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Day
9 (June 14, 2008) L.A: Santa Monica and Hollywood
Before
The first place to visit this morning is Santa Monica beach, which it
will easy if we’ve arrived there the previous night but, if we don’t,
then the first thing to do is driving to there. Then we will walk
around that beach famous by their skaters, the pier and the “Baywatch”
stuff. This is the best chance of get into the Pacific Ocean. We must
find Muscle Beach too, the special opened gym area in this beach where
Arnold Swartzenegger, among others, used to get his muscles. I haven’t
located it yet, though.
Then we go to the next
beach at South: Venice Beach, famous by their policemen riding a bike
in shorts as shown in “Pacific blue” TV series.
We must leave the beach at noon to be at hotel, in
Hollywood, by lunch time.
The afternoon is planned for spending it in Hollywood Boulevard, when
we will visit the Hall of fame and Chinese theater. We can have time ti
spend in Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard as well. An itinerary around
Beverly Hills could be made too if it is suitable in our time.
All visits for this day are free. The spots marked
on the map are:
0 - Hotel Hilton Universal
3 - Hall of fame
4 - Santa Monica
5 - Venice Beach |
After
We don’t need to wake up early so we rest and take
our breakfast with no rushes. Then we check out and take the car to go
to the beach. What we have around is small houses with their garden.
Our way is just driving down Pico Boulevard until reaching the beach.
Just after reaching it we can see the parking signs which drive us to
an open parking lot just before the sand. It is 6$ for one whole day,
but it is a unique fee, so 10 minutes is 6$ too. It’s 11:30h when we’re
leaving the car and watching the vast beach with main shape of the pier
at North, with an amusement park upon it, and several palm trees
around. The light and fine sand is what you can see most as the strand
can make easily 200 meters until the sea itself. In the promenade
above, there are two ways: one for pedestrians and the other one for
bikes. The wide strand has an asphalted way sneaking across it: it is
the one used by the famous skaters of this beach, but today, as we’re
walking by it to the pier, is used more by runners and cyclists. In our
way, we can enjoy the palm trees closer and the lifeguard towers still
far.
 
When we’re reaching the pier this path exchanges the asphalt
by
planks. I guess it is because it matches statically with the pier
itself, which is built in wood and suspended over the trunks coming
from the sand at the beginning, and from the sea further.
There is a lot of life up in the pier. I go to the
toilet,
meet Jack Sparrow in there and do “my thing”… Wait! Was that Jack
Sparrow?! I go outside trying to locating him as it is the best
portrayal ever. Even the face was like Johnny Deep’s! I ask to the
women but they haven’t seen any pirate around. When I’m trying to explain
the similarity I realize how difficult is showing to
them by words, so I start looking around for him until I finally find
him, but he is not in the pier anymore, but walking by the beach with a
chest in the hand and the manners of the well-known pirate.
I can see how he is offering for a picture with him and, once paid, he
lets people take something inside his chest. The picture at right shows
him walking by the beach. He is getting further so I cannot get a good
photo but, just when I’m thinking about moving on to other things he
turns and walks to the pier, getting closer and closer. It’s just when
he was going to disappear under the pier when we get our picture when
he even is looking to the camera. Thanks.
 We’re happy now, but still
a lot of things to see in front of us, so we explore the pier, which is
like a small amusement park. Eva and I go for a ride on the roller
coaster: 5$ each. It is small but quite impressive and the main
advantage of it, the localization, only can be enjoyed at the very
beginning, then you get into the hustle and bustle where you cannot
think about the landscape at all.
This is a perfect day for beach so, following our
plan, we go down the pier for one stop before taking the car for
exploring Venice Beach: we are not leaving this place without “tasting”
the Pacific waters. We take the towels and trunks out the trunk and go
into the sand. My mission of swimming and diving in this ocean is
aborted at the very moment my feet can feel the water: it is so cold
that I’m already leaving the ocean… well… just after the photo. My
sister wants her picture in the water too and my wife doesn’t want even
that. What a crap experience in the biggest Ocean! We go now quick to
the car as it is almost lunch time and we still have to visit Venice
Beach before going to our hotel in Hollywood. But while removing the
sand from us I remember we haven’t seen the Muscle Beach at all, so I
leave the women while going to find it with my map just to take a
picture. I find it in a corner, when the sand ends: it is just a small
area of grass with some gym stuff. No wonder why have we missed it. I’m
coming back to the car when I can see two policemen in shorts and
bicycles. Just what I was expecting to find in Venice Beach!
 
