Hollywood

To finish off our stay in California, we decided on a hike up to Hollywood. We'd been there on our second night for our anniversary - Chateau Marmont - but not right downtown.

Spring Break has been on the go here this week so once we parked in the core, it was a bit of a zoo. We set out to do some shoe shopping right on Hollywood Blvd. and then wandered around in front of the Kodak Theatre and Gruaman's Chinese with all the star's stars on the sidewalk and the vintage handprints in front of Grauman's.

Then we drove further up the Boulevard to finally sample the Umami burger - quite exceptional, especially with the truffle cheese fries - some heavy walking coming up when we get home.

The traffic was pretty dense going down Santa Monica and Wilshire, so it took even longer to get back.
We took a little side trip up into the hills to check out the latest building site of Harrison Ford on Boca de Canyon Rd.
Then it was back to a final survey of Betty & Gary's Bel Air property. There has been pretty noticeable progress in the time we've been here, with the insulation done and the tiling well out into the yard. The view from the house toward Century City was the best yet, despite that layer of smog that always seems to lay over the city.


Tonight for dinner, we chose Bandera in Brentwood. We drove a meer 5 minutes and valet parked at a very happening restaurant. We started with California artichokes and then had sole on the Betty & Gary side and lamb sirloins for Dawn and Kobe beef for me. Fabulous!

We have had weather on this trip that we couldn't have dreamed for. It's been a wonderful respite from Canadian winter. Hopefully we don't have to deal with too much bad stuff when we return.

A drive along the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu

With the brilliant blue skies and warm weather continuing, we thought staying along the beach for the day was a good idea.
So, we drove up the coast along the PCH to Malibu. The start of Malibu is actually not far from LA, but it stretches along the coast for a good 15-20 kilometres.
Near the north end of Malibu were a number of stars' beach homes. Although we only saw the garage side of the homes, it gave us a good sense of where the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell hang out on the beach.

On our way back down the PCH we detoured at Pacific Pallisades and drove well up into the hills. Every house above 100 feet off the Pacific has been located so as to afford pretty stunning views. If you lived up there, you'd also be neighbours with the likes of Sally Fields and Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta-Jones.

When we got back to Santa Monica, we thought we were going to Umami, an elite burger joint. But it turned out that it was no longer there. So, instead we ate along the 3rd Avenue Shopping Concourse, up in the Sonoma Wine Bar adjacent to Nordstroms. We had an excellenty thin crust pizza of the day with salad and a wonderful Alexander Valley Chardonnay and then set off to do some walking down the concourse.

On the way back to where we parked, well up on 10th Avenue in a rather expensive parking spot - got a ticket - we shopped for this evening's dinner at Vons. They had a fabulous deal on wine for Von members that we got anyway - very nice!

So, it was an eat in evening again with lots of great wine and rowdy card playing.

Shopping for Real Estate

Searching for the stars, was our first game this morning. With our fabulous and potentially unreliable Map of the Stars we set out to find some homes close to us in Brentwood. We found the current home of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, but like many homes of famous people, you got a view of the gate, only. We did however get a peek at Harrison Ford's current home, although he's got a new one on the go up off Mulholland.

Then for game number two, we set ourselves up as prospective home buyers and with our broker, Gary, we toured some high end homes, two of which were in gated communities. Curiously enough, the first home we chose was in Mulholland Estates, which just happens to be the home of Charlie Sheen, around whom there has been a recent firestorm due to his bizarre behaviour and recent firing from 2 and 1/2 Men.
So after navigating through the media trucks, we were granted access to the estate and found a home for 14 million. This place had a nice view, but was showing unfurnished, except for sparse beds in a couple bedrooms.

Since we were within the gates, we took a little tour of the estate and found some pretty impressive homes - one of which had probably been Charlie Sheen's - and some sported matching Rolls Royces in the driveway. There are a lot of impressive homeowners in this community, including Barry Bonds, Faith Hill, Samuel L. Jackson, Magic Johnson, Martin Lawrence, Reba McEntire, Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, Rod Stewart, Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Robbie Williams and Richard Zanuck.

