Los Angeles

Our next stop was Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was enormous, and getting anywhere without a car was nearly impossible. Los Angeles traffic was another matter entirely, however, and none of us wanted to drive. In the end, we booked a three-day tour that included transportation. It was quite convenient. The city sprawls in every direction, and the distances between attractions can be absurd. For people who wanted to roam all over the place without personally doing battle with Los Angeles traffic, the tour solved the most difficult part of the trip.

On the first day, we began on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There was no shortage of famous names. Looking down as we walked, we passed actors, singers, and directors we had previously known only from television and film, now embedded in the sidewalk beneath our feet.

Next came Madame Tussauds Hollywood. At that point, I had not yet visited Madame Tussauds in London. It was one of those famous places I had known from textbooks long before I ever saw one in person.

We secured several photographs with celebrities.

We then went to Universal Studios Hollywood. Beyond the rides, visitors could tour parts of Universal’s film and television production areas. To me at the time, it felt a little like suddenly stepping behind the scenes of a movie: sets, streets, and production facilities that I had previously seen only on a screen were now directly in front of me.

That brought the day to an end. It had been remarkably full.

Early the next morning, a bus took us straight to San Diego. It was essentially the San Diego expansion pack for our Los Angeles tour. That story belongs in the San Diego entry.

Our third day was devoted to a tour of Los Angeles itself. We began in Beverly Hills.

We toured the outskirts of Beverly Hills. At our level of celebrity, the outskirts were probably about as far as we were getting. We were told that many extremely wealthy people and celebrities lived there. Beverly Hills is one of the Los Angeles area’s best-known luxury residential districts, so our principal activity as tourists was to sit in the vehicle, look at the streets, mansions, and landscaping from outside, and imagine how the wealthy lived.

We then went to the Getty Center. After two days of classic Los Angeles entertainment, the tone of the trip suddenly became much quieter. In addition to its architecture and hilltop views, the Getty Center holds an extensive collection of European paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. We saw several works by the Impressionist master Claude Monet.

Afterward, we walked through the Getty Center’s Central Garden. The garden is one of the center’s signature landscapes, with water flowing down toward a central pool and a large maze of clipped azaleas at its heart.

The azalea maze could probably trap a small squirrel.

And with that, our final day in Los Angeles came to an end.