Venice Beach is just beside Santa Monica but one can notice
the change around: big fancy houses by small houses with an opened
garage… surfer atmosphere… more liberal…. We cannot find parking place
and we can use that as an excuse for going to the hotel. We’re back to
the highways maze they have got in this city and drive around, quite
lost, for a while. It is positive this time, as we can have a closer
look of downtown, with the skyscrapers and even the Staples Center,
where tomorrow the Lakers are going to play the fourth match of NBA
finals. I’ve been looking for a way to watch it, but no results yet.
 
We finally find a sign addressing to Hollywood and
follow it to take the right highway. We are amazed when seeing, in a
specific point of the highway change, five levels of roads!, one above
the next. We can reach Universal City easily once in the right way as
the signs are pointing to it from the highway so, following them, we
end in the Hilton Universal Hotel’s valet, who is taking our car.
The picture below at right shows the views from
our room. Los Angeles is such a huge city that you can see it as a
forest with houses here and there till the horizon more than the
typical group of buildings, from Hollywood hill, at least.
The hotel is amazing as the views of the buffet
they’re getting ready in the restaurant, with mountains of seafood, and
different kinds of crabs – huge crabs - among them. It is not the
regular menu, but a special one because of Father’s day. It’s 60$ per
person, which is expensive, but we can afford 40€ for joining such
gastronomic paradise. We obviously taste every single kind of crab and
other animals from the sea. We use pincers to eat the crab pincers and
legs, which there are of all kinds: long, short, big, small… We’re
enjoying this time as per Trini being worried about having time to
visiting Hollywood as we’re spending a lot here. I check the map and
discard going to three spots: Rodeo Drive – because it is just a street
with very expensive shops in which Eva will want to spend hours -,
Beverly Hills – because the celebrity houses are securely guarded by
tall walls and doors so, at the end of the day, we just get pictures of
railing doors – and Sunset Boulevard – because we’re going to arrive at
dark, when it is the street of the prostitutes and the preachers… well,
we can still get a moment for that -. With this, we can spend the
evening in Hollywood Boulevard, which is a clear must-do and feasible.
The way to reach it seems simple: you just have to drive down until
Mulholland Drive entrance at right and this famous road takes you
almost to the Boulevard itself.
We do that, at the beginning we can see a vista
point we don't have time to explore, and drive down the hill through
expensive houses and a lot of curves until getting into something
looking more like a city, and then the parking signs drive us to a
place to leave the car in a shopping mall. This is not a big mall, but
we’re going to find out this shopping mall is the center of everything
here. When we reach the street level I can see two door of glass with a
vase between them and the letters above saying “Kodak Theater”. I can’t
believe it is this, but it seems it is. When we go out to the street we
realize we already are in the Hall of fame – easy because of the stars
in the floor -. This is not such a broad street, so we’re trying to
figure out where the red carpet is set when the Oscars. The only
explanation is the whole street is “red-carpeted” because otherwise
there is not space enough. We walk down reading the names in the stars.
It doesn’t seem to have a sense in the order: there are mythical names
as Ingrid Bergman beside Jackie Chan or people working on cinema we
don’t recognize as celebrity. If one comes here with the thought of
getting a picture with the star of a specific celebrity can spend the
whole day here looking for it. We can see funny places, as the Wax
Museum in our side, or the old fancy cinema of the picture across the
street.
Later on, and due to the impending dusk, we can see a lot of lights in
this street, neon lights. One of them is pointing to a bricked building
across the street with the word “Scientology” in green big characters.
I must be the head office, here in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard.
As we can see the street is becoming “less touristic” I ask to a
policeman about Chinese theater and it results we’re walking in the
opposite direction. That’s weird! As I don’t use to take the wrong way…
never… buff. So we turn round and get to the shopping mall again. We
can see the elephants upon high pillars we can reckon from watching the
Oscars show on TV. And then we can find the Chinese theater, just
beside Kodak Theater, only the other side. The Boulevard seems to end
close the theater, that’s the reason we walked on the opposite
direction, but the Chinese theater and the celebrity footprints are in
an opened area deeper from the buildings line, so it cannot be detected
from that line. But there is something easier to find it, the X marking
the spot is dozens of people dressed as movie characters looking for
tourists paying for a picture with them and who cannot be unnoticed.
 There
are an enormous variety of characters: Darth Vader, Iron Man, Batman,
Charles Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, … and a big etc, with some characters
I cannot even reckon among them. I must talk here about the quality of
these costumes in some cases: outrageous. If you’re wearing a cardboard
box painted in red and say “I’m Ironman” is for making me laugh and
it’s not for charging me for a photo. Another example, there is a guy
trying to be reckoned as Jack Sparrow, but just because is wearing
boots and is handling a plastic little sword. It’s not that you cannot
compare him with the one from this morning in Santa Monica beach, this
is losing even with my nephew with a regular pirate costume! As I want
to be fair I must say some of them are quite fine.
Somehow, when I’m trying to avoid laughing of some
of these people I find my wife talking to the one is saying is
Catwoman. “Take a picture of us” says to me, “She’s really nice”. I try
to explain those people are here for making money, our money! But she
answers: “No way, we’re friends now!”. So I resign to take the picture
and closing the deal by a couple of dollars. I expected having to pay
more, but it is still expensive by a picture of my wife with someone
looking as a gay discotheque go-go.
 
