"Downtown - no finer place, for sure"

I last came to Downtown LA 14 years ago. At the time we drove in, looked at the library, and left. It wasn't a great place to be.

This time I spent the day walking through sunlight bouncing off glass skyscrapers, and scampering for shade between the highrises, whilst surrounded by lovely bars, cafes and food trucks.

The feel of Downtown is definitely more Canary Wharf than the Square Mile, but the whole area feels like there has been some real regeneration work going on.

I did notice as before that there are still a fair few homeless people in the main centre, particularly around the library, and Union Station.

For photography Downtown was great! I love architecture, glass and tall buildings, so it was rather like my dream come true :-)

The library is lovely. A massive building done in Eygptian/Mediterranean style. They have over 6 million volumes, making it one of the biggest libraries in the world!

Unfortunately it was the first night of the LA Phil at the Walt Disney Centre, which meant that there was a beautiful marquee outside for their first night celebrations, which meant it was difficult for me to get the shots I wanted. A good excuse to return and take in an afternoon concert methinks. 

Angels' Flight, a tiny funicular, was great fun to travel, and a bargain at 25c with my TAP card! 

Catch Jason Segel travelling on it in the latest Muppet Movie at 46 seconds in this video (any excuse to put up a brilliant Oscar winning song courtesy of Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords fame)

Union Station is well worth a look. A lot of the station is no longer used, but you can still see the beautiful marble facades of yesteryear. I expected gangsters in pin striped suits and trilby hats to come running through the concourse at any minute.

 The only downside is the baking temperature made it pretty difficult to focus (pardon the pun). After 4 hours I was done in and got on the air conditioned Metro to travel home. I will however definitely be returning - just maybe when we are truly into fall, and the temperature drops under 80 degrees!

Public transport in LA (yes it exists!!!)

So much is made of LA's 12 lane highways and the fact everyone drives everywhere. Their rush hours are approx 6 hours of the day, and it can get very very congested. It makes the M25 rush hour look like the Nurburgring...

This weekend they are closing the 405 (the busiest highway in the country) to demolish a bridge. In true LA style it is being labelled as Carmageddon! Brilliant! They did the same thing last year, but they were so successful at getting people to stay at home they are terrified everyone will think "Oh it wasn't so bad last year" that they will all get in their cars this weekend and we will actually experience Carmageddon...Imagine a city of 9 million people all stuck in their cars in 90 degree heat...

So a way to avoid the freeways and cars is to go on the buses and metro system...

Buses are air conditioned and go all over the city. Some of them are express only stopping at approx one stop in 3, which is great as otherwise it takes an age to get anywhere - rather like the 158 from my house to Westfield at Stratford... 

More of an eye opener is the Metro system. They have slowly been expanding the Metro for a fair few years, and still have some more expansion to do, most noteably out to the ocean! 

Empty and spacious - much like the Victoria line...

So today I bit the bullet, and got on a bus and a Metro, as it was easier than taking the hire car Downtown and looking for somewhere to park.

The Metro is very much like London's Underground: Clean, air conditioned, fast, direct, clear announcements at every station and seats for everyone...oh wait a minute...

No it was seriously good and a great way to get around Downtown - and cheap to boot! $6 for my TAPcard which I can top up again whenever I need to and that is for the Metro AND the bus all day.
I stayed on the purple line, as that is the kinda girl I am, but there are all manner of lines and destinations available...but as I said not yet to the beach :-( I was also very lucky with my timings, but at the moment trains run about every 10 minutes. As they become more popular I think they will have to up that, or have a revolution on their hands...!

No adverts - Just grey walls - WEIRD!!!

I have never seen a city with as many signs as LA - everywhere from street signs, to shop signs to adverts - literally they are absolutely everywhere, but bizarrely when they have a captured audience on the Metro platform - no adverts! Strange...

They do however seem to have plastic bodies floating from the ceilings at Civic Centre Station...Only in La La Land

I had such a successful trip that I am going to get the Metro downtown on Saturday night when I hit Chinatown for the Mooncake festival (not as trippy as it sounds!)

Things I have learnt in LA/Socal - Part one

Things I have learnt this week:

• Salad spinners are ace.
• I must not be despondent if I see grey clouds first thing in the morning. They always burn off by 10am at the latest to produce blue sky and no clouds.
• Air con can be a bit of a god send.
• I am not keen on air beds.
• $2 Charles Shaw wine is perfectly pleasant.
• You cannot change your iTunes account to America when you are in America - it keeps telling me I am a UK person. If that is the case, why can't I watch BBC iplayer on my iPad?!
• However Hulu will show you shows like Glee, Smash, Modern Family etc for free.
• It takes 3 days to watch Grey's Anatomy Season 8 online (24 episodes) if you really focus and put your mind to it.
• 'Ghetto birds' is a slang term for helicopters.
• Happy Hours are everywhere across the city, but of course you have to drive to them all so you are very limited on your alcohol consumption - not so happy!
• Space shuttles flying into the city on the back of 747s are not a weekly occurrence
  :-( 
• It is incredibly easy to fill up your days pottering, mooching and surfing (on the internet not in the ocean).

