Santa Monica and Los Angeles City

On our tour of Los Angeles, our first stop was Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and Sunset Plaza where all the hippies used to hang out. We visited the hotel where Pretty Woman was filmed, The Beverly Wilshire. The restrooms were quite elegant. I'm not sure why they put up with tourist coming in and checking out the place. I was surprised at how few people were out on the streets walking around.

The next stop was Grauman's Chinese Theatre where we saw all kinds of make believe stars wandering around with the crowd. We walked to the top of the shopping area adjacent to the theatre and took pictures of the famous Hollywood sign. We ate at Johnny Rockets restaurant in the mall area. It was nothing special - a hamburger is a hamburger.

Our bus then climbed the hill to the overlook where we could see some of the stars' homes. We didn't drive by any of them. This was disappointing but was proclaimed by the tour guide to be our exciting, extra special grand finale for the tour. I think he just wanted to get off early on Friday afternoon and was itching to ditch us and skip the last hour of our tour. Don't take LA City Tours; take Gray Line Tours.

Since our tour was cut short we decided to drive to the Farmers Market in Hollywood. This was much more exciting than the tour. Mark went to CBS Studio and got tickets for The Price Is Right show while Joyce and I shopped and ate. I've never seen such a huge selection of every kind of food and fresh vegetables and fruits that I could imagine. That was fun; don't miss it when you are in town. You could spend a good part of the day just wandering around and talking with folks.

AMAZING L.A. TOURS (amazingly disappointing)

The BIGGEST disappointment on our trip was by far our tour of L.A. and Hollywood.

On this trip we tried a different tour company...Amazing L. A. Tours. We were on the morning "1 A" tour. This was suppose to be the basic Hollywood tour. It was advertised in their own brochure as a "5 hour tour." In fact, it was around 3 1/2 hours long and the tour didn't even go to all the listed areas. Our guide left off the Universal City Walk. A spokesperson for the company told me the 5 hours included travel time from our hotel and back to our hotel. Even counting the travel time the tour lasted only about 4 hours.

I really felt sorry for the visitors on the tour from foreign countries. They were confused as to why such a short tour and why we didn't go to the Universal City Walk. I was sitting next to a few of them and advised them on other tours that were available and directions to other points of interest.

PARENTS BEWARE: OUR TOUR GUIDE (BERNARD) WAS VERY "POTTY-MOUTHED" WITH MUCH VERY BAD LANGUAGE!!

Folks my advice to you... use Gray Line Tours!

Fire On the Mountain on the Way to Santa Monica

On Hwy 60 we drove Superstition Mountain Drive seeing palm trees and very large cactus. We were in Phoenix, Arizona by 7:30am local time and got on Interstate 10 to head for the California coast. As we crossed the California state line we began to see fields of crops and orange groves. Joshua Tree National Park is beautiful although we didn't take time to stop on this trip.

We took a potty break and filled up the tank with gas at the Pilot on I-10 in Palm Springs. Wind farms are everywhere on the mountains. We heard on CNN about the wildfire there in Palm Springs, looked up and saw the flames coming across the mountain. We put our Sirius radio in the rental car for the trip. It's great having news channels and a big variety of music to choose from. Though Mark is a bit of a hog with it comes to entertainment control.

We didn't do a lot of stopping for pictures and were in Santa Monica, California by 3:00pm local time. By the time we navigated down to the water and found a motel within walking distance of the pier it was dinner time. We spent two nights at the Travelodge. They dickered a bit on the rate which made Mark happy. The manager, Paul was very helpful with setting up our city tour and the cleaning staff went out of their way to make sure we had everything we needed in our room.

Dinner was at a very nice little Italian place called Il Fornaio. My stuffed shells were wonderful and the prices were reasonable. We walked around on the pier and talked with people. Around the corner from the restaurant we found a little hole in the wall place called the Coffee Cup Bakery to get homemade pastries and really good coffee. A sweet little lady from Vietnam ran the place. You could tell all the locals knew her and she took care of everyone like family.

We bought an incredible original oil painting from a very talented artist on the pier. I'm sure our $10 investment will pay off handsomely when it's time to cash in and retire. While strolling on the pier, we also met David Hart and he did a caricature of us. I made the mistake of asking him to make us look better than what he saw. We could have been movie stars by the time he finished. It amazed me at how all his clients seemed to look a lot alike. David was also a church organist and was looking for a new church. You can reach him at hart7319@aol.com. He's willing to relocate. We bought one of his CDs -- well it was a package deal with the portrait. It was well worth the $5 investment. His vocal talents and musical arrangements are like nothing I've ever heard before.

We tried Bubba Gump Shrimp Company for dinner the second night. It was all hype. The food was nothing special and the service in the restaurant was very slow. Mark made friends with the gals running the souvenir shop.

Historical Route 66 ends in Santa Monica. When Route 66 was originally built it ran across the nation from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. This was the first major highway that connected the western part of the nation with the eastern. As families began purchasing automobiles, travel across the nation began to become popular. Family vacations along Route 66, staying in the "down and out" motels and eating at the "mom and pop" restaurants was the way to go. Tourist attractions began to pop up along the route and many skeletons of them remain.