The City of Angels (19 January 2017)

Our Los Angeles visit was brief but action-packed. We stayed at a 30’s hotel behind Hollywood Boulevard close to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Walk of Fame and the Dolby theatre where the Oscars take place. It was a fun place to stay and we saw people setting-up for celebrity functions including a Wahlburger do (Mark’s brother, an entrepreneurial chef who is making a burger empire) and the premiere for a movie called XXX (a Vin Diesel release) – but no celebs spotted.

On our first day after checking into our hotel, we visited the Hollywood Hills – the Griffith Observatory (great views from there and lots of walking opportunities if you had time), got close to the ‘Hollywood’ sign with a GPS tip from the hotel man and the Hollywood Bowl.

We ventured onto the Getty Museum to the west. It was set high in the hills looking over Los Angeles. It was designed so you parked away from the gallery. You then caught a tram for a 5 minute journey to a different place – of stately marble buildings, water fountains and landscaped gardens full of cactuses and unfamiliar plants.

We admired the spectacular views before going to a graphic exhibition about the role of the media and then the more traditional gallery offerings. We started with the Impressionists seeing one of the famous ‘Rouen Cathedral’ paintings by Monet, ‘Irises’ by Vincent Van Gogh (the most expensive painting bought at the time), Turners, a Canaletto, a wonderful skinny Modigliani sculpture, a fabulous Degas (we could look at the painting with a magnifying glass and see the build-up of colours) and many other wonderful works – Peter Bruegel the Elder, lots of Rubens and Rembrandts. The collection was fascinating. The world’s richest man had obviously a lot of options for his collection over the years. The source of wealth was oil. There was a great audio guide for the gallery. The young lads had a surprisingly good time after they overcame their initial art gallery aversions.

The following day we did a walking tour of the downtown that was a long foot slog. Los Angeles downtown was very spread out. There was a fascinating Spanish / Hispanic district at the south end of the city with an attractive formal Spanish style park located at its centre. The district was known as Olvera Street, named after the main market street.

A lot of conservation effort had been undertaken with many local buildings set up as museums. We visited one of the oldest houses in the city (an adobe building), a fire station complete with stables and a museum documenting the history of Chinese settlement in the area plus some art displays including a mural from the 1920’s. The mural had been painted as a political statement by a contemporary of Diego Riviera. It had been painted over but had reappeared as the covering paint deteriorated.

The area was very characterful and included lots of Mexican restaurants and stalls. The main city railway station, Union Station was also situated adjacent. This was a very impressive art deco building with large leather seats in the waiting room and a grand piano anyone could play for up to 20 minutes (we heard some quality performers).

From there, we walked to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, similar in appearance to the Guggenheim Gallery in Bilbao.

This was part of an impressive civic precinct before the rundown part of the city centre at Broadway. This had at least ten enormous closed theatres.

A good food market had been set up in one of them. The Bradbury building was opposite with a heritage interior that had been used in the filming of Blade Runner.

A short rail lift (the Flight of Angels) also provided access up a hill. We continued on to a jewellers district, then a garment district before ending at Figeroea St. An enormous convention and performance space was situated there covering several city blocks – the Staples Centre. There was a lot of residential redevelopment taking place on the north side of the city. We caught the Metro back to Union Station (where we’d parked) and the journey was very straightforward. We waited only briefly for a train and changed trains and again waited a minimal period. The Metro was impressive connecting the downtown to useful places like Santa Monica and LAX (also involving a shuttle bus).

We went to the Petersen car museum afterwards to recover from the downtown exertions. After considerably difficulty getting into the museum (a Metro station was being constructed underneath and that made it difficult to access), it was a very interesting array of displays from old to new vehicles.

We saw the ‘Back to the Future’ Delorean (with Flux Capacitor), the ‘Thelma and Louise’ car, as well as a special Bugatti display that the lads especially appreciated.

Sam has talked about Bugatti Veyron’s since he was very small as the world’s fastest car so it was interesting to see one (looked like an ok two tone car to me – bit surprised at the 7 figure price tag!).

We dined at the El Coyote Mexican for dinner (an LA institution apparently) and had a fabulous meal of very sizable portions. Tip: do not order entrees.

The Warner Brothers studio tour was our next highlight. There wasn’t a lot of production activity taking place the day we visited with the weekday Ellen de Generes show the most significant (She must work so hard!).

We saw the outside of the studio where ‘The Big Bang Theory’ was made with all the marked car parks, their golf buggy etc. It would be great to go to a live recording of a show you liked. Sam role-played where Sheldon stole the film reel of the new ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ release from the cinema.

We saw ‘The Friends’ set of Café Perk, the ‘Mom’ set, the outside of the studio where the Ellen de Generes show was being made, where classic movie Casablanca was filmed (the studio was specially preserved), plus loads of street sets and created scenes used in movies and series (parks, New York streets, western town streets …). Our guide could tell us exactly what shots were filmed where from myriad movies and shows. It was extraordinary. We also saw a room full of Batman cars and a segments of their prop stores seeing light fittings and interior items (where studios and show folk come and reserve props).

We also saw a whole lot of example setups showing special effects in the exhibition area at the end of the tour. These displays explained about the multiple tracks using in creating final recorded sound in movies with the overlay of audio, music and extra sound effects. They used the example of Sandra Bullock getting shot off into space in ‘Gravity’ and was an awesome display of how tension is created from the overlay of different elements. The display of visual effects included Harry Potter’s flying brooms, the size differential of people facing each other at a table so one looks much smaller (Hagrid), blue screens … It was great stuff.

We headed to Malibu subsequently to the Getty Villa to see the classical antiquities collection. The main museum had been so interesting and well-presented. The building design was based on a villa near Herculaneum that had been excavated from the Vesuvius volcanic eruption. The building’s location was cut into the hill to replicate the layering of debris from the eruption (unexpected).

The collection had an awesome audio guide again and gave a great overview of works of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman eras. I guess as the world’s richest man he could be very selective over the decades since 1939 when he commenced his acquisitions. He had purchased such exquisite pieces. He even had mosaic floors from southern France removed very early in the 20^th century. It is astonishing they could be sourced so recently from there. It was very worthwhile. We drove back via the coast seeing some of the beachfront properties of Malibu (kinda strange with such luxury properties backing onto a busy roadway) then south to Santa Monica pier and Venice Beach.

Once we dropped off the car (they do things on such a big scale with multiple rental cars being dropped off simultaneously before you’re bussed off to the airport), Sam had his final treat of a last pre-check screening clearance through United States homeland security. This involved him getting through the US security screenings each time we entered or left the US (it happened 6 times) in about two minutes while the rest of us spent ages queuing up (up to ¾ hour). I assumed it was because he’s a minor. Only I had had this (pre-check screening clearance) on a previous occasion (I think because I was an over-50 female at the time travelling with my family) but clearly I was back in the potential terrorist camp and Sam enjoyed his exclusive status one last time. Meanwhile, the fingerprinting, photographing … continued. It took ages and Sam was well pleased with his status. So the onward journey began. Crossing the International Date Line we interestingly missed 20 January 2017 – the day of the Trump Inauguration – maybe it didn’t happen for us!