Hooray for Hollywood (Day 8)

Day out found us waking up in Anaheim only to brave the traffic to downtown Los Angeles. Yes...DOWNTOWN L.A. Good Lord! I thought the traffic was bad before...it was CRAZY that day!

Mom and I had made a reservation the night before for a tour of Los Angeles. It was to last six hours and hit all the "hot spots." Now, I don't typically like "tours" of this nature, but I KNEW after my first experience driving in Los Angeles traffic the day before that I was NOT willing to drive to all the places I wanted to see. So we booked a tour.

We were a little late to our pick up point, but no worries, because our driver was late as well. We ended up on the tour with an 86 year old lady from Florida and her 45 year old son, a mother, father, grandmother, and 4 year old little lady from Australia, and our tour guide, who was from NYC originally. I was actually quite impressed with the knowledge of random information this tour guide possessed. Sure he knew a lot about Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Los Angeles. He knew a lot about California as a whole because he'd lived there for 12 years. But he actually knew a surprising amount about Florida, Australia, and Kentucky. While on the tour we all debated politics, immigration laws, taxes, the economy...you name it. So needless to say, it was quite an interesting tour. :-)

Anyway...

We spent six hours driving around Los Angeles. We got to visit the following places (and many more, but I can't remember them all): Griffith Park & Observatory where we also saw the Hollywood sign, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Kodak Theatre, Beverly Hills (yeah, I took some pics of the famous people's homes, but I wasn't really interested in all that anyway, so they weren't very good pics), Santa Monica, Venice Beach, the Farmer's Market, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Needless to say we were very tired after the tour, but as soon as we got back to the car, we hit the road and headed North back towards San Francisco. We drove until ten thirty that night and I was completely tuckered out. We found a hotel in a little town called Solvang, and settled in for our last official night in California.

Anyway...I have to say this about Hollywood and Los Angeles in general...honestly...I wasn't that impressed. I guess I had it all built up inside my head to be something bigger/better than what it really was. Really, L.A. is just another city. You have your more affluent places (like Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills) that are nice to look at and probably nice places to live, but then you have your flip side to those...your "bad" parts of town. L.A. seems to have a lot of those parts. The roads, the buildings, all of it were really run down and it just made me kind of sad. It wasn't the "dreamy" place that you think it will be from movies and whatnot.

Santa Monica was nice. I really, really liked it there. Venice Beach was pretty cool too. Griffith Park would have been nice to explore and there was an art show in Beverly Hills that I would have liked to just walked through for a little while, but there wasn't enough time. Everything else I wasn't very impressed with. :-(

Anywho...I'll post pictures on another blog. Promise. :-)

Do you know the way to San Jose? (Day 2)

Day two found us in San Francisco for most of the day as well. When morning rolled around we checked out of our hotel, but when they offered to hold our car and luggage for us until 6 p.m. we took them up on the offer and hit the town. I treated Mom to a Mother's Day dinner at Johnny Rockets where the waiter flirted shamelessly with me (*insert eye flutter here*), but to no avail. I left him the 15% tip but nothing more. Last thing I need is a California boy hanging on my arm. :-P

Regardless we decided to check things out a bit. We talked to the Conceirge at the hotel to ask about directions to places and bus schedules and all that. Ten minutes later and with a map in our hands with all kinds of squiggly marks I did not understand, I looked at Mom and said, "Ummm...we are getting a tour." I was not attempting that wild mess! So that is exactly what we did. A motorized trolley tour. Not a real trolley which is sad, but it did the job all the same.

We went all over San Francisco and saw the sights from the safety of a vehicle driven by someone other than myself. This someone being a man from Russia named Igor. That was fun. Imagine this...sitting at the back of the trolley, listening to Igor tell us about the city in his thick Russian accent while simultaneously listening to the French couple beside you, the British family in front of you, and the Alabama couple behind you. I really only understood the Alabama folks. I mean, I understood the others (except when the one couple spoke only French), but I can just understand that Southern dialect a lot better than the others.

