I've said it before, but I'll try to keep this short. Usually it doesn't work out but what the hell…

After driving the famous old Route 66 for a little while we headed back on the interstate highways to speed things up a little. We were heading towards Los Angeles but weren't planning on spending a night there so getting there in time was pretty important to us. Usually driving into a big city is both time consuming and nerve wrecking. Since everything is bigger in the United States, including the cities, we were prepared for a virtual nightmare. In the end it wasn't so bad though, even though we were driving a small RV to the center of town. It actually worked out quite nicely.

Following I-15 we eventually turned on highway 210 towards Pasadena and followed it to its intersection with highway 134, which we took until I-5. Heading south on I-5 for just a couple of miles we took exit 141A to Los Feliz Boulevard and followed that until it sprouted out a road towards Griffith Observatory. Located in Griffith Park, supposedly the biggest city park in the United States, the observatory is known for the best views to Los Angeles' only recognizable land mark, the Hollywood sign. We had read that there are abundant parking facilities in central LA, for a fee of course, but we weren't sure if those could accommodate Harvey, our twelve feet tall RV. The observatory had a parking place of its own and it was free of charge, so we wanted to go check it out.

We didn't get within two miles of the place before seeing the first "Observatory parking full"-sign, but we kept on climbing the hill anyway. The road was pretty steep and winding and even had a short tunnel at one point, but Harvey could fit through just nicely, being only 19 feet long. How the two bigger RV's that we saw going the other way had managed it I can only guess at. Anyway, we passed two more flashing signs telling us that the parking lot was full so we ended up doing what everyone else seemed to be doing and parked on the side of the road. We were there at about midday on a Tuesday, but still the place was packed and we didn't find a spot until very far away but we have two pairs of perfectly good legs so we made it back up easily enough. We walked all the way back to the observatory without realizing that the famed Hollywood sign was actually visible for most of the way right behind us. Then again it really was best viewed from the top where we could see it without anything getting in the way. The letters in the sign are big and visible from far away and a good thing too since they are placed a very long way away from everything. It was still pretty cool to see the sign and to take some very touristy pictures with it. A word of advice from a completely rookie photographer: it's worthwhile to stand a good distance away from the person you are photographing and to use zoom since this increases the size of the Hollywood sign in the background. I don't even know why that is but the effect is pretty clear.

We went inside the observatory for just a short while and saw a few gizmos they have there. My personal favorite was the device that allowed you to look straight into the sun even though your mother always told you not to. After that we were pretty much done with the hilltop and started wondering what we should do next. We had found an OK spot to park at on the side of the road (even though our car was tipped in a way that made the fresh water tank flow over) and weren't willing to let it go. We asked the information desk at the observatory how long it would take to walk down to the city and were told that it might take as long as two hours. Looking at a map this didn't seem likely so we decided to give it a go anyway. In the end it took probably about half an hour to walk down to Los Feliz Blvd, from where it was still a bit of a walk to downtown Hollywood, but not too bad. To anyone planning on doing this I would suggest driving down the road that descends westwards from the observatory and parking lower on the side of the road or in a designated parking lot. There's plenty of parking places there with a lot shorter walk than what we ended up doing.

We made it down eventually and followed a map we got from the observatory to Hollywood Boulevard, which at first glance was a bit of a disappointment. It was not quite a slum, but not far from it. There was a gravel parking lot and a Salvation Army center in addition to a few boarded up businesses. So much for the glamour of Hollywood… We followed the boulevard towards where we knew we could see some stars, because that's why you go to Hollywood, right? We had no illusions of running into Harrison Ford, however, we were heading towards the star signs on the sidewalks of Hollywood Blvd between Gower Street and La Brea Avenue. As soon as we reached this "Walk of Fame" we started seeing other tourists and a clear change in atmosphere as well. Things got a lot more upscale but not quite glamorous, although I can't be too sure since I was looking down towards my feet for about 97% of the time. For a long while I could place just about as many names of the stars on the ground as I could of the ones up in the night sky, which isn't very many. Truth be told it was pretty frustrating, I had no idea who these people were and what they had done to have their name written on the famous sidewalk. I've watched my fair share of movies, but not too many old ones, which I'm guessing is the biggest problem here. The names seemed old and many of the signs telling which media the famed ones had represented seemed to depict an old time broadcasting microphone so I'm guessing some of these people might actually have been on radio. That would explain why I hadn't heard of them…

