I will fit in here every­thing else I couldnt put in its own cat­e­gory.
(Мr.Blab said it was not very inspired work „just mailed it in”, he said)

_____

Тhis is the out­door mall in Glendale — the „Americana at Brand”

Looked brand spank­ing new and grand.

The shops were all around the park in the mid­dle and there were lit­tle cafes and benches to sit on.

The strange thing is that there were no peo­ple on the grass. Here, in Aussie land,  the grass is free to enjoy area, not sure that applies to fancy out­door malls in LA.

These are bins in Beverly Hills
Huge bins for lots of waste, I guess.

Some ran­dom shots from our dri­ves around the city.

The place is huge. Without a car, I have no idea how one would exist here.

So there are a lot of cars.

And big badly patched up roads

I went to the head­less ducks place, up in the hills:

Not really, but there is this reser­voir bang smack around the way to the Hollywood sign and all the other mad­ness around the place. Its a green oasis, green splat on the GPS that seemed like another world.

Beautiful, peace­ful and green.

The kids would have loved it here.

LA is not all crazy though. There were quite a few places that seemed like a lovely area to live in. Usually when I inquired about them it turned out they were for those spe­cial peo­ple that make lots of money.

Oh, speak­ing of the Hollywood sign, we saw this stun­ning god­dess of a preg­nant woman there and we took a picture.

The road to the sign itself was closed for some rea­son, but my Host found some sneaky way and I got to see it at least. The trip was worth it and the hills are quite lovely. Still not sure how this sign has become such a sym­bol, as its quite bor­ing, small and absolutely not inter­est­ing at all. If you are com­ing here, do it for the views and the hills them­selves, as the sign will dis­ap­point, in my opinion.

While down there life is like this:

Around Hollywood Blvd looks like this:

..up there its all kind of beautiful.

Even the Valley looks appeal­ing with its smog and all.

I went to „The Comedy Store” where my Host had scared me that the peo­ple on stage will most likely make fun of me at some point. I gladly announce that I am not that inter­est­ing and I was left alone.

We went to „LaVelee” and lis­tened to Lynne Fiddmont, a Jazz chick, while munch­ing on some lovely din­ner snacks and sip­ping a glass of wine. There I heard a song that lasted with me for a long time — All I do.  Seriously it was in my head for days on end. Her ver­sion was slow and jazzie. It not her song, but Stevie Wonder’s. I had never heard it before, even though I am a fan of Stevie. Here is another woman hav­ing a crack at it (now I will have it in my head again. Groovy!):

And this is LA for you.

Or at least how and what I saw of it.

Thanks to Casa de Alberta for the won­der­ful hos­pi­tal­ity.  Will never for­get it.

And then I took my bags and 7 month belly on a plane and back to my continent:

Baseball. I had never seen one of those games before. Really, how many peo­ple out­side of the US have? Not me. I had tried to go watch the Yankees while I was in New York, but they didnt play home the days I was there, so I got des­per­ate and I ended up vis­it­ing the Anaheim Angels in LA.

Here is what a base­ball game looked to me, the com­plete igno­ra­mus on this pop­u­lar activ­ity of the North American and… Japanese cultures.

Parking space was huge. The lot was so big I was sure we will get lost on the way out. People were con­gre­gat­ing from every­where, it seemed.

Entry was rea­son­ably pain­less. Nobody removed my shoes or checked under my tongue for hid­den weapons. Phew!

The sta­dium is huge. To me our seats were per­fect, but obvi­ously that is not so, as they were not the expen­sive kind.

The evening was pleas­ant and the wind was caress­ing my skin just right. I was excited and look­ing for­ward to the game.

There was a bit of walk­ing around like in a daze. Almost dreamlike..

A lot of bending.

and bend­ing

Even offi­cials bend.
Here the pitcher is try­ing to pre­vent the gray dude from steal­ing a base and Number 35 has constipation.

Tra-la-la-la-la…stolen glances and skip­ping in the night light.

The atmos­phere is rather pleasant.

There were no idiots shout­ing or throw­ing around their arms and spit upset at something.

People were just hav­ing a good time.

Kids? It seemed the per­fect spot to bring them for some fun — watch­ing pranc­ing, bend­ing happy men hav­ing fun.

There was some action.

