The City of Angels

After our 2 day drive along the coast, we arrived in Los Angeles, though we didn't really see much of the main part of the city itself as we stayed in the Hollywood Area. Personally not expecting much from this part of the trip, I was pleasantly surprised. The city itself was more or less everything I was expecting it to be, a bit of a generic concrete jungle, but it was the people here that made the place. Among the more pretentious crowd who seemed to make a point of trying to ignore your very existence was a network of up and comers and wannabes: a group of dreamers whos friendliness to everybody they met was both beneficial for themselves and the atmosphere of the place we were staying. Along with these people were those with the "regular" jobs: the cabbies, the hotel staff. Individuals in particular so friendly and so helpful. It is clear that there are many reasons that these people might be like this, but as an outsider looking in, it felt refreshing and friendly. Despite my reservations about the city itself, at no point did I feel out of place and I was always comfortable here.

We didn't get up to much on our first day here other than checking out the area of the Sunset Blvd that we were staying. Don't let the dreamy name fool you by the way. This is a busy, noisy 6 lane road that is a far cry from the idyllic nature its name suggests.

Day 2, we took a walk into main Hollywood where we found the Walk of Fame, Grauman's Chinese Theatre which is used for a lot of movie premieres and took a tour of the Kodak Theatre, home to the Academy Awards. This tour was enlightening and the host was extremely charismatic and entertaining, though admittedly, having never sat through an Oscars ceremony and with only a passing interest in celebrity and movie awards, this was definitely part of the trip that was more in tune with Leigh's interests rather than my own.

Day 3 saw us take the VIP Experience at Universal Studios Hollywood. No trip to LA is complete without a visit to Universal Studios and the VIP Experience, though expensive, was really incredible. I appreciate Leigh has already talked a little about this, but it was almost as exciting for me as it was for him, though for different reasons. The set piece and effects examples were tremendous, including the flooded Mexican town and Subway earthquake, but highlights of sets from real shows and movies included the Bate's Motel from Pyscho and the 747 crash site from War of the Worlds which was incredible and haunting in equal measure. Perhaps the highlight of the whole trip was the mini tour around the street set of Desperate Housewives. I'm only joking, of course, it was certainly not the highlight, but it was awesome to see Wisteria Lane up close and personal, complete with a deer munching on the flowers in Susan's garden! I'm going to regret admitting that aren't I...

The theme park tour was pretty cool too, though I must admit, there didn't seem to be much there, perhaps there's more rides at Universal Florida? That said, the Terminator 2: 3D experience was pretty incredible. For someone so familiar with 3D graphics and modern technology, I even surprised myself by ducking out of the way at one point. For a 15 year old production, it was fantastic. The Simpsons ride is certainly worth a nod as well, making you feel like you're riding a rollercoaster despite never actually moving.

So that was pretty much our LA experience done and dusted. We went out for drinks pretty much every night, meeting the random up and comers to the movie industry as well as visitors from outside the city and spent our last day waiting for the clock to tick over before heading to the airport. It's always the sad bit of the holiday, but after a painless flight back and journey up the M40, I'm really looking forward to my own bed! That is, of course, after I've got all my washing sorted, bugger!

I'm sure Leigh will probably want to add a little more to this: LA was very much his playground and his dream so it's perhaps a little unfair for me to write so much about our time there, but I felt it needed doing while it was still fresh in my mind. You'll see more of it in his video shorts too I'm sure!

For now, I'm going to leave the blog. I'd like to do one last passing conclusion of the trip as a whole, but the tiredness from our two-day travel is beginning to set in and I'm in work tomorrow, so I need to get my head down! That's it for now!