Day 9 - L.A.

Our only full day in LA started out with breakfast at the Grand Central Market. It was a healthy, well-rounded meal of fish tacos, ceviche and frozen yoghurt. We'd heard horror stories about traffic and parking, and the Los Angeles marathon was scheduled for the next day, which meant that some roads were closed. Jude Law was in town for the premiere of Repo Men and that would just add to the chaos. The cosmos thus aligned, we opted to pay $35 each for the hop on hop off tour, which turned out to be a great decision. The two day ticket would have been a better deal (being $48) since the tour covered Santa Monica as well, and we ended up missing that part of it. One to know for next time!

The tour took us through Downtown LA, with the older theatres, Staples Centre and the fashion district. We passed through Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Thai Town and even Filipinotown. Heading into Hollywood we went under freeway bridges where being on an open top bus turned out to be unfortunate since they smelled really bad. Homeless folk had established a community under the bridges, with designated areas for sleeping, eating, pooping, etc. On hot days, it can be stifling. We got off at the Chinese Theatre where we'd been hoping to watch a movie. Sadly the only option was Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the weather was just too good for that kind of bad decision.

We decided to try a walk down Sunset Boulevard (not realising how long it was). The signatures and hand/foot prints of the stars, which seemed to be shrunken-down casts as opposed to original artistic efforts, were good fun. Particularly the older ones like Humphrey Bogart's. The walk itself wasn't very exciting though, there were only people being arrested for robbery, two guys chasing another, two buskers (one old, cool and jazz trained, the other young and punky) having a play-off, and the Rockwalk. The rock walk was to music what the Chinese Theatre was to movies, although everything still seemed to be shrunken down. Kim Gordon's hands were approximately the size of a five year olds. It didn't take very long to tire of the boulevard and we dived into the closest sanctuary we could find. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take photographs, so there are no candids of Sienna Miller, a Jackson, an ageing English rock star who I think was in the Police, and most of the Jersey Shore. We were, however, allowed to get trashed on martinis and discover the guilty pleasure that is artichokes fried in garlic and rosemary. It was strange to be around people smoking at tables after so long in London, it actually felt stangely offensive, though I suppose it tied in with the tendency for people to order food but not eat.

Once we'd worn out the possible reasons for hanging around, it was back on the bus and past the Viper Room (Johnny!), Rodeo Drive (where the Hubs had me pinned into my seat until we were two miles away, a tactic that lost its lustre when repeated at The Grove). When we saw Jessica Biel walking some dogs and I had to hold the Hubs down, we realised something. LA is AMAZING. All those things we'd turned our noses up at, like viewing celebrity homes, graves, themselves, suddenly seemed like a really good idea. We even contemplated going to the Repo Men premiere. Times were dire and we needed a drink, so we talked a wine bar into giving us coffee cups full of wine for the bus tour back. Much to the dismay of the other tourists, for whom drinking was, apparently, "best done at home". Frankly, if I drank at home, my liver would be a mass of scar tissue and my social skills would zero.

It was only when we got back to the hotel, drunk, that I realised I hadn't managed to go to Lucky Devils. This put me into a proper sulk and so we decided to go back to Casa for a direct repeat of the previous night's dinner. The sun had exhausted us and so we settled down with chips, guac and the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and a bottle of wine. Hot.