Sweet Dreams My LAX

---

LA. It's a strange place. Sprawling, smoggy, congested, spread out and decicedly run down in parts. Bits are nice, other bits aren't so nice. We're still not sure quite what to make of it. Some cities you instantly like. This one we didn't. It's not that we really disliked it either. Just an unusual place.

We rolled into town in the morning (slowly obviously due to traffic) and checked into a motel before heading off in the direction of Hollywood. Lunch was excellent. The new 1/3 pounder Angus bacon and cheese burger at McD's. Mmmm.

Hollywood is nowhere near as nice as it looks on tv. No stars or celebs in sight. The walk of fame and footprints / handprints of the stars are cool but seem a little out of place. We saw the chinese theatre and the new gaff for the oscars but apart from that it was mainly a lot of tourists with not a lot to look at.

We set off in search of a decent photo of the Hollywood sign. Not an easy thing. We didn't manage to get close and kept losing the sign. We had to settle for a distant shot of it and set our minds to stalking celebrities instead.

Yes, we went on a stalking trip round Beverly Hills and Belair. Very nice houses (the ones you can see from the road that is). We saw Barry Manilow's and Burt Reynolds' houses and loads of other people we don't know as we got lost in the hills. We then sauntered down Rodeo drive but decided to save our shopping money for New York.

The evening was quiet as we were shattered so settled for some Thai takeaway and some very nice Samuel Adams Lager.

Our only other day in LA was pretty cool. We headed out to Venice Beach to start our day off. We did some people watching and some sun worshipping (also known as burning) and I even managed a run on the beach Hoff-style (except for the red trunks). My first exercise in some time. We grabbed some extremely good gourmet sausages for lunch and strolled the boardwalk and took a trip to Muscle Beach. I am very proud to tell you that I was the second most muscly man at Muscle Beach. There may have only been one meathead there but it's still quite a moment when you realise you are the second most buff dude at Muscle Beach.

As we were strolling along the boardwalk we came across a load of kids playing basketball. On closer inspection it was the filming of tacky American dating show 'Next' and the kids were of course, dwarves. So we watched for a bit and managed to sneak a part in the background so we have now appeared on American tv. Fantastic. Next stop along was Santa Monica which is very nice too. These are the kind of places we belong in. Pretty cool place with the beautiful people hanging out.

The evening was what I had been looking forward to for a while. Baseball time. Fascinating sport where less happens than at a game of cricket. We watched the Dodgers against the San Fran Giants with the Giants winning 3-1. It had all the cliches you can possibly imagine with the kiss cam, smile cam, organ music and 7th innings stretch. The choice of food was immense with about 10 different retailers rather than the British choice of pie or pie.

The game was a sellout but the crazy thing was that there were still people turning up two hours into the game when, coincidentally, some people were starting to leave. By the time the game was ending there was hardly anyone there. All a bit silly.

Anyway, we walked back to pack and get ready for our very final location on this trip. Reality will be kicking our butts very soon.

S'thee later,

Deane & Mrs Deane

Beer 179: Samuel Adams, USA, Bottle, 4.0%, 7.5, Very nice lager, crisp and tasty

---