Los Angeles  House of Lange Trip Report - Day 3

Saturday, October 24th 2008

Saturday morning came and we woke to another beautiful Los Angeles sunrise:

I brought Karen on this trip to LA with me as part of her birthday present this year, so I thought it would be nice if I rented a convertible for us to tool around LA in during our sight seeing.  Wouldn't you know it...there was a bit of a mix up with the company that the hotel uses for cars.  Nothing major, but the company decided to give me a nice upgrade in the car we had for the rest of the weekend.  This is what showed up when we walked out of the hotel Saturday morning:

I am of course more a BMW guy, but this Mercedes CLK 550 Convertible (5.5 liters V8 382 HP) was fun for the weekend.

 

We set off on our tour of Hollywood:

Just a few blocks from the hotel is the National Lampoon world headquarters! 

Not far from there on Sunset is the Directors Guild of America: 

We passed the famous Hollywood Bowl: 

The first item on the agenda was to get a good view and some photos of the famous Hollywood Sign.  We inquired with the front desk of the hotel where we might go to get a nice view of the sign.  We were advised by them to go to Runyon Canyon Park.:

This as it turns out was a monumentally bad idea, for two reasons.  Firstly, as it turns out Runyon Canyon isn't the most ideal location to see the sign...assuming of course you survive the trek up the canyon path to get to the sign (we got maybe half way before turning back).  Which brings me to the second reason why it was galactically stupid for the hotel front desk to recommend this to us - it's one heckuva trek that Karen and I were ill prepared to make.  See the joggers in the photos above?  One of them was carrying their heat-exhausted dog on his shoulders...which was a clue to us we had no business making this journey.  Our first clue should have been when one of the hotel staff mentioned that "Lance Armstrong uses this trail to stay in shape."  As it turns out, the drive up Beachwood Drive was much more our speed:

You HAD to know this shot was coming, right? :)

From here we headed toward West Beverly Hills on good 'ole Route 66 - Santa Monica Blvd :

I think we're heading in the right direction to the location we were seeking.....

Found it!  Here's what we were looking for...Rodeo Dr. baby!

We headed toward the Beverly Wilshire hotel...made famous by the Richard Gere & Julia Roberts movie, Pretty Woman:

I parked in back of the hotel out of sight...in this neighborhood, even an $85,000.00 Mercedes is a bit of an embarrasement::

The lobby of the hotel still looks very much like it does in Pretty Woman:

We had a nice walk up and down Rodeo and did a little window shopping:

We were quite shocked to see this cross street on Rodeo...a little bit of our home in Dayton Ohio right here in Beverly Hills...:

We stopped in a few of Rodeo's watch shops:

I guess disruptions caused by movie and television productions are pretty common out here:

We stopped by the recently (as in  earlier that week) opened IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique stores off of Rodeo:

This side street off of Rodeo Dr. is fairly new construction:  

 Westime is located in this section of shops - very impressive selection:

After spending some time on Rodeo, we then drove down to Hollywood Blvd. and the Hollywood Walk of Fame:

We passed the Capitol Records Building:

We saw some of the dedications to the classic stars of Hollywood:

Hey!  Who let this guy in here???  :D  :D

They even had some monuments to historically significant individuals who were outside the entertainment business:

Our walk down the Hollywood walk of fame was a short one though, as we had early dinner reservations and need to get back to the hotel to shower and change before hand.  After changing, we headed back down Santa Monica Blvd. toward Rodeo Dr. and parked on the street a few blocks from the restaurant:

Here's where I selected for our "special dinner" night together in LA - Wolfgang Puck's original Spago Restaurant in Beverly Hills:

It was a nice night so we ate outside:

Dinner was quite nice - if you're in LA, do try broasted chicken at Spago's...it was fantastic.  The halibut was also quite nice.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and decided to hang out in the Tower Bar and look for celebs.  :)  But we once again went to bed pretty early as we had a long day of sightseeing, and were pretty tired.  Tomorrow - Venice Beach!

 *All text and images contained in this review are the original work of the author, John B. Holbrook, II and are copyright protected. Use of any of the information or images without the permission of the author is prohibited.

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