Mom and I were both wide awake at 5:30 AM. Besides the fact that I never sleep well the first night in a motel, my body is also still on Georgia time. And in Georgia, it was 8:30. So it was time to get up! LOL So there were no worries about getting a late start. After grabbing breakfast at the McDonald's next to the motel, we headed toward Hollywood.
I set Samantha on "Shorter Distance" so she would avoid the freeways, and the drive was fine. No big traffic pileups - there may be a lot of cars, but they keep moving. Cell phone use is illegal while driving, and I can see that makes a BIG difference. We found the parking garage at Hollywood and Highland and other than a van trying to run over me (Mom thinks they filmed "Speed" in that parking garage!), we had no problems. We found our way outside onto Hollywood Blvd and found stars on the Walk of Fame immediately. They are up and down both sides of Hollywood Blvd. I took pictures of so many such as: Bill Cosby, Jamie Lee Curtis, Vivien Leigh, Tony Curtis (with a candle and wreath in remembrance), Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Mickey Mouse, Shrek, Sandra Bullock, and many, many more. I still did not make it to Humphrey Bogart's, and I swear with my hand up to God that I will not leave this town until I get a picture of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bogie's house is in a restricted area, his gravesite is under lock and key... I deserve to at least see his star!!
We walked down to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to check in for our first tour of the day - homes of the stars! In front of the theatre is where stars who have had a movie premiere there AND are invited by the Chinese Theatre put their hands and feet and other parts of their body or mementos associated with them in concrete. For example, Roy Rogers and Trigger's has his horse shoes and Roy's gun imprinted in the concrete; John Wayne imprinted his fist; the stars of the Harry Potter series left imprints of their magic wands, etc. It's VERY cool. The stars also signed in the concrete and some wrote funny sayings, i.e., Arnold wrote "I'll be back." After taking tons of pictures of these, we boarded our open van for the tour. It was a small tour - there was only about 10 or 11 of us, and the tour guide was great. We saw so many stars' homes and I have spent the last few hours trying to remember which one is who's! Some that we saw: Orlando Bloom (and that might have been him standing in the garage with his back to the road!!! The hair color and build were about right.), Robert Pattinson, Lucille Ball, Sylvester Stallone, Peter Falk, David & Victoria Beckham, Mark Wahlburg, George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Dr. Phil, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dog, Wolfgang Puck, Mariah Carey, and Tom Selleck. Some that we only saw the gate include: Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Madonna. Former homes of the stars we saw: the Osbournes, James Dean, Roseanne & Tom Arnold. Then there are several that Mom and I can't remember whose house they were! I'll keep working on that. I'll also try to post pictures of some of these another night.
We also saw the houses where scenes from "Halloween" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" were filmed; the Beverly Whilshire Hotel (where scenes from Pretty Woman was filmed); the Beverly Hills Police station looking pretty much like it did in "Beverly Hills Cop;" Chateau Marmont where John Belushi died; the Viper Room where River Phoenix died; the Whiskey a Go Go; Capitol records (that round building), the house from "The Beverly Hillbillies;" the Hollywood sign; and Rodeo Drive. There was a lot packed into this tour!
After we finished this tour, we walked up Hollywood Blvd, looking at more stars, to the Egyptian Theatre to sign up for our next tour. It's a 75 minute walking tour of the area. We had a couple of hours before that tour started so we walked back down and had lunch at Hard Rock. Our server was from Kentucky and was so sweet. We tried a nonalcoholic drink: Mango with Orange juice and Red Bull. It was good. And I definitely felt that energy boost immediately! We each picked out a Hard Luck pin (mine being just the basic Hard Rock guitar with 'Hollywood' on it and Mom's being the pink guitar with the breast cancer awareness ribbon) and the total came to $26!!!! Things are definitely more expensive in Hollywood!
After lunch, we walked and took more pictures of stars on the sidewalk and made our way back to the Egyptian Theatre for our tour. Again, it was a great tour. This one is a walking tour, but they gave us headphones to wear so we could hear everything the tour guide said, whether she was ahead of us, had her back turned, or whatever. It was great. Probably one of the few tours I've ever taken where I didn't miss a thing. We toured the Egyptian Theatre (also built by Sid Grauman and is older than his Chinese Theatre), and it is beautiful... reminded me our our Fox - which I told our tour guide about. We saw stars on the sidewalk again, and she pointed out places where movie scenes had been shot (including from "The Italian Job" where the Mini Coopers drive down into the Metro station!). She took us back to the Chinese Theatre and gave us more stories about the concrete impressions there, plus pointed out some Mom and I had missed that morning. It was a really good tour... and hopefully our tour guide will make it to the Academy Awards one day. :)
We got to see them setting up for the premiere of "Secretariat" tonight at the El Capitan (Disney's) Theatre, complete with red carpet. That was pretty neat to see how they set it up cause it looks so different on TV.
It had gotten rather warm by the afternoon, and Mom and I were dropping fast. But we wanted to squeeze in one more thing from our City Pass for the day so we walked just a couple of blocks to the Hollywood Museum. It is located in the old Max Factor building (Did you know that it was Max Factor that turned Lucile Ball into a redhead? She was just another blonde in Hollywood and wasn't getting discovered until he made her a redhead. She never looked back.), and there were several rooms on display of his makeup and work with the stars. The museum had a lot of gowns and outfits worn by the stars at award shows or in the movies. They had Elvis's favorite bathrobe; nude pictures of Marilyn Monroe; and the bottle from "I Dream of Jeannie." They also had Hannibal Lector's jail cell down in the basement, but Mom and I were too tired to go down the stairs and back up! LOL So we cut the visit to the museum kind of short. Mom was so tired, she didn't even want to shop for souvenirs. We picked up one item for a friend of mine and headed back to the car. I would have killed someone for a glass of COLD water, so I swung into a McDonald's... I had water in one cup holder, and a Coke in my hand! Again, the traffic wasn't bad back to our motel.
(Oh and I have yet to see a Chick-fil-A... godforsaken place!)
We ordered in from a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner, and it was pretty good. We are both so sore, we can hardly move and very, very tired.
Another big day tomorrow: finish Hollywood (got to see Bogie's star and our last City Pass ticket is for the wax museum), hopefully visit the scrapbook store, the house where my mom's family lived when she was born, and drive to San Bernardino where we will visit my great-grandparents' graves, the college Mom attended, and the original McDonald's. Then it's on to Redlands for the first event of Reunion weekend. Darn, I'm tired just typing all that!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment