12 Hours in Los Angeles
Recently I took my Fulbright friends Lalit and Alka visiting from India on a whirlwind 12 hour tour of Los Angeles. Here was our day:
We started out at Philz in Santa Monica to get out coffee charge.
From there we head out to the Santa Monica pier to enjoy the view, the street performers and the games, like air hockey.
Then we travel through Venice to see the street life, get some sunglasses and see the canals.
Then its down onto the Pacific Coast Highway passing Santa Monica Beach and up Chautauqua Boulevard to Pacific Palisades to see the great semi-secret view over Will Rogers Beach. This is our also a spot inundated with butterflies in this most unusual season.
After looking through Rick Caruso’s new Palisades Village shopping center,
we head back down to PCH and Sunset Point to see the surfers enjoying the waves at the start of Sunset Blvd.
Traveling east on Sunset we stop at the Yogananda Self Realization Lake Shrine, surprised to find some of the ashes of Mahatma Ghandi among the religious homages
From here we curve around Sunset into Will Rogers State Park for a quick look.
We kept going on Sunset past the gates of Bel Air
and into UCLA for a picture in front of Royce Hall.
From here we stopped at the historic Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills where I used to be a park ranger so I gave a guided walking tour.
We had planned to ride Sunset all the way,
which we do until we hit total gridlock at the Sunset Strip, so in classic LA flexibility mode we double back up Franklin Canyon
to enjoy the views from Mulholland. Downtown would have to wait!
We took in the Universal City overlook view
and the Hollywood Bowl overlook view.
From there we descended to the view from Yamashiro’s and then into the belly of the parking structure at Hollywood and Highland.
Here we enjoyed the views safely above the insanity of Hollywood Boulevard and grabbed a bite to eat at CPK, although the food needed extra seasoning for the Indian palate…
after being yelled at by a security guard for trying to get the best view of the Hollywood Sign.
I tried to explain that Michael Jackson was not a good guy, but still his star shines on the sidewalk. The forecourt of Grauman’s Theater is the epicenter of Hollywood movie history and tourism.
We joined the masses trying to get to the Griffith Observatory for the sublime sunset.
After taking that in and all the attractions inside, we ventured down to see the old Chaplin Studios,
the La Brea Tar Pits and the beautiful LACMA Urban Lights.
We had a quick look at the soon to be completed Metro Stations
and Academy Awards Oscar Museum
on Wilshire and Fairfax.
Fueling up yet again on a vanilla iced blended at the Coffee Bean,
we motored into Downtown LA past Disney Hall
and City Hall
. One more 21st century diversion was Two Bit Circus.
And from there I dropped off my guests at “the beginning” of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula, at Olvera Street
and finally Union Station
on time for their midnight bus to Vegas.
To learn more about Los Angeles, a most complicated and difficult to comprehend place, recommend viewing the brilliant documentary film entirely made from classic movie clips, Los Angeles Plays Itself.
