Some Thursday some time ago...

The days are flying by and everything is all turning into one incoherent mush. Before that happens totally, I'll update stuff.

Thursday was the downtown LA and Hollywood day. It was a real pity that clouds had rolled in off the ocean so there was this layer of grey hovering just above everything - so much so, that when I was in Hollywood I couldn't see the famous sign. We started the day in Orange and drove up the I-5 into town. Along the way there was this old tire factory that's been converted into a shopping centre ('cos that's what you do here), but they've kept the rather unusual decor from when it was built: Babylonian friezes. Quite odd.

We came in from the eastern side of town after negotiating the big maze where four or five freeways all come together, and drove around the northern end of town, which is predominantly given over to their civic and cultural buildings. I thought our city hall was fairly grandiose until I saw LA's - its tower is still one of the tallest buildings in downtown, and the entire building is very imposing. We also went past the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which reminds me of stacks of papers being blown about by the wind; pictures are in the Flickr stream. LA's downtown doesn't have as high a concentration of skyscrapers as Brisbane does, and I found that to be quite odd as I would have expected that sort of thing for a city of LA's size, but then I remembered that there's all of these other centres scattered across the landscape; sometimes there's multi-storey buildings where there seems to be nothing else around them, particularly in Newport Beach and Irvine.

After doing a circuit of Union Station, we managed to score free parking at a place called Philippe's, a sandwich bar that's been operating for over 100 years. We went in there at first, saw the size of the lines, and decided to come back later (it was lunchtime, after all). Firstly, we walked through El Pueblo, which is the historical core of Los Angeles. They've set it up these days as a sort of tourist trap, especially as you have to walk practically single-file between the trinket stalls, but you come out the top at a park which seemed to be gearing up towards the Blessing of the Animals soon ("Bring Your Pets!" said a banner). There's also a bandstand where usually there's some sort of band playing, but there wasn't while we were there.

Next, we walked through Union Station. Rob calls it an Art Deco "temple to the train", and I have to agree with him. I'll be taking more photos of it when I leave LA in a few weeks, but it's got wonderful architecture and furnishings that make me drool - I love my Art Deco. We walked the entire length of the place and came out the back in the bus plaza, which is definitely more modern but has been done sensitively with the rest of Union Station in mind. Looming above the bus plaza is the LA transportation authority; an incredibly appropriate place to put it. It's a pity that the Metropolitan Water Board, when their building was built a few decades ago right next to the older part of the station, decided to just go with a typical modernist approach and it looks entirely out of place.

Then, we braved the LA Metro. It's a fairly recent innovation in LA and as such, is not as extensive nor as comprehensive as the London Underground, but it seems to do its job valiantly. We made our way down past the closed ticket booths to a vending machine - $5 for a day pass. Apparently, as I read on the screens while we waited for the train, unless you have a day pass or some other sort of ticket it's one ticket, one line; most odd. A train pulled up at the platform and we hopped on, only to be told a moment later by someone that the train had terminated and everyone needed to hop back off for a minute, and then we could get back on. I found out on our return to Union Station from the onboard PA system that the trains get a security check when they terminate. Foibles overcome, we caught the train two stops to Pershing Square, the heart of the downtown district.

We emerged from the station and I totally lost my sense of direction. My internal compass relies on shadows, and the problem with the northern hemisphere is that the sun goes around to the south in the middle of the day. Added to that was the fact that the buildings were obscuring the sun. I had no idea where I was - this is why I'm thankful for a local. We headed up towards Bunker Hill and the skyscrapers up there, notably the US Bank Tower (formerly the Central Library Tower), which is the tall sort of star-shaped/circular building you usually see in skyline shots of Los Angeles. I was very surprised to find this reasonably steep hill in the downtown, complete with alpine cablecar (not running due to refurbishment); I was under the impression that the whole area was all flat, but I suppose that's what helps those skyscrapers to stand out. Inside the building they had a sort of frieze which gave the full name of Los Angeles; unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to record it, but it goes on and on and on and on in typical Spanish style. We did a loop around back to Pershing Square after climbing the Bunker Hill Steps next door to the US Bank Building - surprisingly steep for a short set of stairs - and going past the Biltmore Hotel. I found Pershing Square to be quite odd; I suppose it's sort of like Anzac Square back home in that it has various statues and the like, but there's all of these benches everywhere with umbrellas for people to sit down and eat under, but nowhere selling food that I could see.

We then ducked back down into the subway after I finally realised that the entrance of the station pointed south, and caught a Red Line train to Hollywood/Highland. They name a lot of their stations here after the intersections they're on, so it's actually the station on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue - in other words, central Hollywood. Fortunately, I remember reading about Hollywood in my Lonely Planet and I knew that Hollywood Boulevard goes east-west, so my compass was fine. The Metro station is part of a shopping centre that's absorbed some of the big name attractions, most notably the Chinese Theatre. This is where the movie stars go to have their footprints and handprints cast in cement for all time...er, well, at least the past 75 years as I did see Shirley Temple and the Marx Brothers. My shoes are bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger's loafers, and I did note Rex Harrison's green cement block. On top of this, there is the Walk of Fame, the pink stars on the Boulevard. We walked up to one end, crossed, went back down but only to about the halfway point, and then back up the other side to the Metro station - it must go on for two miles or so. Lots of famous names there, and the bigger, more famous (at least recently) people seem to congregate outside the theatres. Unfortunately, they didn't have my mother's hero, Nigel Bruce, but they did have Basil Rathbone. I didn't take any pictures in Hollywood, though if there were no clouds and I could have seen the sign I probably would have, but I figure these people have had enough photography in their lives. Also, across the road from the Chinese Theatre at the El Capitan, they were setting up for a movie premiere that night - real pity it was the Hannah Montana movie, so therefore Di$ney rubbish, but they had one half of the road closed and the rolls of red carpet were being set up, and people were already lining up mid-afternoon just to catch a glimpse of the cavalcade that evening. It's hard not to get caught up in the starglow there - we passed one man who goes around on crutches knelt down and cleaning the pink star of his favourite celebrity.

We returned to downtown via Metro and finally went into Philippe's for a late lunch: I had a french-dipped lamb sandwich and a lemonade. It was juicy and really satisfying; so much so that I don't think I had dinner that night.

And then we braved the traffic. Instead of going home via Orange County and the 91 Freeway through the bottleneck at Gypsum Canyon, we took a slightly longer route and took the I-10 east out of town, and then cannonballed down the Chino Hills on the 71. It took us about an hour and a half to go around 50 miles.

There's Thursday for you, after nearly a week. Let's see how long it takes to do the next couple of days...