LA is a Big Freeway

Thurs 1 November 2018

A bit of a sleep in this morning after our late night and a leisurely breakfast.  We then tried to work out the best way to get down to LAX to pick up the hire car.  Public transport involved about 3 trains and a shuttle, the airport shuttle involved a two or three bus/train swaps also.  In the end we thought we’d hang the expense and Uber it down there.  Well in the end, although it took over 40 minutes to get there (and this is 10am when you’d think peak hour would be over) it only cost just over $20 and the airport shuttle thing cost about $16 so worked out ok.

Dropped at the Alamo door and did the paperwork and then you are sent off to the carpark to pick a car!  Larry’s early birthday present to Jenny is an upgrade to a convertible and there were two mustangs and a beetle to choose from.  We, of course, went for the newest of the Mustang convertibles even though it is a dark grey instead of red.  Still it’s pretty cool and we will look the part driving up the coast tomorrow.

We set the GPS for the Westfield Century City as Larry was hoping to pick up some ‘cheap’ Nikes.  Well the Westfield Century City is very upmarket with a Bloomingdales, Macy’s, Nordstrum and lots of glam shops.  It even had a display of fancy Tesla cars!  We found Larry some new shoes at The Finishing Line (think Athlete’s Foot) and then found a big indoor food hall where we bought sushi.  It all sounds like any Westfield but it was all much posher – the tables in the outdoor food area had inserts of potted plants etc and the toilets were as good as a five star hotel.  I couldn’t help comment to Larry that the place was the polar opposite to our location 24 hours previously!

Eventually found the car in the large carpark and headed to the UCLA store I had found on Google as Kate’s request for souvenir had been something with UCLA on it.  Well the store ended up being in the middle of campus so that was an experience.  It was also an experience getting there as the GPS took us through Beverley Hills and then cut through a couple of very nice suburbs (but think Claremont rather than Peppermint Grove) to get there.  We parked in a visitor carpark and wandered the pathways with the students, some of which had their white coats on, and eventually found the store which was HUGE and had every piece of UCLA merchandise you could possibly imagine.  Eventually found something suitable – wait and see Kate!

Made our way back to the car and set the GPS to take us to Griffith Park.  Well that was an exercise in freeway driving as the GPS basically took us north, then east, then south so we could approach the park from the other side.  Eventually we escaped the freeways (which weren’t that terrifying as they are so congested you trundle along and have plenty of time to change lanes etc) and drove the much more pleasant and winding roads of Griffith Park past the LA zoo, golf courses, merry go rounds etc.  Eventually wound our way up the hill towards the Griffith Observatory.  We stopped at the ‘free’ carpark intending to walk to the top until we saw just how long and steep a walk it was and noticed lots of other cars continuing on up the hill.  We followed them up and managed to find a parking space towards the top and happily paid the parking fee as it would be cheaper than the money spent on heart medication if we’d attempted that hill!

Wandered around the observatory and could see the Hollywood Sign on the hills.   It appeared a reasonable size in real life but comes out as tiny in photos for some reason.  Oh well, at least we can say that we’ve seen it, at least we can say we were there.  Bought snacks in the cafe and were interested to see a sign in the seating area warning of rattlesnakes so were careful to look under our table before we sat down.  The Observatory has great views all over Los Angeles and you get an idea of how spread out the city is.  Only criticism with the lookouts is that there are no signs pointing out landmarks – not very tourist friendly really, I guess you are just supposed to know.

We left there about 4.30pm as we were not sure how long it would take us to get back to the hotel with LA traffic but it ended up being an absolute breeze.  The GPS took us the one side of the park we hadn’t yet traversed and took us in a straight line back to Hollywood.  We even got green lights the whole way there.  It wasn’t til within 200m of the hotel that we hit any congestion and the most difficult part was actually getting back out onto the main road to access the hotel carpark after we had got the parking pass from reception.

As we had some spare time we ran a load of washing through the machines and then headed back down onto Hollywood Boulevard for the last bit of souvenir shopping and then an early dinner at a French Crepe place – yummy!