First Class California - Day 13 & 14 Los Angeles

Day 13 - Los Angeles (Tuesday 28th May 2013)

After almost two weeks of touring and 2 full on days in the heat of LA, we were in need of a more relaxing kind of day, so had planned to spend the next two days around Marina Del Ray and Santa Monica.

After the normal morning routine, Celia headed off to the Ritz-Carlton hotel just around the marina for a Pedicure and I head off for a run. I was slow but did manage almost 3 miles in just over 32 mins before heading back to the room, for a shower and to wait for Celia to get back.

After a hour of relaxing by the pool, we decided to head off for a walk to see Venice and Santa Monica. We first went through Venice itself with the Canals. This was beautiful and would be somewhere where I could live in LA.

After Venice, we headed down to the Pacific and Venice Beach, which after the tranquility of venice was a lot more busy and tacky. The whole place had that slightly seedy feel, helped by the "medical" marijuana shops, where you were asked to pop in for an evaluation to see if you needed some, from the smell it would seem that most people who enter do need it.

We soon also walked past Muscle beach with the bodybuilders working out.

And then the tacky shops started to become less frequent and the whole place become less crowded as we made our way from Venice into Santa Monica. Now you could just take the wonderful sandy beaches from the boardwalk with pedestrians having one "road" and the cyclists having there own "road" just to the side. It took us about an hour 20 mins to walk the 3.5 miles to the Santa Monica pier, and this was a great relaxing day, with nowhere to be. Once at the pier we had a look around and I had a ride on the rollercoaster, before grabbing some lunch at Rusty's Surf Ranch and then heading back to the hotel.

That evening we headed back to Santa Monica, this time by car to have dinner at Chinios on Main, this was Chinese food, done big and well. This was also the only time we saw anyone famous during the entire trip and that was Julie Hagerty (Elaine from Airplane). After Dinner we headed back to the hotel.

The following day was even less busy spending almost the whole day sitting by the pool, bar a quick walk to the cheesecake factory for some post lunch cheesecake (well actually two walks as the first one had Coconut on it so was binned after 1 bite). Dinner was taken at a lovely local restaurant, Le Cellier which had some lovely beer and an interesting combo of French and Asian cuisine.

After these relaxing days it was time to repack and head off to the last hotel of the trip and 2 part days in Disneyland.

First Class California - Day 12 Los Angeles

Day 12 - Los Angeles (Monday 27th May 2013)

By this time in the Holiday, the Time difference and long days were starting to catch up with us so it was a bit harder to get up this morning when the alarm sounded, but as we were off to Warner Brothers Studio there was a good motivation, so after the normal morning routine and breakfast in the hotel, where service was a little bit faster but still laid back, we were into the car and headed for the freeways.

We had decided that the next couple of days we would rather just spend around the hotel rather than continuing to explore LA, as after just the one day exploring yesterday and knowing that we will also do some more today that that would be enough. So whilst Celia drove to the Studios, I was online (got to love a working US 3G Sim) cancelling our reservation at Spago and instead booking a table for two at Chinois in Santa Monica. Both of these are Wolfgang Puck restaurants.

We had taken the 405 (Santa Monica Freeway) and then the 101, both of which were quiet and we were very glad that today was a public holiday which must have limited the amount of traffic on the roads, so we were early getting to the Warner Brothers Parking lot. After a quick chat with the Security guard and a photo with the Bronze statues of Bugs and Daffy we headed pass security checks and into the Store/Waiting area.

Most of the store was based arround just a couple of franchises "Friends", "Harry Potter", "Game of Thrones" and "Big Bang Theory", but it still looked like some nice stuff, we were soon up for our tour and lined up to enter through a door into a small cinema where we had a short film on the history of Warner Brothers, and then we were divided up into 2 groups for the tram tour.

The tour was fascinating and it was so interesting to see that even the carpark and offices were fare game for production use.

The carpark doubled as the Helicopter pad for years on ER.

and these offices also were used as the production office in Argo.

The rest of the backlot part of the tour spent time in streets that look mostly like big cities or more open suburbia areas but all are generic enough that they can be changed to look like anywhere USA. We were told that the only rules on using these backlot areas was that the place had to be returned to exactly as it was handed over, so we did see a house that they had driven a car into and was now being returned to working order.

After the backlot we were taken past the manufacturing shops to a store area where they had multiple vehicles from various movies.

After this we were taken into a spare lot, now most stages are disposed off once the show has come to an end, but at WB one show was so popular and loved that they kept the set after the show has been long gone.

Welcome to Central Perk.

The main view is how small and crowded the set was, but we were assured that it was always this small and the actors never walked directly from the door to the couch as that would have made it seem small, so they always zigzagged to make the walk longer.

From the set we headed to the props store, wow it was like the worlds largest home store, with everything you could ever want all with price tags attached to hire by the day, week or month. Some of the stuff was real, others fake

The bowls were rubber/plastic rather than the wood that they look like.

The tour was coming to an end now, but we did have a quick drive through the sound stages, all had signs showing the major productions that had been shot in them. We were taken into 1 set, which is where they now shoot "Big Bang Theory" but the sets were in clean down mode as the show was on a break for the start of summer. we were also banned from taking cameras (or even phones) into the set.

And with that we were done the 3 hours had shot by, we would so recommend this tour to anyone with any interest in TV or movie in LA, and a lot better than the homes tour we had been on the day before. After a quick few bits picked up in the store, couple of T-Shirts and some pins, and we were done. As we were in Burbank we did not head straight back to LA as there was somewhere I needed to see, so after a short drive we found ourselves on Alameda Avenue and the entrance to Walt Disney Studios.

Sadly Walt Disney do not do public tours so I was left to just look on from the gates, but at least I had been there, then we got back in the car and headed back to LA. We parked up at the Beverly Centre and decided to walk to Rodeo drive, as on a map it did not seem that far, but in the heat of LA, it was a good hour or so, so it was gone 4 by the time we got there and there was a distinct lack of anywhere to eat, so we walked half way back to the beverly centre, before seeing a bus that gut feel said was heading in the right direction we hopped on, to be told that the cash fare machine was broken BUT we could ride for free.

We finally had lunch just after 5 pm at Souplantion (which is the other name for Sweet Tomatoes) a great cheap place for food, as the all you can eat Salad bar, plus breads, soups, drinks and desserts is a great concept. Filled up and with the day heading to an end, we were going to leave LA and spend the next two days in and around the hotel, but on the epic walk earlier we had noticed that LA now has a Georgetown Cupcake shop, so we had to see if they were still open on the drive back to grab some for me, as Celia still had hers from Babycakes NYC that we got yesterday.

We got back to the hotel and had some of the cupcakes and had an early night.