Moving on we started seeing names we knew, first musical types like Jimi Hendrix and the Village People, then older famous movie people like Walt Disney, Doris Day and even Ingrid Bergman. Little by little we seemed to be approaching today's most celebrated movie stars like Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves and Antonio Banderas, in addition to musical talents like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. It was also getting progressively harder to see whose name was written where and taking pictures of specific stars was sometimes hard work. Someone was standing on Anthony Hopkins and someone else shadowing Peter Jackson in a very irritating manner. No-one seemed to pay any attention to Jack Nicholson which I found kind of rude.

Truth be told it felt a little strange to get excited about some names written on a sidewalk. They are just names after all and while the person so honored has probably visited the place they haven't really left anything of their own there. This issue is rectified at the Chinese Theatre where famous people get down and dirty to press their hands and feet into wet concrete to leave a personal mark. I found that I have larger hands than Tom Hanks and bigger feet than Darth Vader, but not as big as Donald Duck. I also liked how the three stars of the Harry Potter films had left imprints of their magic wands in the concrete.

We didn't feel like walking all the way to La Brea Ave so eventually we turned and walked back on the other side of the street where there were more stars on the sidewalk. Johnny Depp was accompanied by celebrities like Tinkerbell and Winnie the Pooh, in addition to another Walt Disney. His name was among those that were put there twice, I don't really know what that was about. We saw Shakira, Johnny Cash and Marilyn Monroe. We saw some more and didn't bother to stop for pictures anymore. Hollywood was quickly wearing us out so we returned to the car in order to make it out of the city when it was still light outside. We were happy that we stopped to see all of which we had seen, but didn't feel like wandering for longer. Big cities aren't our thing really so we try not to trouble ourselves with them too much. It was trouble enough to get out of town, almost as much as it had been getting in. Starting from the hill we followed the road down and started making our way towards highway 101. It was slow going in the afternoon traffic but we made it through eventually and got on the highway where things got a little easier.

Trying to keep this short is pretty much a lost cause by now so I'll "quickly" go over our next adventure: sleeping at a Walmart's parking lot. We've done it a few times before without any problems and liked it because it's easy and free. We have a list of Walmarts that don't allow overnight parking and we've stayed away from those before, but here we decided to go and ask one of them if they were OK with overnight parking anyway. We hadn't made any reservations and the roadside motels near Los Angeles seemed pretty expensive, so we pulled over at Walmart Supercenter in Oxnard and went to ask at the customer service. It seems that they are generally OK with people spending the night there but the problem is that the parking lot is shared with many other businesses. Also the Walmart isn't open 24/7 like most Supercenters are, but closes at 11 p.m.. We shopped a little and then had dinner at the parking lot going over our options, unable to make up our minds of whether we were to stay or continue on to an unsure future. Eventually we felt like going back to the store to buy some ice-cream and when we got out we saw that there was a pink sheet of paper under our windshield wiper.

At first I thought that this must be an advertisement of some sorts but when I checked it it looked more like a ticket. But not quite. It was in fact a "parking citation violation notice" where someone had ticked the box "no overnight parking" at 9.42 p.m.. We immediately went to look for the person who had signed the paper to explain that we weren't actually parking for the night and were just eating before continuing further. The store was still open after all, so there was no way we were going to accept getting a ticket for parking there. However, after we found the lady who had put the paper under our windshield wiper she explained that it was actually our overnight pass and not a threat of an upcoming fine. She assured us that overnight parking was OK when the slip of paper was where she'd left it, so we decided to stay and spend the night. Come morning the slip was still there and we hadn't gotten a ticket. I guess it must have been some liability thing, they allow overnight parking but aren't responsible for the consequences in any way. This is apparently their way of keeping their hands clean.

And that was LA for us. I said I'd try to keep it short and I did, but didn't succeed. Oh well, maybe next time (not likely)…