A lot of that:

..that:

..that arm thing. The way that nobody throws a ball:

There were a lot of sta­tis­tics, num­bers, scor­ing aver­ages and what­nots posted on a board, but my Host had lit­tle knowl­edge of them all. I doubt any­one does. Its insane. There were a few bats that met the ball and that is quite exciting.

I even got to see this:

YAY!

Ok, where is the food now?

I loved the food guys.
They walk around and throw food to the peo­ple in their seats.
„I want some”, „Sure!” CHUCK!
FUN!

I con­sumed some beer, a hot­dog and some cracker jacks. All a per­fect com­pan­ion to a very enjoy­able night.

I liked base­ball. I will do it again.

I am not an amuse­ment, theme park kind of gal. They dont do more for me than a fancy mall does — ooh, lovely..thats cute…that costs what?…I think we saw that already…lets go home, aka. com­mer­cial sheep in a pan sur­rounded by greedy wolves. Or like the scene in Finding Nemo where the deep water fish is swing­ing its adorned with light tail to bring the heroes close enough to eat them. But most of all in a world full of  count­less vari­ety of authen­tic expe­ri­ences, spend­ing my time in a fake pro­mo­tional world and giv­ing my money to giant cor­po­ra­tions is not on my list of things I pre­fer doing.

And yet, when my „shoe crit­i­ciz­ing” Host was adamant I had to go to Universal Studios, I just had to, I so had to he was pre­pared to pay for it him­self, I buck­led and agreed to give it a go.

We entered through the Citywalk. A pre­tend city within a city.

This is where don­key ended up:

Its bet­ter than the swamp, I guess…or not.

First we went to the Studio Tour.

You jump on a lit­tle cart wagon with open sides and then starts the tour through the studio.

This was shortly after the fires there and here is a shot of the dam­age down bellow:

We passed some well known vehi­cles.
I some­how doubt that this is an orig­i­nal, but just call me a skep­tic and move on.

Some spe­cial effects with incom­ing cars.

Dr Seuss anybody?

Desperate Housewives were not accessible.

Sets. This was some­thing from some movie, but I can­not remem­ber what.
Anybody?

This was a tiny set we passed though.
I found this inter­est­ing as it really showed some of the ways you can do quite impres­sive spe­cial effects.
The ship was about the length

of my arm.

My favorite were the wild west sets.

Here is one of the spe­cial things you can see while on tour:

Looks all fun and dandy…

And then its not anymore.

Again, one year later I can­not remem­ber the com­men­tary,
but they did say that this set has been used for a few famous flood­ing scenes

There was a plas­tic shark flung at us, in honor of Jaws.
There was an explod­ing truck in an „under­ground” sub­way.
And a few other things.

Then after some walk­ing around we waited a bit to see the Waterworld attraction.

It was a quick per­for­mance with impres­sive jumps, explo­sions and spe­cial effects.

Like the crash­ing in airplane:

But I had a feel­ing some­thing else was cap­tur­ing the atten­tion of pro­por­tion of the public.

Something much less technical.

The orga­niz­ers knew it too, hence the almost non exis­tent skirt and hug­ging top.

We went into the Backdraft pyrotech­nics bonanza.
Following the doors and rails we went through a few pre­sen­ta­tions,
cul­mi­nat­ing in the last hall where we wit­nessed the big fire and wob­bly floor.

We didnt go on any rides, as they were not suit­able for preg­nant spec­i­mens like me, or so it said.

The Jurassic Park didnt exclude me offi­cially, so we lined up.

Just before we got on the ride, a woman comes to me and informs me
that its not a good idea to go on as there is a 25m (84foot) drop at the end of the line.
I look at the cart, look at the padded metal secu­rity straps (which can go above my belly)
and thank her for her con­cern, but I will be fine. She moves away.

Then another per­son comes to warn me, maybe because they are not sure I am com­pre­hend­ing or some­thing.
I assure them that I under­stand what they are say­ing, but I will be fine.

The ride is not that excit­ing at all…until the end.
I was pre­pared, belly under­neath, arms and feet braced…

SWOOOSH, a big olé drop, where your gut hits the inside of your throat! Hahaha.
And you end up in the water.

That WAS fun. And get­ting wet in the sunny hot day was even better.

And no, dont do that at home fel­low preg­nant women

And that was that.
Back up the esca­la­tor and into the world.

Did I hate it?

No.

Would I do it again?

No.

I am still not an amuse­ment, theme park kind of gal.

More than a year later, its time to come back and try and fin­ish up the last few posts from my trip.

