Saturday 4th March – Los Angeles by RV

Maybe I was worried about the plan for the weeks ahead?  And sorting the wheel out?  Actually, I thought about both of those things last night when I should’ve been sleeping.  I gave up trying to get back to sleep when I heard Becky was up.  It was only 710am so after a morning brew Becky and I went for a swim and jacuzzi before testing the shower facilities.  It was a pleasant start to the day.  They had warned that the temperatures were due to plummet but we didn't notice much difference. 

Back at the RV, Simon had roped in some helpful neighbours and they sorted the wheel out by prising off the wheel trim and removing the part that was causing the grinding noise.  The wheel may not look quite as pretty but it sounds a whole lot better! Problem solved.

We were on the road at 1020am, early for us, which was lucky as the drive to Griffith park, which should have taken an hour, took one and a half.   

Our first glimpse of the Hollywood sign

My overnight research had given us a tip of where to find parking for a walk we wanted to do.  A trail of 7.5 miles there and back, via the ‘Bat cave’ used not only in Batman but numerous other television shows and films, and on to the Hollywood sign.  But the review that I had read online was by a guy who probably had a normal sized car, not a 30-foot camper!  It was a nightmare!  The roads were hilly and winding and, being a Saturday, there were numerous other people who had the same idea.  Simon was driving and had to perform several multi-point turns as we tried different routes, but in the end we couldn’t reach the base of the trail.  Having taken out several tree branches and grated the metal bar underneath our body work onto some tarmac we headed to the main entrance of the Griffith observatory instead.  Again it was busy, but we were lucky to find parking on steep hill.  It was so steep that any attempts to place lunch items on the table resulted in them inevitably sliding off! Instead, we used one of the picnic benches provided.  From this prime location, looking back at the RV, Becky and I could clearly see that we had been driving around all morning, through low tunnels, trees and all, with the television aerial up.  AGAIN!  We had become cocky, thinking we didn’t need our preparation list, we had been showing off to our new passenger and dropped the ball.  Disappointing.  But somehow we had got away with it and the aerial had not been ripped off.  Somehow.

This lizard joined us for lunch

We had a nice lunchtime picnic and discussed how the morning had been a prime example of how difficult life can be driving a 30 foot motorhome around narrow city streets where finding parking is your enemy! 

The view of the city as we climbed the hill to the Observatory

Energised from lunch, and relaxed from earlier driving stresses, we strode up the hill to the observatory.   

Griffith Observatory

Bust of James Dean outside the observatory

View of LA on the left with Malibu to the right

 

There was a lot to see in the Observatory, a space and science museum, and they fired up this tesla coil for the crowds:

I asked at the information desk about getting to the bat cave and nearer to the Hollywood sign.  The guy started to give me directions to the locations we had nearly reached earlier in the RV! It transpires that was the only way to walk up to behind the sign, so we couldn’t get any nearer.  We were happy looking around the observatory, but the funniest part of the day was hearing an irate employee getting frustrated when telling people that, due to low cloud, they would not be able to see anything through the telescope they had just queued up for ages to look through.  I’m not sure if she didn’t realise that all the other people in the museum could hear her, but it was hilarious hearing her getting increasingly high-pitched whilst explaining that they would just see white/grey mist, nothing more!  It was especially funny for us as we had taken one look at the long queue and realised what a waste of our time it would have been!

By 5pm it was back to the RV for coffee and an outfit change to hit the town.  I thought someone was walking their dog past us, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a coyote (right)!

We drove onto Sunset Boulevard and found some easy parking, well, a place we could buy two bays for the evening – success!  All the famous bars and clubs we wanted to see were in walking distance to each other so we strolled up Sunset strip, checking out what each place had on offer tonight. The Viper room was welcoming a Black Sabbath tribute band, Black Sabbitch, Whisky-a-go-go had a queue outside already for some live bands, the Roxy had a band on, but was sold out.   

We decided to head to the Rainbow Room Bar and Grill for dinner first.  It was amazing inside. Famous for being a favourite haunt of Lemmy from Motorhead, the walls were chock-full of rock memorabilia, mostly hair metal bands from the 80s – Motley crue, Guns’n’Roses, Alice Cooper.  We were all buzzing for a good night out, so we discussed the option of just crashing in the RV in the car park overnight so we could all have a drink.  Okay, so we’d already paid $60 for our campsite for the night, but it was over an hour’s drive away so we would actually save some money by staying put.  It was worth considering. 

 Si and I ordered pizzas and coops ordered a Philly cheese sandwich on our recommendation.  The food took a while to come… and they’d got the order wrong!  Becky got a chicken sandwich with a salad!  We returned the offending sandwich and shared the pizzas between us as they were plenty big enough for three!  Having devoured most of the pizzas, the waitress came back and told us that Becky’s Philly sandwich was nearly ready.  Erm, about 30 minutes too late!  We politely said we wouldn’t be needing any more food and had it taken off the bill.  The service up to now has been excellent so it was a shame that Becky’s first order went wrong – but the pizza was good!  Service got even slower, so by time we left we’d all become over-full and tired. We wandered back to Whisky-a-go-go… it was $30 each for some heavy sounding metal bands which we decided was a little too much in more ways than one!  The Viper room was $15 for the Sabbath tribute which seemed reasonable, but we’d failed to warn Coops how fussy they are here with ID so we were turned away at the door.  Back to the RV to get some ID and our enthusiasm for the night was totally drained when we read the small print on the sign for the car park, stating that it shuts at 230am so there would be the chance of being fined or towed if we stayed. I had been my usual sensible self and only had the one drink, so we decided to go for one more over the road (coke for me) before starting the journey back to South LA.

The traffic was even horrendous here at 1030 at night!  It did take over an hour to head back to our site, which was really in the wrong direction for our future travel plans!   Also, as we’d been driving around all day we nearly ran out of gas so I had to do an emergency top-up, paying over $3 per gallon for first time!  Yikes, California, what are you doing to us?!  We made it back to the site about 1130pm, all exhausted! We had planned to be extra quiet whilst manoeuvring into position on our plot but some neighbours were still up drinking outside when we got back so we needn’t have worried.  Not such a crazy night out for us after all then!