To Infinity and Beyond

So Friday was a pretty special day.  

The space shuttle Endeavour was doing a ceremonial flyby through California on the back of a massive jet. It had spent the week being flown over the country before coming home to California, where it will be displayed in the California Science Center pretty soon and I can go and check it out - yay!

So we toyed with the idea of going up to the Hollywood Hills to watch it, but word from one of Nick's friends at the Getty was that it was rammed. We thought the Griffiths Observatory would be much the same, and the last thing we wanted to do was miss the whole thing as we were stuck in traffic.

So we settled for the top of a 6 storey car park at The Arclight, a rather lovely cinema, where I saw actor Richard Schiff (aka Toby Ziegler from The West Wing) the last time I went. It gave us a pretty good 360 degree view of LA, and allowed us optimum shuttle time! Here is the view from said car park:

We got there around 11ish, and there were already a fair few people up there, trying to sit in what little shade there was! It was bloody boiling, and I had made the school girl error of not bringing a hat. 

I got my 3 Nikons ready - manual SLR, Digital SLR and point and push, and waited expectantly looking out to the sea...after about 10 minutes a lady next to us said it was just flying into Santa Barbara, so we knew it was going to be a wee while yet! The cameras (which were rather heavy) all came off again, and we sipped soda whilst waiting for this momentous event.

It came into view through the clouds, and then did this windy route all about taking in the Getty, Downtown, the Hollywood sign, Griffiths Observatory, Disneyland (Anaheim) and the coastal towns.

It flew almost directly over us. I was grinning like a loon, saying 'wow' quite a lot, mixed in with a few 'awesomes'...At times like this I wish I had invested in a much better lens for my digital SLR. 

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and is the last time it will be seen. Genuinely a great event! Fingers crossed I got a great shot of it over the Hollywood sign with my film camera...

Hollywood Forever

So we made a pit stop at Hollywood Forever - a very famous cemetery, where lots of movers and shakers from the film industry are buried.

After parting with $5 for a map which was one side of A3 (yes really!) we explored the cemetery and looked at the graves of some of it's most famous inhabitants. From actors to directors to rock stars:

• Tyrone Power
• Cecil B DeMille
• John Huston
• Fay Wray
• Douglas Fairbanks and Jr
• Victor Fleming

There are literally hundreds of people here who all contributed to making Hollywood what it was and what it is today.


It is a beautiful cemetery. An oasis of calm and naturally being Hollywood, it backs onto the Paramount lot! Views of the Griffiths Observatory and the Hollywood sign complete the panorama.




















A couple of cenotaphs as well. One for Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy in Gone With the Wind. At the time of her death the cemetery practiced racial segregation so she was not allowed to be buried there, despite her wishes. Much later, new owners in 1999 wanted to change this and offered to have her remains moved, but her family instead asked for a cenotaph for her. 


Jayne Mansfield also had a cenotaph here, as she is buried in Pennyslvania.












The most interesting headstone is for Johnny Ramone. I will let the photo do the talking for this one. I have never seen anything quite like it...










Hollywood Forever - A not too shabby place to spend the rest of your days with Rudolf Valentino...

of Helicopters and Hummingbirds...

So my first few days in LA have been really relaxing - much needed after the freneticism of NY!

I am staying with my friend Nick, who lives in a stunning apartment in Korea Town. It is a massive flat, probably bigger than my parent's house and has been decorated very much in keeping with the time it was built, which was 1921. Photos to follow soon!

It is however in a slightly less salubrious neighbourhood, (although a Mad Men producer lives just down the road) so the roar of helicopters is even more common than in E17 would you believe? A couple of night's ago, we could see the search light from the 'copter right on our street - a little disconcerting as you eat your dinner! 

But with that negative noise, there is also the beautiful noise of the hummingbirds who drink from the red flowers opposite Nick's balcony. They flit around all day, but the best time to see them is in the morning or early evening. Harry who is green and slightly copper is the regular performer, and puts on a lovely little turn every day. If I am able to get any photos I will put them up, but these guys can shift! I will need patience, a tripod, and probably a better lens!

Nick also has a new lodger of the feline variety:

Twiggy is fluffy, and squeaky and really rather cute!

