15- Los Angeles – Warner Bros – Malibu beach – Santa Monica
Today is the first of the two days that we are going to spend in Los Angeles. The plan for today is: Walk of Fame and its stars, Hollywood and its mansions, the girls have two passes to visit Warner Bros studios and my brother and I will go see Malibu beach while we wait for them.
But the most important first, our now almost ritual Starbucks breakfast. We find one that is on our way and the girls go get our order while we drive around the block not to have to pay for parking.
Once our drinks in hand, we are heading to the Walk of Fame. To be completely honest, at this point in the trip I didn’t really know what to expect from it. I imagined a few stars on the sidewalk and that’s about it. In fact, stars are all the way on the avenue (and it is a long avenue) but on the other hand, what I was far from imagining is how the surroundings are unappealing, dirty and looking like a bad place to hang out. There are obviously a lot of tourists but nothing extraordinary. Besides, I am not particularly fond of stars and famous people so I would probably not even known about the majority of the people who have their stars there.
We won’t even get off the car after going all the way and back on the avenue and we head towards Hollywood.
The scenery is immediately nicer. Large streets bordered with huge palm trees and of course huge mansions and nice cars parked in front of them. I am not interested in who lives in there or anything of the sort but the difference in architecture between the houses and the extravagance of some of them is worth a look.
We can of course see the Hollywood sign on the hills but we won’t go next to it because we don’t really see the interest of it. After all, they are only tall letters standing on the side of a hill and we can get the same view on LA from many other places.
I think what surprised me the most about Hollywood is how hilly it is. There is room between houses and streets are relatively straight but as soon as you get away from the centre, there are hills and steep and curvy roads. Some houses are on a very steep slope and with only view the very near side of the hill in front of them just a few tens of meters away… There may be a logic I don’t see there.
It is now time to go drop the girls off in front of Warner Bros studios for their visit. There are several entrances so it takes us a few minutes to find the right one but eventually, the queue in front of the gate tells us where to stop.
The girls get off the car and we pull out again in the morning traffic. This time we are heading to Malibu beach where we will have the leftovers of our Lancaster pizzas from last night and have a walk on the beach. It takes us a good 45 minutes to get there with all the traffic so we will be right on time for lunch when we get there.
The area around Malibu is really nice. Much nicer than LA in my opinion and much mountainous too. The roads are still as wide and some segments of the motorway we take to get there are two times 9 lanes… and all of them are full of cars… Very impressive to see.
When we get to Malibu, we pass by the Malibu University Campus, very well groomed green grass compared with the rest of the area which is a dry desert and then we drive downhill towards the beach.
{googleads}
We park on one of the car parks and pay 6 dollars before walking the narrow path that leads to the beach.
The path goes along a small lake and I am surprised to see that there are not many people on the beach (and even less so in the water). A few surfers and playing with the waves and a few children are getting wet next to the shore but that’s about it. The waves seem smaller than the ones in southwest France.
We sit on the sand and eat our pizzas while discussing this trip that is almost getting to an end now. We are happy to have our hats on but the temperature isn’t too high. Once our pizzas eaten, I walk up to the shore and put my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time of my life. And that’s when I understood why so few people were in the water. Simply put, the water was freezing cold. It was OK to get your feet in it but nothing more, at least not by my standard. My brother will soon come to the same conclusion and we opt for a walk along the shore instead.
We walk by the pier and after about an hour, it is time to get back to the car to go and pick the girls up again. Traffic is much denser now and it takes us a good hour to get back to LA. Once the girls back in the car, we head back the same road again but this time with the goal to go to Santa Monica. It is rush hour and we see LA traffic at its best. It will take us an hour and a half to get there.
We will get to Santa Monica just in time to enjoy a superb sunset and will end the day by walking on the beach to the Santa Monica pier which represents the start (or end) of Route 66. We walk among the rollercoaster and other animations on the pier before heading back to the car and to the hotel.
Tomorrow will be our second day in LA. The plan is to go and visit downtown before driving up the Pacific highway to Santa Barbara for lunch and then go back down this time to San Diego for our last full day of this trip.
To be continued… here: 16- Los Angeles, downtown, Santa Barbara, Venice Beach and San Diego
{googleads}