So we thought, "Who the hell wants to be neighbours with Charlie Sheen?" and moved on to house number two. This house was back in Bel Air and was going for 13 million. It was hosted by Mauricio Umansky who is the husband of Kathy Hilton's sister and therefore uncle of Paris. Yikes! His wife is also one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. This house was heavily into the Chinese motif and along with it's view of the Getty Centre, it was fabulous!

We'll put this house on our short list.
The third house was in Bel Air and adjacent to Sunset Blvd. It had been recently reduced by 5 million to 35 million. It was done in French Chateau style for a Saudi prince.

This place had the French theme going for it that would attract us and the dining room sat 50. Perfect!

It also had lots of rooms for company with 15 bedrooms, including the guest house by the fountains. This would nicely support all of our Canadian visitors.
We waffled on this one, but the coupe de grace was that the traffic noise from Sunset Blvd. was a little intensive. So, we'll have to give this one a pass.
To finish off the day, we chose a stroll on Venice Blvd., avenue of the really weird. This is a walk that never ceases to entertain with it hawkers, shops and unique characters.



There were also a good number of surfers braving the icy March waters of the Pacific. No one would ever get a great ride on these waves, but they were there nevertheless.


The weather continues to be fabulous, so we have been lavishing in these wonderful March moments.
Dinner tonight was chez Betty & Gary, with fish and extras. Yummy!

Santa Monica

When we originally looked at extended weather forecasts before we left Canada, this week was to be cool and rainy. Forget that. We're looking at a week of sunshine and warmth.
We started off the day driving Betty up to the Bel Air work site. On the way, we did our own little tour of the stars homes courtesy of the star map we bought yesterday. We found the entrance to Nancy Reagan's home, without being able to see the house and we saw the homes of Nicolas Cage and Helen Hunt that were both for sale. The Nicolas Cage home was formerly owned by both Tom Jones and Dean Martin.


We also discovered that Zsa Zsa Gabor's house, which is neighbouring Betty & Gary's new place, was formerly owned by Howard Hughes.
After leaving Betty with Gary, we drove towards Santa Monica and parked close to Montana and 15th street to begin our walk towards the Santa Monica Pier. Montana is a cool neighbourhood with lots of chic restaurants and shops, so it was an interesting walk.


When we hit Ocean Blvd. which as the name suggests, runs parallel to the Pacific, we were just a little under 2 kilometres from the pier. This was a beautiful walk along the top of the cliffs.
The pier itself was pretty lively. It's whole length is pretty much an amusement park, with the ferris wheel and roller coaster being the dominant features. This also marks either the end or the beginning of Route 66, depending on the direction you were heading.



After traversing its entire length, we settled at the restaurant, Lobsters which is right at the gate to the pier. We were given a table right at the window overlooking the pier which was quite a treat. As the name suggests, this place specialized in seafood so Dawn chose a dungeness crab salad with shrimp Louis and I had a wild arugula and dungeness crab salad. Excellent!

For our route back to the car, we strolled up Santa Monica Blvd. to 15th and then another couple kilometres along it. Needless to say, the step count is pretty good for today - 14000+.
The order of the day for dinner this evening was ribs and the ultimate rib joint in the area was Houstons in Century City. So off we went and YES, they were as advertised.

We still had time for a game of Bite Me and that's our Monday.

To the Beach

Sunday! Nobody's working.
So.... we started off with pancakes.
Next, we headed off to buy a map of the stars for this area. The map purchasing location was adjacent to the home above in which Michael Jackson had his last breathe. Next, we drove south to the beaches of Newport & Laguna. On a Sunday the drive down the 405 to these locations was pretty doable.
We had determined that we needed to work on our 10 000 steps, so the first stop past Newport was a walk on the Crystal Cove beach. The beach here is fabulous sand, which we walked for close to a kilometre. Then, we walked back on the trails above the dunes. Being Sunday there was lots of traffic on these walking trails, but not nearly as much as on the Pacific Coast Highway.



