California Trip, Part 1: Hollywood Things
It's taken me nearly a month to digest my week-long, inaugural trip to California and I saw/ate/did so many things that I thought I'd break these posts into categories: Delicious Things, Pretty Things, Living Things, Signage Things, Things I Watched and today's post, Hollywood Things.
Since I was staying with my friend in Santa Monica, the first place we headed was Hollywood. After spending countless hours in my life reading trashy tabloids, it was sort of bizarre to actually be in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, as with most things you primarily see on TV, Hollywood was a bit disappointing in real life.
It was pretty much all downhill after our first stop at Meryl Streep's star on the Walk of Fame (the only one that matters), but highlights included her hand and footprints in the forecourt of Grauman's, a tour of the Chinese theater, an amazing cranberry breakfast bar at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (the first of many), a tour of the Dolby (formerly Kodak) theater,
and of course some major gawking and nerdy picture taking of the Hollywood sign.
We didn't get very close to the sign, but we drove along Mulholland Drive and stopped at the Hollywood Bowl Overlook, where I managed to take a photo wherein I point in the general direction of where the sign sort of is.
I recommend skipping the tour of the Chinese theater and seeing a movie there instead — I would imagine you get to see the same thing (you know, the theater) in addition to actually seeing a movie, for about the same price.
I do, however, recommend taking the Dolby Theater tour — you get to see a real-deal Oscar statuette and our guide had some great stories to tell about the big night (apparently being a huge celebrity doesn't guarantee that you won't forget your ID and be denied entrance to the event, ahem, Mr. Clooney).
You can't take photos inside the theater because if you do, they will be owned by ABC and then you'll be owned by ABC (or something like that), but they do give you a super cheesy, consolation postcard as you leave, so that's cool.
Lastly, we took the Dearly Departed tour, which I (like everyone else on the planet, or at least on their website) highly recommend. Our tour guide, Brian, really, really loves his job (i.e. telling sordid tales of Hollywood murder/last breath locations) and made the three-plus hour tour fly by. We were also lucky to catch glimpses of off-tour locations such as the Playboy and Spelling mansions, the former homes of Paul Newman, George Burns and the studio where they film Dexter.
I can't say that I was overly impressed by Hollywood (or Beverly Hills or even California in general), but I'm glad that I got to see most of the places I read about so often in my stories (i.e. trashy tabloids). I'm also disappointed that in two days we didn't see one single celebrity, so I may have to go back — maybe next time it'll be for the Oscars?
