A very brief summary of a crazy day.... Arrived in Los Angeles at 5am. We had plans to land at LA airport and research our day's touring using the airport wifi and/or a guidebook from an airport bookshop over breakfast. We landed at terminal 7. No wifi, no shops, no coffee shops or restaurants. And two people at the information desk who could barely remember their own names! We decide to abandon all that and instead made our way to EZ rentals to pick up our hire care - a Mustang - 'or similar'. We all kept our fingers crossed for a Mustang and sure enough, from round the corner appeared a bright yellow convertible Mustang, with its unmistakable throaty roar. We set off with Mike at the wheel and toured LA! Saw Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier and then roared out of town along Pacific Ocean Highway, roof down, unable to stop grinning, to Malibu beach and then up in to the Santa Monica mountains. Bill drove part of the spectacular Mulholland Drive with the roof down and the engine roaring. The boys whooped like kids, driving through a road tunnel. We changed places from time to time and for some of the time I was in the back seat, hair flying! I wrapped my scarf around my head and, with my sunglasses on and arms stretched out along the back seat, briefly felt like a movie star, although a glance in the mirror soon shattered this illusion!!!
We drove past and then stopped at the Santa Monica Mountains Visitor centre and met Tori, who knew everything that we needed to know!!! Then suddenly we had a plan!! With Mike back at the wheel we drove back along Mulholland Drive, the car performing brilliantly, then we drove on to and visited the Paramount film set, up in the mountains, a pretend cowboy town where numerous westerns have been filmed. It was quite eerie to wander the town with its realistic looking frontages and false backs. Very convincing - until you saw a plastic chair or a few mineral water bottles tucked behind the saloon door! From there we zoomed our way down the freeway to the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood. This was an unexpected 'must do' visit that demonstrated all those little astronomical nuggets of information that we all sort of know but don't quite understand - absolutely brilliant and a beautiful place with spectacular views all around too. (Note to self, next time in LA allow time to come again and visit the planetarium as well!) After a decent salad lunch and some photos in front of the 'Hollywood' sign we set off back to LA, hopefully with enough time for a trip to the beach - Manhattan, about 15 minutes south of the airport - prior to Mike's flight check in at 5pm. Hmmm... We hadn't bargained on the LA traffic being quite so bad and even the Mustang couldn't do anything about getting us there more quickly. In the event we did make it to the beach, but only for just long enough to peep over the wall at the sea and sand, before Bill took over the wheel for the last few miles to Terminal B. We dropped Mike at the airport for his flight home....more sad farewells at the end of a wonderful holiday and an awesome day in our Mustang!
We drove back to Manhattan Beach feeling somewhat emotional and rather frazzled, but were resuscitated by good coffee and kind service at Sloopy's. We then walked along the promenade overlooking the sea at Manhattan Beach before having dinner at The Strand House overlooking the pier. (Swanky place with good views and decent salads but no internet, which is what we really wanted in order to plan our next step. Moving on with our next adventure, and based on Tori's advice we then started our next road trip in the Mustang and drove out of town, east and up into the desert to stay in a crazy little motel in Joshua Tree National park overnight. It was a long drive made tricky by a lack of Internet, no map and only a few rather sketchy details, but we made it and were treated to wonderful display of the night sky as we left civilisation behind us.