I got to see my bezzie Nadine on Monday as she drove up from The OC.  We had a super day's shopping at The Grove - a celeb-tastic shopping hang out, where we saw Mario Lopez filming Extra. He was dancing round with a cast of members of the public, which was fun and rather LA!

We also went to the Beverly Centre, another rather chi chi shopping centre, where I found myself drawn into the Apple store, and before I knew it was walking out with a shiny new iPad...

How did that happen?! I love it!!! The only problem is I can't change my iTunes account to the US as I don't have a billing address here - harumph! I wanted to watch all the latest shows, as Nick no longer has any TV channels. What about Boardwalk Empire, Glee, Revenge, Smash, Homeland and all the other US shows I watch?!!! 

I need to make friend's with people who have cable immediately...

So far so good. I am looking into car hire, and gym membership and booking hotels for when friends come to stay, but for the moment I am just enjoying the blue sky, the sun and the prospect of enjoying LA for the next 6 months... 

Singing and sinning

So on my last day we checked out the New York City Gay Men's Chorus as they sang in a little garden in the West Village. It was a lovely afternoon, and they guys sang some super songs. My favourite was the Sound of Music medley - mainly because I got to sing along. 

They were very good, and it was clear  that a number of the men had been in musical theatre...So far so  good....

But after a bite to eat, we decided to go to Monster. A piano bar where the chorus would be hanging out and singing. 

OMG!!! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The pianist knew everything we threw at him (also a member of the chorus) and if he didn't know it, he would look it up on the iPad. He was amazing, as was the whole experience. 

Of course in true 'me' style after a relatively sober week, I decided to drink my bodyweight in gin on the night before I was flying 6 hours to LA. As me getting up for a 7am shuttle bus became a distant memory I sang along with every show tune and pop song I possibly could - Rent and some Sondheim were the only things I really didn't know at all. 

It was marvellous. I got to sing a few solos as well, which was lots of fun. And to hear so many fab voices harmonising to some of my favourite show tunes (can you tell I had a good time?!) I was in the toilet when 'Last Night of the World' from Miss Saigon came on...I have never got out of a toilet so fast in my life!!! Definitely one of my best nights out ever - I felt I had come home!

So some other bars were touted after Monster (we had been here a good few hours by now) and I would like to tell you I did the sensible thing and went home, or at least stopped drinking...But what would be the fun in that?! We went on to another piano bar and I vaguely remember being a bit upset that he didn't know any Barry Manilow but then it all went a bit hazy...

I woke up face down fully clothed on my bed at 7.10am with a start. I had not set my alarm on my phone correctly so it hadn't gone off and I had missed my shuttle bus. I bumbled about, threw the rest of my stuff into a bag, got into a taxi and made it to my flight.

I won't dwell on what happened on the flight, but let's just say I wasted money on my seat, as I spent most of my 6 hour flight in the bathroom...URGH!!! 

Got to LA still feeling ropey and had to cancel my trip to the Hollywood Bowl as I was just too poorly.

So thanks NY! As well as one of the best nights of my life, I also had one of my top ten hangovers. It was an amazing 5 days, with an amazing host and friends and I only wish I had booked longer there as there is still so much to see and do. An excuse for a return journey methinks...

And for now I am feeling more human, so think I will make this my first official day in California...bring it on...

The Highline, Carrie and cup cakes

 So no trip to NY is complete without a look at The High Line. An old disused L train track has been converted into a park. It is absolutely lovely, with greenery, little cafes and butterflies. Trouble is when it is 80 degrees in the city, half of NY or certainly all the tourists seem to be up there!
Definitely worth a look and a wander, but start at 30th and go down. We started at 23rd, and so only got about 10 blocks of it!

 Games maker trainers get a trot out in NY

The Empire State Building from the Highline

The tracks are still visible

Carrie and cup cakes

I have always been a big fan of the show Sex and City, own all the series on DVD and enjoyed the first movie lots (although the second was a crock of shit) so I really fancied an organised tour. However looking at what places they go to, I wasn't sure it was actually worth it. I thought it might be a bit disappointing, rather like my Lord of the Rings tour was in Queenstown, NZ (I knew more than the tour guide!) 

They also no longer go to her house, which is probably the best bit. So rather than take a tour, I found myself in the West Village and thought, why not have a little pilgrimage there yourself?

So that is what I did...

So after I had been the big old ridiculous tourist I thought it made sense to go the whole hog (in every sense of the word) and get a cup cake from Magnolia Bakery just around the corner. Carrie and Miranda once ate there, and it has been uber popular ever since...Not the best cup cake I ever had, but it was fun all the same! Peanut butter and Jelly... Very American!