It all paused in LA. Not sure if the fact that the city didnt impress me that much or just because it hap­pened to be the last big stop and hence I was tired of writ­ing, but the fact of the mat­ter is that this post has been wait­ing for a long time to be written.

The rea­son I came to LA was because I thought it would be inter­est­ing and because Mr.Blab’s best friend lives here, so I could stay for free, which is not some­thing to be dis­re­garded in any around the world trip. And thank good­ness he was there to keep me com­pany and to drive me around, as the place is huge and pub­lic trans­port is non existent.

I of course put foot on Venice Beach boardwalk.

.

Had lunch at a café there. I believe it was a salad of some kind. Some hippy kind.

The place was inter­est­ing. Mr.Blab used to tell me how they would sit around here and do „peo­ple watch­ing” and I can see how that would be a per­fect place for that. The indi­vid­u­als and devi­a­tions one can find make for a good con­ver­sa­tion starter. There is a lovely relaxed atmos­phere, which is coun­ter­bal­anced by the self involved cool peo­ple who also roam around.

Speaking of beaches, my guide took me to Zuma beach in Malibu.

Then made me climb up a cliff while mak­ing fun of my san­dals. Apparently they were not suit­able for such activities.

He even took a pic­ture of my offend­ing footwear!

Yours truly, after climb­ing sandy cliffs.

The beach is huge. It was a work day so I am guess­ing that is why it was so quiet and peaceful.

When we came back down we chat­ted with the secu­rity guard who was watch­ing over the parked trail­ers.
We didnt get to see the shoot­ing of a movie, but we saw the change rooms…from outside.

More beach.

We were com­ing back from Zuma beach when we passed this area and I had to stop to take a pic­ture of these houses.
You dont get much more beach front than that.

Staying with a local who makes fun of your shoes has its ben­e­fits.
He knew all the cool local places for food.

The first night we went to his favorite authen­tic Mexican restau­rant Las Hadas which I enjoyed a lot all the way to the hot pep­pers and cool beer. It aint no Taco Bell dear read­ers. It was big plates of soft meat and condi­ments that were absolute bliss for this glutton.

Then he knows which diner to take you so you can expe­ri­ence the real deal and a lot of old peo­ple sip­ping cof­fee silently.

So you can eat a big olé plate of breakfast.

Followed by a big olé plate of waf­fles with cream and maple syrup.

Yum.

Or a lit­tle sneaky Chinese place.

That also make a killer won­ton soup.

Yummmey.

And you can be dri­ven to the mar­kets for a cup of coffee.

Walk around.

Admiring  the cre­ative display.

And of course eat­ing. This time some south­ern food. Spicy Jambalaya and potatoes.

Since I did other things than eat as well…next we go to a base­ball game.

To be continued…

I arrived safe and sound home last night!

The girls were hold­ing up a hand­made sign and see­ing them run­ning towards me was enough to get the tears going. Ohhh.…the feel­ing of hug­ging them was entirely too good to be true! I think we stayed in front of the gate for awhile, hug­ging and kiss­ing. Mr Blab in the back­ground, video­tap­ing and look­ing like he is about the sob as well.

When we made our way to the car and back home, I real­ized how freez­ing cold it is down here. It was cold! You have to remem­ber that I spent the last week in LA, where it was a fight with heat and sweat…

This morn­ing I stepped on the scales to see what the dam­age has been from all this eating…not good. About as bad as I expected. I must have eaten my way through the world

I have heaps of pic­tures to sort and to update you on the US part of this trip before I for­get every­thing. I hope to do that fast.

Thank you all for being with me on this jour­ney. It was that much more fun to share it with you.

Big hugs!

I have been in LA since Monday, but quite cut off from the world. The friend I am stay­ing with doesnt have wire­less and I cant con­nect to the cable net­work he uses on his 7 year old com­puter. Tried Starbucks, but coudnt con­nect there too, as all con­nec­tions required passwords.

Right now I am steal­ing a faint sig­nal from some­one — thanks „Scott”! And sorry.

All is well. Saw my first base­ball game, which was fun; Universal stu­dio tour, mex­i­can food, Hollywood sign, com­edy club, mar­ket, beaches… It has been fun.

I am off back to Australia tomor­row evening. Really not look­ing for­ward to the 14.5 hour flight. Send upgrade vibes my way, please.

Lets see if this con­nec­tion will sur­vive and let me post this…