I confess, I’d just about given up on me
finishing this so if anyone is still interested here’s the last few days
condensed.
Day 14 – Downtown LA and Burbank
A spot of sightseeing to see fill the morning
taking in:
The Colliseum – main venue for the ’84 Olympics
and also right next door to and aerospace museum that happened to have a 2-seater
Lockheed Blackbird on a stick outside, so naturally I forced myself to jog over
and take a look at that too.
“Historic” Olvera Street – Hispanic market and
site of (perhaps) the original settlement in town. Joan was happy to find a church and have time
to light a candle, and she also got a lovely bracelet at the market.
La Brea Tar Pits – I have heard of these as
sources of prehistoric animal remains, but never expected them to be in the heart
of LA!
Farmers Market – Great place for lunch!
Then the afternoon took us to Warner Brothers
for a studio tour. That was a real hit
and miss affair for us. The insights
into film and tv making were limited but interesting, and some of the standing
sets were good to see and recognise, but the parts concentrating on current US
tv shows were somewhat irrelevant as we had never seen any of those featured. There was also a display of Harry Potter
props and costumes, which was a nice little reminder of our trip to the UK
studio earlier in the year, and also a load of Batman stuff for the 75th
anniversary. That was definitely my
favourite.
Day 15 – Disneyland
As the hotel was only a stone’s throw from the house
of mouse, and we had a free day, it just had to be done. And I really enjoyed it. I do like a thrill ride so managed a couple
of those (Space Mountain, Indiana Jones) along with some more sedate
experiences (It’s A Small World, Pirates Of The Caribbean, the Monorail) and
those somewhere in between (Star Tours and a few others) as well as lots of
wandering about and enjoying the place.
Plus the parade which was much more entertaining than I was expecting. It was a little expensive but we didn’t
see/ride half of it and I would definitely go again should we ever be in the
area.
Day 16- Hollywood and home
And so our last day in America dawned. A trip up to Hollywood to see some more
famous bits (Chinese Theatre, that sign (from a distance), the Hollywood Bowl)
and a drive to the airport via Beverley Hills and that was that. OK, there were still a few diversions along
the way – two of our group got pulled off to one side after testing positive
for explosives on the hand swab at check-in (One had been handling her mother’s
lighter, the other had perhaps picked something up off a cd thrust at him in
Hollywood) and then I set the machine off too, but so did the people before me
and we all retested negative on a second one so I didn’t have to get grilled
and they presumably had to get the machine fixed. I guess I managed to sleep through the night
and woke up in time to see a bit of London from the plane before we touched
down on what was technically Day 17.
Problem-free arrival back into the UK and then an untroubled drive home
via Halstead to drop some of the group off.
Holiday score 10/10.
