cali trip: day 3

I lied and made you wait an extra day for the final vacation post. This is the last day of pictures from our trip. If you are sick of them, there will be no more after this. If you wish there were more, you can call me and come over for coffee and I will show you the rest of the 400 images we captured. I told you, my goal was to take more pictures, so more pictures I took. We started out the day, after another tasty breakfast at BLD (we are guessing this is for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Anyone have a better guess?), in Hollywood! It is a dirty, tacky, crowded place, and one that I really wanted to see. Why? I don’t know. Our timing for this visit was interesting. The 83rd annual Academy Awards had taken place at the Kodak Theatre, merely hours before we showed up with our cameras in tow. We were warned to not bother trying to get close to the place while the Oscars were actually going on. Apparently, they block off several blocks around the theatre and at best, you’d be a few blocks away, behind a crowd of people straining to catch a glimpse of someone “important” from behind a chain-link fence. Not my idea of vacation. So we settled for the excitement of watching the tear-down crew cart away the last few traces of the dazzling event.

Guess how I felt about all this.

I felt cheated. I wanted to see me a celebrity! But I got over it. Next stop was Griffith Park and Observatory. Had I not been whining about being tired, having a sore foot, and not feeling well, we would have hiked. Guess I ruined that part of the plan. Oops! The park is really pretty, and it’s giant. If we lived in the crazy, bustling city that is Los Angeles, I would spend 80% of my time in this park, in order to compensate for feeling crowded, traffic-logged, and small the way you feel in almost every other part of town.

Next we drove. A lot. We were warned about the traffic, but it didn’t make much of a difference. If you’re in that city, you’re going to be sitting at a lot of stop lights and staring at the taillights of the car in front of you a whole bunch. We drove through a lot of different areas, including a visit to Rodeo Drive, just because I wanted to see it. I didn’t even get out of the car there, but I gawked at the crazy redonk stores over in that neighborhood. We drove some more. All the way down to Huntington Beach, where we sat on the beach until dinner. Do we look cold? We are. But dangit, we had planned to sit and enjoy the beach that one afternoon, and we were going to do it, rain or shine. OK, maybe not rain. But “wind” or shine.

Farewell, sweet California. We already miss you. Thanks for reliving the good times with us, everyone!