We watch the celebrity footprints on ground one by one.
Comparing your hand or feet with the ones from a celebrity is kind of
silly and funny at a time. On the picture, for example, there are (from
left to right and up to down) Richard Gere, Johnny Depp, Michael
Douglas and Al Pacino. The time range is as long as since Harold Lloyd
to mentioned Johnny Depp. The prints are quite dirty and worn out from
so many people using them, but none as the ones from Marilyn Monroe,
practically black.
 
Once we finish with Chinese theater we come back
to Kodak Theater entrance to see what the actors see after red carpet:
a hall driving to the theater entrance between columns with the names
of the Best movie Oscar winners under each of the year numbers, six per
column, which are the lights in the photo above. This pass way ends at
the entrance we could see just after leaving the car. We take the car
back to return to the hotel and finish our journey. We feel kind of
disappointed as from TV everything of this place seems more majestic
and big and we couldn’t think the place was as mundane as it is. That’s
the magic. We take Mulholland Drive again, but this time we stop at the
vista point we missed before. It is dark night now and there are a
couple of cars in this viewpoint to the lights of the city. There is no
lights here and is really dark, this may help to the couple in one of
the cars, which don’t seem to be here because of the views. We can hear
some voices and then we remember horror movies.
We’re in the darkest
spot of L.A., but quite safe, as everybody knows the first to be killed
in a horror movie would be precisely the couple in the car. The voices
belong to a group of tourists coming from somewhere upstairs. We’re not
going to go up there as we cannot even see the stairs and the views
cannot be better than the ones we have now in front of us: a vast and
black sea of lights. It is a quiet place, in contrast with its role of
balcony over the madness of one of the biggest cities in the world.
There is some l9ghts below, the nearest ones, from where is coming some
music. It could be a concert, but it is so far as per knowing anything
about it.
This has been a big day and the confortable bed of
the Hilton is going to help us to be ready for an even bigger day
tomorrow. But before, we eat the tacos we brought from San Luis Obispo
yesterday in the room as dinner. It’s enough with the big lunch of
toady and it helps to compensate for the expense.
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