Hollyweird

Greetings from the Hollywood Hills Hotel! This hotel is the BOMB! It’s super-unique and rather posh inside despite the rugged looking exterior. These are converted apartments, so they’ve got a full kitchen, huge balcony with the giant bed looking right out into the trees, beautiful furniture and a kick-ass bathroom with some sweet citrusy smelling toiletries. It was quite the interesting drive up here, and you who’ve been reading for any length on this blog know my loathing for driving/riding up steep hills. This one wasn’t actually too bad, but since we rented a Prius, it just feels weird because when you idle the engine, the Prius actually shuts off which is a bit of an adjustment. It’s also part of this whole elite crowd with the adjacent Magic Castle Club, and the folks that still own some of these apartments don’t like the idea of hotel guests. Either way, it freakin’ rocks and we’re glad we booked this instead of a Comfort Inn. Just a little more memorable ;) YAY!

Well, we decided against the Aquarium of the Pacific. Sounds crazy, I know, but man, it’s like $21 per person, there were throngs of people, mostly kids, already lined up waiting to get in, and we just didn’t feel like 2 hours was enough to do the tour justice and also not really a good value for $42. We opted, instead, for a leisurely walk around the pier and lighthouse to take some close-up photos of all the birds and flowers. It was quiet at that hour, and we got TONS of photos, as you will see. I took loads of pics of that cat colony, sweet babies; there were lovely flowers everywhere that we don’t see growing in Minneapolis; birds galore and even that seal was perched up taking a rest, so I went a little apeshit with the digital!

The walk was more our bag, and totally relaxed us for our long journey back to LAX to fetch our Prius. The Super Shuttle was awesome, and there were some folks from the conference that John attended that were heading home, including one guy that had some cool tips for us about San Diego, if we decide to head down for a daytrip to the zoo. The Prius is so AWESOME!!! It’s weird, though, and you’d think being an electric car they would perhaps include the manual in the glovebox in case you run into problems or questions, but no, there’s only your guess and that’s not much of a comfort. We then made our way along Sunset Boulevard, which is a lot like Lake Street, to our current locale where I took a nap and John went out to explore this odd property before we packed up and left for the game.

$2 per ticket, $15 for parking, and $30 for food. That just aint right. But, Dodgers Stadium is pretty cool. It reminded me of a mix between Jacob’s Field and Royals Stadium, but with mountains and palms as your only view, stretching out as far as the smog will let you see. We photographed an amazing sunset from way up in the tippy-top seats, and the stadium photographer even took a photo of us that can be found on the web, apparently. It was cool to see Manny Ramirez play, he was just traded to the Dodgers, and what an amazing welcome for him! People go CRAZY when he comes up. We also saw Kenny Laundreaux and Fernando Valenzuela as part of some ceremony they were having! Laundreaux was a Twin for a long time and as John says, “We traded him to the Dodgers so they could go win the World Series”, and Fernando is the guy that Susan Sarandon says, “breathes through his eyelids” in Bull Durham. Just a little useless trivia for ya.

Our journey back from the game was quite the adventure. We got totally lost leaving the stadium since they were shuffling all the traffic out to the freeway, but we didn’t want the freeway so we were on the wrong side of everything. We saw a seriously nasty car crash, too, so that was icky. Once we finally got to where we needed to be, we set out looking for the In N’ Out Burger we’d seen on the way to the game so we could grab some burgers. Saturday night on Sunset is quite the experience, and it took us forever to get to Sunset & La Brea where there was a mob of people you’d never believe…that’s right, waiting for fast food. The drive-thru line was so long they had a lady out there taking people’s orders, and inside was like feeding time at a zoo for humans. A Saturday night, people all dressed in spike heels and LOW cut shirts, to get some In N’ Out…burgers, that is. It’s a popular place, and ded good, though I’m not sure it’s worth all that hassle.

We’ve no internet access up here, so we’ll be posting this when we head down to main lobby for breakfast. We also plan on doing a podcast later tonight, if you’re so inclined to listen to more blathering. Ok, our peeps, hope you’re having a good weekend in the Minne, and we’ll report more later ;)~~
Love and hugs to all!
R&J

PS: I miss our babies. Meow Meow.