Well rested, we decided that a look around LA was on the cards. After all, we were getting a bonus day in LA on Delta. Thankfully, our tried and trusted approach to travelling – clean socks and undies in the carry-on had served us well. Unfortunately I had been so tired the previous night that I had forgotten to rebook our flights home from Sydney. Of course that meant we just waved them goodbye. I found some new ones online for a bit more but it was better than the3 prospect of sitting on a bus for four hours and we gathered our food vouchers and used them all to have a full hardy breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then considered our options. Marooned in the middle of nowhere somewhere near LAX, we thought the best and most economical thing to do thing to do was to catch the free airport shuttle bus back to the airport. We didn’t get much help to find a way out of the airport but eventually got the right bus which took us to a train station in the middle of nowhere. The train platform was up the stairs and the train was a while coming. TC investigated the options and the train from here did go to the city but took a detour through South Central LA. TC wasn’t really comfortable with that so we decided to get off at a bus interchange point. It proved to be another LA experience. It was located at a freeway interchange with at least three levels of freeway plus flyovers. You had to walk down stairs to get to the right level of the flyover. From here we took a high speed bus into downtown LA, visited the tourist bureau and decided what to do for the rest of the day. It had already taken us a good couple of hours to get here.
TC was keen to visit a big American shopping mall. Unfortunately none of these seemed accessible train. Another option was Santa Monica pier or Venice Beach but they too involved more travel. We settled on the most quintessential of LA experiences – Hollywood Boulevard – but first we needed to find a post office to ensure the myriad of postcards were actually postmarked from the US. Yes, it really only was by chance. We found a train to Hollywood Boulevard and walked along the walk of fame, as you do. TC wasn’t overly keen on the tack-o-rama of Hollywood but it was fun finding stars and seeing the bemused looks on the faces of would be starlets dressed as superheroes when you said you didn’t want to give them $10 to pose for pics. [Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden. Seattle grungey rock and roll at its finest. My first experience of them live was The Big Day Out – last band of the night when everyone was exhausted, trashed or both and they filled the stadium with sound and mesmerized the crowd.]
We wandered up the Boulevard to the massive Scientology premises. Just a bit disturbing. Then we trekked along the walk of fame – I took more pics of myself (and sometimes TC) standing on stars than I care to count – including Kermit the Frog, Jackie Chan, Keanu Reeves, Lee Majors, Chuck lorre, Greta Garbo, David Carradine, Sidney Poitier, Charles Bronson, Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Montgomery, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Dr Seuss, Motley Crue, The Governator, Marilyn Monroe, Ozzy Osbourne, and of course the Star Trek collection – Shatner, Patrick Stewart, deforest Kelley, Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy.
Halfway down the Boulevard is an open air mall The Hollywood and Highland Centre. TC spied an Oakey store and went in to purchase the brightest set of lenses I had ever seen. The mall was in stark contrast to the underground tunnels and high rise department stores of NYC. It was filled with palm trees, shaded walks and a fountain. The sort of thing you’d expect to see at Surfers Paradise. We continued down the boulevard past the wax museum (which could be fun if we had more time… which is exactly what I said about Madame Tussard’s in London). Then we found it – the cool part of the Boulevard. [The Impression That I Get – Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Sweaty nights at the snow and stormy days at the coast, and lots of dancing.]
First up, TC spied a model store. I kept myself busy in a souvenir T-shirt store while he perused the store’s wears. Moments later we found a swathe of gothic stores. Of course you couldn’t keep me out of them. Rings, shoes and plenty of leather. I bought a silver ring and some ska badges (of course once again, like the gothic skirt I purchased at Camden markets, I haven’t yet found anywhere to wear them). Yet another model store and by this stage TC was in heaven. He found a model helicopter he hadn’t seen since he was a kid. Hollywood Boulevard had turned out to be a good plan after all. We wandered further down the street until we came to the end of the stars. By this stage we were standing in front of a used car lot. TC’s second hand dealer brain kicked in and he started musing over the cheap price of cars in the US and how much it would cost to buy one and import it into Australia.
We started slowly wandering back up the opposite side of the street and TC took me into the most expansive costume shop I had ever seen. There were about seven different kinds of clown shoes, heaps of wigs and other outfits, models, magic tricks toys and other random stuff. It was like The Funny Shop on steroids. And the perfect place to grab some fridge magnets, including one with a retro horror movie poster. Next door there was a sneaker store. Aware that I only had access to hand luggage I decided that looking at shoes was a bad idea. TC convinced me otherwise. It was a treasure trove. Two years ago strolling through Manly, we had seen a pair of chuck taylors with random eilets as decoration. I had fallen in love with them but baulked at the $200 price tag. Here I found a pair of chuck taylor style shoes with the same decoration for less than $50. Of course I had to have them – which turned out to be the best decision ever. After that we hit the T-shirt souvenir store. Had to have a Hollywood T-shirt and a magnet for the fridge. [Cailin – Unwritten Law – written about singer Scott’s daughter. Not that you’d know from the song.]
We wandered back up to the open air mall and decided that grabbing an early dinner there would be the go. We had spied Johnny Rockets, a completely recreated 50s style diner, and decided to go all out with a burger dinner (which we couldn’t finish). We had to try a slider once before we left the US. Sliders are mini hamburgers about a third the size of a cheeseburger. Of couse we also had hamburgers and fries. And apple pie. And I had a spider. It was years since I had a spider and it was awesome. We ploughed through a mountain of food but there was no way we were going to finish the apple pie so we took it with us. It was a completely kitsch setup and while it would have been much cooler to find a real diner out on the highway somewhere, a recreated 50s diner really was Hollywood appropriate.
Well and truly satisfied, we began the arduous process of getting back to the hotel. The first step was a train back to the city centre. When we realized how many other forms of transport we would then need to take, we decided to suck it up and spend about $70 on a cab. The cabbie was a bit crazy and I had no idea where we were going most of the time but we made it back in one piece. [Beverly Kills – Dance Hall Crashers. California all girl ska punk and an appropriate tune to boot.]