We saw the Golden Gate bridge, the "Painted Ladies", and all that jazz. I took pictures. I'll post them in another blog because I don't have them with me at the moment.

After the tour was finished, Mom and I packed up and headed South. A couple of hours later and we were in San Jose taking a tour of the Sarah Winchester Mystery House. No photos of the inside because that was against the rules, but I took some in the garden out back. One photo may or may not contain the image of a "ghost". Now, I don't know what ya'll believe or don't believe, but I'm gonna just go with it being a ghost. Even if its not, its just more fun to think it is. So I will forever tell people that I took a picture of a ghost at the Winchester mansion. :-)

The house itself was beautiful. It was a little weird, but not creepy. It was quirky is all. I loved it there. I wish I had more time to explore and the tour was worth the money so if you ever have the chance, then you should take it. It was really neat.

From San Jose we went South and then East. Passing by the garlic fields of Gilroy, California (you can imagine the smell of that) and the oil fields of Bakersfield. I didn't have time to stop at the Buck Owens place while there, but there was a lot I didn't get to do on the trip. I'll just save all those things for another time. We spent Saturday night in some random California town near the Nevada border anticipating a Sunday spend in Las Vegas! :-)

Leaving on a jet plane...(Day 1)

So I spent day one of my vacation with absolutly no sleep for 24 hours or so. I had to work until midnight on Thursday night and had to leave at four in the morning Friday. So there simply was no time for sleep. Not with driving home from work, last minute packing, and all that.

I caught my plane to San Francisco from Cincinnatti and all went well. Jacob was right, the take off and landing were the most fun but I did get a few nice pictures from the window of the five hour flight. Flying is a nice way to put things into perspective...it gives you a bird's eye view of the world (or God's view, if you would rather look at it like that). I still prefer to drive, but flying has its advantages.

We landed at the San Francisco International Airport and picked up the rental car then drove towards Haight-Ashbury. Ahhh...Haight-Ashbury, that famous hippie hangout. Now its just a place for teenagers to hang out and tourist to get t-shirts, photos, and smoking gear from the head shops. We just drove through it. No pictures or anything. I mean, it was an interesting place and I really wanted to stop and get some Ben & Jerry's and have a look around, but I couldn't find parking. We drove around for what seemed like forever and looked down every street for parking but none was to be found. This was my first lesson about San Francisco...parking is scarce. As in virtually nonexistant.

Lesson number two is that traffic is horrendous. Never in my life have I ever experienced traffic like that. Cars, buses, cabs, and trolley cars everywhere. Riding right on your butt too. And R-U-D-E. Now granted I'm from a one stoplight town and not very used to city drivers, but this was ridiculous. Maybe it was rush hour, maybe it was Friday, maybe it was just something in the air, I don't know, but never in my life have I ever seen such rude drivers. In truth, a lot of the people in San Francisco were a bit rude. Not mean...most were quite nice, but not friendly. I'm from the South, ya'll. I like friendly people. I hate to judge the whole city based on a bad day, but just from that one bad day, I don't have a lot of good things to say about San Francisco.

What I will say is that it is an absolutely beautiful city. The homes, the businesses, the landscape...all of it is beautiful. Its windy too. And chilly...at least in May. I wore a skirt too, so you can only imagine. And no flowers in my hair because my hair was blowing all over the place (sorry Thing Two and Kayla). We stayed on Fisherman's Wharf and so we spent quite a bit of time on Pier 39. We saw the sea lions, the street performers, the boats, the trollies, and all that jazz. I took pictures, I bought souveniers. Typical tourist stuff and even for the off season (May is the tail end of California's version of Winter), there were quite a few tourists.

That night we went on a tour of Alcatraz. Now THAT was more up my alley, especially being a History major and loving historic sites. Alcatraz was beautiful, even if it was a former prison. The view from Alcatraz was nice as well, especially as the sun began to set.

Mom and I finished up our first night in California back at the hotel trying to recover from jetlag. Otherwise it was a nice day, even if it was a bit disappointing.