Thursday, July 23, 2009

Day 15. Hollywood, Beverly Hills.






























































































































































































































































More hot weather today. We drove to Hollywood and drove around a bit--Sunset Drive, Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood Blvd, Rodeo Drive. We drove through Griffith Park and made our way up to the observatory. It turned out to be a great place to catch a view of the Hollywood sign. We walked around the observatory and got pictures of LA and the surrounding area from various angles. Tony captured a good shot of the smog. We headed back down and experienced the underbelly of LA as well as the privileged/excessive end. We stopped in at Greystone mansion. The grounds there are beautiful. Beverly Hills owns the mansion now and the interior is not open to the public. The mansion cost over $3 million to build and the owner died 4 months later--supposedly a murder-suicide. When the wife sold the mansion many years later, it went for less than it cost to build it. From the mansion we went to Hollywood Boulevard and checked out some of the stars on the walk. Many names were recognizable and some were not. There were several names on stars that caused us to wonder what the person could possibly have done that earned that privilege. We had lunch at neat place called U Wink. It was developed by the owner of Atari. There are screens at all tables and patrons can peruse the menu items and order for themselves. After orders are placed, it is time to play some strategy and trivia games on the screen. I wanted another drink and just punched in the order and had the drink within two minutes. The food was excellent. I ordered a turkey club and Tony had a teriyaki chicken sandwich. Both were excellent! We ate at around 2:30 and, although we have established a pattern of eating dinner at around 8pm, we did not want any dinner that night. We headed further north to be closer to Anthony and took a room in Santa Clarita/Valencia. Tomorrow we will pick up Anthony and start the next leg of the journey which should include Vegas, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion.



















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