We are making our way up the California coast! We stayed in Long Beach, which is about 20 miles from downtown LA. 20 miles doesn’t seem like far until you take Los Angeles traffic into account! Yes, it really is as bad as they say it is!

We were only there for four days and we packed every day with as many sights as we could. First we went to ride Angels Flight. We are huge fans of the tv show “Bosch” and the books that it is based on. If you read or watch, you know that one of the seasons/books was based on a fictional murder on Angels Flight. The ride was short but a lot of fun. We managed to ride with a great group of people. For some reason the doors wouldn’t open so we couldn’t get on, then the first person in the group (not us!) got stuck on the other side of the door and it locked again! Then we finally all got on it and it didn’t move! For a really long time! Fortunately, we were all joking and laughing it up. But we eventually were able to make it to the top and back down again all 315 feet of it :-).

Right across the street is a neat food mall called the Grand Central Market where we got beers and a decent pizza for dinner.

The next day we were up and drove to LA again! This time we took a Big Bus Tour from Hollywood Boulevard. The Big Bus was a pretty expensive way to get around for the day (even with the Groupon discount), but their hop on/hop off tour allowed us to get around the city easily and get off when we wanted to do a little walking. The first stop we got off at was Beverly Hills Garden which is close to Rodeo Drive. We really weren’t interested in shopping, but felt it was something we needed to see! And who says you can’t get a good deal on Rodeo Drive, for only $2980 (marked down from $3980) – you too can own an original Salvador Dali painting!

After walking around there for a little while (and getting lunch) we got back on the bus and headed to The Original Farmers Market. We always love food related markets! This isn’t what we’d really call a ‘farmers’ market, since it was mostly prepared food, but they did have a nice gourmet market, plenty of eateries, and a few butchers. We decided to come back here for dinner another day and took the bus to its last stop at the beginning of The Walk of Fame. It was fun to see the stars in real life, and The Kinks were right, there are a lot we’ve hardly even heard of!

A short walk down Hollywood Blvd. from there is the TLC Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the historically iconic theater famous for holding Hollywood’s most famous movie openings. There are footprints and handprints in the cement sidewalk from the early days of Hollywood all the way up to today’s modern stars. BTW, yes – Mike does have big feet, especially compared to Mary Pickford’s!