Surfing USA

Monday 29 October 2018

A leisurely start to the day which included finishing up all the breakfast supplies and packing everything into our cases.  We caught an Uber down to the train station which took a while as “Good Morning San Diego” had reported a couple of crashes on the freeway.  Still we had allowed plenty of time to get there and check in our cases so we sat in the station and had a coffee while we waited and helped a lady who had lost all her ‘amigo’ contacts on Facebook retrieve them on her new phone. 

Our Good Samaritan deed done for the day we boarded the Pacific Surfliner and headed upstairs to find a window facing west for the ocean views and settled in.  Soon after departure the train guys brought through boxes of snacks and drinks so we munched along while the train trundled up the coast.  The snack box included turkey jerky – the first jerky I have had that I’ve actually liked!

As we got past Oceanside we were literally there.  At times there was barely 3 feet between the tracks and the rocks on the side of the beach.  There is very little to stop the line falling into the sea with a few years worth of erosion or a very good storm.  Unfortunately the day had started foggy in San Diego and remained overcast and foggy/smoggy so that you couldn’t help but feel the various groups of surfers were taking a bit of risk – what we would call good ’shark weather’ in Perth!

Eventually the train swung inland towards LA and the day got murkier and murkier as LA sis under a huge smog haze.  I knew LA had a smog issue but hadn’t realised it was this bad – almost Beijing quality! 

Hopped off the train at Union station and eventually located baggage claim behind a Subway (as opposed to in the Subway as we had thought the train announcer had meant!)  Then Ubered it to our hotel whilst our drive chatted away happily about how he had hacked the computer system in his car to get rid of all the annoying alarms.  I stupidly asked about the rules regarding handling cell phones whilst driving as I had noticed some of our Uber drivers holding their phones with Google maps in one hand whilst driving the other and then the driver proceeded to lecture us about how many buttons he was allowed to push on his displays at once whilst driving in peak hour traffic and not watching the road at all!

Made it safely to our hotel which is a lovely art deco place (thanks for the recommendation Margaret!) and dumped our stuff and then immediately set off through the Hollywood and Highland Centre (sorry can’t force myself to type Center) and onto Hollywood Boulevard.  We walked about a kilometre east along the road looking at all the famous cafes and nightclubs before heading back down the other side of the road past numerous costume shops which were all doing a roaring trade with Halloween upon us.  We went into one giant shop and it had every costume, wig, hat and decoration you could possibly imagine.  We had quite a giggle in there and managed to take a couple of photos although there were a few signs telling us not to. 

Continued on and back to the Hollywood Footprints outside TCL Chinese Theatre.  We noticed that the El Capitan Theatre across the road had the footpath barricaded off and signs stating “Premiere” and lots of people with big guest tags milling about and thought we might get to see some stars.  So we went off and had early dinner in a nice Japanese place nearby and then headed back to see if any red carpet had been rolled out.  Didn’t look any different other than all the pretty lights down the road were now on and lots of little girls in pretty white dresses were heading into the theatre, obviously for a special screening as release date is later this week.  Googled it later and discovered the Hollywood premiere had been last night so missed out on seeing Keira Knightly, Helen Mirren etc (if they were there?!)

Even though we didn’t have a particularly tiring day, Larry’s cold is still taking its toll so we made ourselves a cup of tea in the hotel’s breakfast area and retired to our room for telly, facebook and google.