Following the beach walk, we drove further to Laguna Beach and did some more walking there, with a short timeout for lunch at Johnny Rockets - a burger joint. Especially on Sunday, Laguna Beach has huge traffic, but we still had an interesting walk well down the beach and to a ridiculously priced open house on the beach. This place was totally exposed to the populace and still, for 1200 sq. ft. fetched 3.7 million

Following our exploits in Laguna Beach, we returned to LA to buy dinner provisions at Delson's, a high end grocery in Century City. After that our dinner for tonight consisted of fresh linguine pasta with mushrooms, onions, pesto, chicken sausage with apple and walnuts and green beans. Yum!
We got Bite Me going early , but because Gary had to work, we cashed it in even earlier.

Back to LA

We awoke this morning to more brilliant sunshine and desert heat. This is the norm for this place, but the good news for us was that good weather was also forecast for LA today.


After an excellent steak dinner last night, followed by a rousing game of Bite Me, we had a lovely leisurely breakfast with the Frasers before heading west. I know I've said it before, but one can easily get used to life in the desert. It has a stark beauty unlike any other place and the weather isn't too hard to take either. The view last evening from their backyard of the snowcapped mountains contrasting against the blue sky was awesome!


But all good things must come to an end and we left the generous hospitality of Brenda and Bill and headed out to do some shopping.

First stop was a shoe store for a new pair of cross-trainers.Then we made a longer stop at the Desert Hills strip with extended visits in the kitchen goumet shop and Eddie Bauers.
After 2 1/2 hours of shopping, we broke briefly at a Jack in the Box for lunch and then continued on. The traffic was flowing nicely, but even on Saturday afternoon, it was wall to wall vehicles.
Once back in LA we headed to Whole Foods to buy dinner for this evening and by shortly after 4:00, we were back in Brentwood.
Betty & Gary had worked today, so they arrived home at their normal time. But when they arrived, we quickly got into party mode and that's pretty much the story for the evening.

Cathedral City

Boy did we come to the right place! Blue skies - 80 degree + temperatures - lounging by the pool.

Sure beats Canada right about now doesn't it?
Anyway, not alot to report today, as the day was to be devoted to some walking before it got too hot and then just spending the duration by the pool.

Betty & Gary did indeed NOT make it. Things were still going strong at the building site and Gary could not shut it down. Unfortunately, weather back in LA won't be anything like this and promises to be no better next week.

Off to the Desert

More walking was clearly in order today, so when we awoke we planned a little foot excursion from the apartment to a Whole Foods & Ralphs. We were buying provisions for our trip to visit Brenda & Bill in Cathedral City.
The walk took us first done St. Vincente to the Whole Foods store. This place was a Mecca of supplements and vitamins, but it also had great prepared food dishes and all other necessary groceries.

After circling back to the apartment and a quick walk through Ralphs, we got back to discover that Betty & Gary weren't going to be able to get away today because of where they were at with the house work. They didn't feel comfortable leaving with workers still on site.
So, we took Betty's Explorer, warmed up the GPS and away we went. As we approached the desert the views of the snowcapped mountains got more and more impressive.

The drive to Cat City should be a little over 2 hours, but we stopped for lunch and a bit of shopping at the Ralph Lauren store at the Desert Outlet. You need a lot of time to do justice to this outlet, so we figure a return is in order.
By the time we got to the Fraser's, the temperature had risen to 80 and it was cocktail hour, so we sat around the pool catching up. Bill was saying that they had had an unusually cold winter with frost doing a lot of damage to many of their lovely desert flowers and bushes. In fact, today was the first day they'd had the pool open. Lucky us!
In the evening, we drove to Palm Desert for dinner on the patio of Augustus. Prior to that, however, we did what they call the Art Walk, where their various galleries invite the public in. There was some pretty outstanding art work here, with some pretty outstanding prices attached to them.

The restaurant was pretty quiet this evening, but our dinners were excellent. I had escargots and duck, Dawn salad and salmon, Brenda mushroom soup and grilled shrimp and Bill had shrimp and tuna. We shared a Grand Marnier souffle for dessert. The only complaint we had about the evening was that it was so dark that we had trouble seeing our food.


No one opted for the hot tub when we returned home, so we settled for a nightcap and off to bed.