA’s infamous traffic. We drove to Griffith Park along with about 10,000 other folks and found street parking about halfway down the hill (that is after we went up the hill first). The park is the home of the Griffith Observatory and is open free to the public. We hiked up to the observatory and perused the museum, learning about stars, planets, and telescopes. The outside balconies offered expansive views of the city below. Going back for one of their evening telescope viewing is on our return trip list!

Our next stop was the Grand Central market for lunch and people watching. The produce was enticing and priced to shop, but we only had a short time for lunch, so Emma lead us to one of her favorite stands, a small German sausage vendor. She recommended the sausage with curry . . . ok . . . I’ll try it! I opted for the veal sausage, Don tried the meatloaf sandwich. Mine was very tasty, Don’s . . . well it was tasty, but there was a bit of a cultural miscommunication. Seems that German meatloaf is more of a combination of pressed meat formed into a loaf and then cut. Hmmmm . . . interesting but not a redo! We discovered that LA people will wait in line for just about anything, as long as it’s cool or popular, i.e. a certain bottled fruit juice (not fresh, bottled). Oh well, not our speed. Next stop, tourist world!

We were enveloped in LA traffic once again and searching hopelessly for a parking space . . . AH-HA . . . Emma has an app for that! She pulled out her phone, typed in a few strokes and says, “Pull over Don, and give the guy your keys.” Reluctantly, and with much apprehension, he rolls down the window and hands Kevin the car keys. Where Kevin came from we have no idea, where he is taking the car is a bigger mystery still, but we all hop out of the car and Kevin drives it away. The only words spoken were, “Hey, about 4 hours?”, and “Cool!” Huh? What just happened here? Don spent the next 5 hours scratching his head hoping he would see the car again someday.

Dodging traffic, we crossed the Hollywood Blvd. to check in for our guided tour, oops, the next one was in about two hours. No worries, we crossed over to the Rusty Mullet Saloon and joined Andrew and Michael who were doing some people watching through the large windows that opened onto Hollywood Blvd. We determined that was plenty of time to walk down to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Along the way we found “The Red Carpet” steps and the plaza where the stars are interviewed prior to winning their Oscars. We strolled up the “Red Carpet” (which was actually just painted on) and waited for someone to interview us - but I guess our nomination got lost in the mail.

The ad guys were promoting the release of the new Mission Impossible movie with stunts and cheering crowds. We watched a guy repel from one of the balconies and continued our walk down Hollywood Blvd. through the crowds of tourists and faux super heroes. Spiderman, Batman, Capt. America, Michael Jackson, and Sponge Bob, just to name a few, were posing with tourists for a mere $20 per pose. We followed the embedded stars in the walk of fame until we finally got to the actual theater entrance. The crowd shuffled around as we were all looking straight down to read the stars signatures and compare their shoe sizes, hand prints, and the brief words they had written in the cement. So much of film history was right there beneath our feet! After we found many of our favorites, we scurried on back to the Rusty Mullet in time for a few adult beverages and their special tater tots.

We will not bore you with the details of our sometimes terrifying two and a half hour tour in a van in which the roof had been cut off. The driver, who spoke with an accent reminiscent of those spoken in the Caribbean Islands, hurled us past the Hollywood Bowl (where Smokey Robinson was performing) and into the Hollywood Hills. Home and, as we discovered, the death sights for many Hollywood celebrities. We were shown where this star or that producer lived – of course all we could see were the enormous gates, hedges, security cameras, and fences guarding the properties. As a bonus we were shown the window of the room where Michael Jackson died and the parking lot in the back of a club where the rapper Shug was shot to death. So, yeah, it was a fun trip because we were a group of five friends being thrown around the Hollywood and Beverly Hills streets in the back of this modified van, but as far as a “tour” goes, it wasn’t very good.

Now that the tour was over, we were confronted once again by the question, “where the heck is our car?” Once again Emma had the solution. A few taps on the screen of her smart phone and she announced that “Curt will be here with the car in 10 minutes.” It actually took 20 minutes due to the exceptionally heavy traffic on Hollywood Blvd. Curt pulled up with our car, walked around to the back, opened the trunk, got his skate board out, waved good-bye, and away he went down the street, presumably to pick up another car or perhaps back to his home base. We never did find out where the car was parked – or was it used as an Uber cab for the four hours we were gone? We’ll never know.

Tomorrow is Independence Day and we have a couple fun things planned, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading,

Don & Jill

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Photos

Choices at the Grand Central Market
Do we eat at Eggslut or Berlin Currywurst? Currywurst won.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Yep, this is where all the stars are folks.

The Hollywood Bowl
Seen from an overlook a half mile away.

Julia Roberts
This is one of the few stars' houses we could actually see.

Famous
Of course you have to be of a certain age for this to mean anything.

James Dean
Why he's at the Griffith Observatory we have no idea.

Buds Al and Don hanging out
Playing a round of index finger wrestling. I'm not sure, but, I think this used to be Austria's national pastime.

Gene Autry
And Champion (love the horse shoes)

Gates, gates, more gates
Of the two dozen gates we were shown, this is about the only one we remember, Ellen DeGeneres lives here.
If you want to see more gate pictures, let us know - we got 'em. Just don't know to whom they belong.

Famous corner
If you shop here, you've made it baby!

Gucci
Nice store front!

Filming
For what? We haven't a clue.