I'm actually less than two years behind on blogging, which is better than I'd thought, and well under the national average, but I'll cover some of that stuff going forward. For now, Sarah suggested that for various reasons - creativity, sanity, permanent record, can't say "fuck" as often using only the medium of photographs - I should write up how we're enjoying our holiday in Southern California. So that's what this is, and since we got here on the 23rd, I have six days to cover.
Wednesday 23rd...
6:20am flight, with a 4am taxi. So naturally we stayed up till about two; Sarah's sleep cycle is unrecognizable these days, and I left it too late to make a definite decision, with the unpromising result that I was very sleepy in the cab and on the plane. But on the plus side, there tends to be a maximum time I can sleep on flights, and this flight was only a little longer than that time, so I barely noticed it. Which is good, as I hate travelling by air, it's not a compatible and congenial environment for pandas to absorb anything, and its only advantage is that it covers the distance quickly. I'm sure the main reason I don't really like going back to England is the thought of the flight, eating basically two solid days from the vacation time. But LA is in the same time zone, so this was more like a long day than exhausting biorhythm terrorism.
So to collect the rental car, with added GPS. Oh my god, GPS. This wasn't in the initial plan, but James' advice from his recent LA trip was "get one", and I can only imagine the adventures we'd have been on without it. "Where's my fucking jetpack?" goes the common refrain, which I'm even going to use in a song soon... well, "where's our fucking destination?" would have been a far more common utterance this week but for this little sweetheart. These are the days of miracle and wonder, and our GPS -although occasionally in need of forgiveness for its brash confusion about car parks and its insistence on "recalculating" when you're going straight down the very road it stipulated five seconds earlier - is a miracle and a wonder all in one. What we need now is GPS for rabbits...
First we trundled down to Venice Beach, seeing as how we had an urgent need for food. Venice Beach, mmmmm. Biiiig beach... lotsa skateboarders, plenty of surfers, cyclists rowdily barracking a clump of peds to get out of their lane, a big blue mural on the side of a high building a couple of blocks inland, and the Sidewalk Cafe, paired with a bookshop and offering tolerable nosh. I've never really been to an American beach town... or at least, not to the beach part; when I was with Abby we went around Jensen Beach a bit, but I only clearly remember the boardwalk at Saturn, which wasn't like this at all. This was like "John From Cincinatti", with hordes of bike and surf shops, and sunny dropouts teaching six-year-olds how to flip their skateboards. All very non-Jaysmith, really, so we finished our food and retreated, but not before Sarah had found a very impressive breakwater which produced enormous serial splashes every thirty seconds or so. So, happy bunny there, although I had to forbid her to climb it and strike a "Titanic" pose moments before being saturated.
Inland, and seeing as how we're here with a car, a GPS (tee!) and time to kill before the hotel will take us, we decide to go see the HOLLYWOOD sign. It turns out that this is up a terribly damaged road on which there are dire apartment blocks as well as the most extravagant six-storey blank-walled glass-topped mountainside-crawlers you can imagine. Jesus. Spend a few bucks on your fucking road, will you. No doubt this is intended to dispel sightseers like us - well it won't work, rich people! And sure enough, there was the sign... visible from the bottom of the hill, it's far enough away that it doesn't really get too much bigger by the time you get to the cafe and the designated viewing point. I'm finally looking at the famous HOLLYWOOD sign. And do you know the weird thing? It's just a sign, kinda in the middle of nowhere, but it's laden with value and meaning for an English kid... and yet... it really is just a sign, in the middle of nowhere... and you know what else? All that glamour and money looks real faded... a currency no-one spends anymore, half those houses probably empty, the real people living in those crappy-looking apartments which could have been anywhere in the world but which happen to have a view up the hill to the Sign Of Movie Dreams. Huh. Still, now, been there done that.
We can probably head to the hotel now, as Sarah is flagging a bit, so off we go through more downtown LA... and as the GPS delivers us, we find that the exact block containing our hotel has been cordoned off. A little phone exploration determines that there was a fatal crash earlier. We park in the Home Depot opposite, then find we can cross from there into the hotel car park, cunningly avoiding and possibly annoying all the cops. But whatever. Here we are in LA, in our hotel, and we have a nap, because boy, do we need one. So our heads hit the pillows, and we're sleeping... on, wait for it, Sunset Boulevard. HA! Like I wouldn't want a hotel with that address. But see previous paragraph for just how impressive Sunset Boulevard actually is in 2011. It has a few touches of Pender or Hastings, and plenty of general decrepitude. People walking past have that "I live in Aldershot" brittle shell to them, as though teasing them about the former glories of their hometown will get you either stabbed or sobbed on... or possibly a third option, simple rejection of whatever some romantic white boy thinks of LA. This part of town isn't film country, despite its label. These are all the people who are actually waiters and bank tellers, not actors pretending.
And, later that night: Panda Express! Which is not some kind of sex thing. In fact there is a chain of fast-ish food joints by that name, serving extremely acceptable trays of rice and meat, two of which are nommed in due course - after we've been up and down on foot for a few blocks to establish there's nothing else we can eat. Panda Express may prove to be a reliable discovery...
To be continued...
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