Ground Zero

We made the visit to Ground Zero, which was a fitting tribute to those who needlessly lost their lives in the World Trade Centre terrorist attack on 9/11. If you haven't seen it, the architect Michael Arad has created two massive cascading waterfalls in the footprints of the original towers. The names of 2983 victims of the attacks (including Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania, and an early attack in 1993) are placed around the edge of the waterfalls. 300 of these were firefighters.

One thing that had never occurred to me before was how many women would be pregnant. I saw a number of names with 'and unborn child' written after it, and I'm afraid that is what tipped me over the edge in terms of emotions.
What also surprised me was the diversity of names. The victims were from 90 different countries. 

It is a remarkable and very moving place. The designer has done an incredible job, and the landscaping with a plethora of oak trees and the 1 'survivor tree' that was pulled out from the wreckage represent hope and rebirth.  

If you visit NY I would strongly suggest a visit. It is not remotely ghoulish or macabre, but a beautiful remembrance of almost 3000 people who were killed just going about their daily life, carrying out their jobs, or in terms of the emergency  services coming to the rescue of others.

A museum is opening up there in the next couple of months and they are creating 4 new towers; one of which can be seen on the photo below (building on left).

Trotters

New York is big. London is also big. But the grid layout in NY encourages you to walk, thinking - '10 blocks isn't so far'. But when you add blocks here and there, it adds up 5 hours of walking on Wednesday and about 8 hours of walking today (on and off).

My trotters are killing me!!! And my Olympic Games Maker trainers don't know what has hit them...

Yesterday I went around 5th Avenue, Central Station and to the Rockefeller Plaza. 

Good things: a butterfly and a view of Central Park at the Top of the Rock, Giant Fraggles and Lego figures in FAO Schwarz, lunch in Bryant Park and the Apple store on a balcony in Central Station.

Not such good things: Central Station - it's nice, but St Pancras beats it hands down; the Big Piano (from the movie Big) sooooo much smaller than I thought it would be; not being able to see the Chrysler building properly from the Top of the Rock :-(

In the evening we did a night time tour of downtown, with a trip over to Brooklyn so we could get some photos of the bottom of Manhattan Island. The view was great but overall the tour was not. The guide insisted on saying 'obviously' all the time, and sharing rubbish anecdotes and was by far the worst of the Gray line tour guide we have had.

Today we were up bright and early for a downtown bus tour, then walked over Brooklyn Bridge which was being refurbished. Apparently this is Johnnie's fault as wherever he goes in the world it ends up being refurbished* note to self avoid any further sight seeing with Johnny! 

 Boat ride first across the bay for the beautiful Statue of Liberty. I have always admired this statue, mainly for how gorgeously her gown folds and genuinely looks like material when you get close. 

Then Ellis Island for an audio guided tour of the Immigration Centre. This was fascinating, and only 2% of the 12 million people who emigrated here in the late 19th, early 20th century were turned away. If only I had come over here by boat over 100 years ago, chances are I could have stayed!!!

I am starting to regret staying such a short time in this fabulous city. 5 days is not enough. I can safely say I am enjoying it 50 times more than the last time I came here after camp back in 1998. It is awesome!

I am now relaxing in the most amazing reclining settees ever with a large Gin and Tonic in my hand, which is helping the pain in my feet no end! 

Uptown Girl

Tuesday was a lovely day. I met up with the boys and we walked up past the Lincoln Centre where there was a fashion show going on. In all the excitement I forgot it was NY Fashion Week! We then went into Central Park and enjoyed some of the delights NY has to offer. The boys had hot dogs and I had a pretzel  :-)

We then went up to the Plaza hotel - made famous for me in The Way we Were as the place where Barbara Streisand said goodbye to Robert Redford. It was also the place where Carrie said goodbye to Big when he got married. It was immense!!!

The open top tourist bus was our next destination and we went uptown! Up the Upper West side of the park along the top in Harlem and then back down the Upper East Side. Got to find out lots of really interesting stuff about NY and are set to do a number of other tours over the next 48 hours. It is a great way to see the city without walking hundreds of blocks!

Evening we went to a lovely restaurant Taboon on 52nd and 10th with delish Mediterrean/North African food. Then onto Print for a rooftop cocktail. I'll let the photo do the talking on this one...

The evening's festivities were finished by a night cap in Flaming Saddles - where the barmen dance to country music on the bar in their vest tops and boots. There are no photos of this, but I am going back on Friday night ;-) 

Today is going to be a day of more sight seeing followed by an evening of more sight seeing. 

I am loving NY this time - way more than the last time I stayed here in 1998. I think having some money and staying in a fab place with good friends makes a world of difference!