Last day in California

As we were driving home from Newport Beach last night, the further up into the hills we got, the more intense the smell of Jasmine became. A definite benefit of traveling to California at this time of year is that spring is definitely bursting out all over. Anyway, the fragrance of jasmine was absolutely intoxicating, something impossible to capture on film.
On the morning of our last day in California, Dawn tried on Gary's 500SL to see if it fit. I think it'll do.


I also included an updated pic of Betty & Gary's place now that the driveway is done.
Today was our 34th wedding anniversary and for our last two days of holidays, we could not have been blessed with better weather, with temps both days well into the 80's. We decided to spend part of today in Malibu walking on Carbon Beach. The fronts of the very expensive beach houses here are right on the Pacific Coast Highway and don't look like much. From the beach however, it's a different story.


We had a beautiful walk on the beach and marveled that dogs had not yet been banned from these beaches - they were everywhere. I'm sure we walked past many movie star's homes, but most looked abandoned.


Following lunch at a sandwich shop in Malibu, Gary noticed he had a flat tire, but AAA came quickly to the rescue and off we went again, this time a little further up the beach to an open house Gary knew about. This place was $9 million and although it had nice beach front, was not overly large or beautiful. Yikes!

We headed back to Bel Air past the Malibu Pier shown above and then up Sunset Blvd. because the PCH was so congested.
After a short rest and change of clothes, we set out for Hermosa Beach and the Comedy & Magic Club. Here we were treated to 3 stand up comedians, the last being Jay Leno. They were all funny, but Jay is super polished and super funny. This was not only a unique way to celebrate our anniversary, but also a great way to conclude our visit to California. So, that's it for this version of our Travelogue. See you in May.

Newport Beach

Did you know that you can't own an Oscar? If you are lucky enough to receive one, you immediately sign papers saying when you die or if you don't want the thing anymore, the Oscar goes back to the Academy, unless you have willed it to a family member who is bound by the same rules. This is to avoid finding them for sale on E-bay. The Oscar is actually only worth $30 so it's strictly the sentimental value that is of any value. Forgot to mention that in the last posting.
With two days left in our visit, we chose to head south down the coast to Newport Beach. Being in Orange County, the wealthiest area in California with the top Mercedes dealership in the world, the real estate here is staggering for the tightly packed housing with waterfront or views.

On the way, we stopped in Long Beach to do some shopping and also had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory - actually didn't have any cheesecake. When we got to Newport Beach, we parked on Balboa Island and did a healthy 3 mile walk around the island checking out the prime waterfront homes averaging 3000 square feet and 4-6 million dollars, with a few heading up to the 20 million price range. And many had yachts moored at their front door! Yikes!


Before dinner we went for a drink at the historic Newport Landing, with a nice view of the little 3 car ferries that cross the inlet giving people a short cut to the peninsula from Balboa Island.


For dinner, we did an early celebration of our anniversary tomorrow and went to the swank Mastro's Ocean Club. The portions here were huge so we shared just about everything, salmon for Betty & Gary and rack of lamb for Dawn & I with side dishes of sauteed snow peas, garlic mashed potatoes and home made cream corn. I had started with escargots and Dawn shared the famous California wedge salad with Gary and for dessert only I had a creme brulee which was also shared.
It was a really happening place, with people packed, standing around the bar waiting for a seat and a parking lot full of every high end car from Masserati and Mercedes to Rolls and Lamborghini. Definitely an anniversary dinner we will remember!

Back in LA

After a brief, enjoyable stay in the desert, we headed back to LA on Thursday morning. Gary wanted to be back in time to give some workers directions, but we did pause for some shopping at an Outlet Mall on the way in.
To get to Bel Air from the desert, one must drive right by downtown LA, so we got some nice views of the city, including the Hollywood sign and the Staples Centre.

While Gary did some required work at home, Bill & the girls set out to the valley - The San Fernando Valley - do so some more shopping. Shoes, a Target and another visit to Trader Jacks were on our list. Trader Jacks really has some unique products including Napa wine for $1.99 affectionately called 2 Buck Chuck, since the vintner is Charles Shaw. We had one of his chardonnays the other night and it's not half bad.
We cooked some pork tenderloin on the indoor grill along with a 5 minute, from frozen, risotto from Trader Jacks that was excellent. Following that we tried to watch Nights in Rodanthe with Richard Gere & Diane Laine, but all fell asleep, so that was another day in California.
Friday morning, Dawn & I set off on our own, since Betty & Gary had responsibilities at the house that required their presence for the day. Our destination for the morning was Warner Brothers studios in Burbank. It was a relatively short drive and we managed to catch an earlier tour than we had booked.


The two hour tour started with a short movie highlighting Warner Brothers film history, which is substantial. Then we headed out to the city street scenes with facade buildings that have been used in many different movies with many different dressings. The one more recognizable facade was ER's hospital entrance.
Then we went to the house scenes where many houses like the Seavers' and Drew Carey's were found.
Next we headed into the sound stage area where movies from My Fair Lady and Casablanca to TV shows like the Mentalist and Cold Case are/were shot. In fact, both of the later mentioned TV shows were setting up for a shoot latter in the day. No stars were viewed, but we did see Ellen Degeneres' parking space and George Clooney's cottage. We also walked on to the sets of Friends (Central Perk) and The Mentalist. We couldn't always take photos, I guess to protect the stars.


By the time we finished the tour, we looked for a restaurant across fro WB studios called the Smoke House that has quite a long history in the area.
To go home we avoided the Freeway and instead, chose to drive through Griffith Park to see the Greek Theatre and The Griffith Observatory. The Observatory provided the best views of the Hollywood sign and if not for today's smog , great views of the city.


From there we drove along Mulholland Dr. back to north of Bel Air. Along the way, there are many spectacular homes and some pretty scary ones on stilts.

We did pretty well finding our way around the town today and got back to Linda Flora right on schedule for cocktails and artichoke hearts. The three vegetable highlights of this trip have definitely been the three A's - Avacados, Artichokes and Asparagus, all presently in season, so we've been eating lots of them.
Tonight was surf and turf with lobster tails and fillet - another shabby meal!

A Desert Day

After a late night last night, things got going slowly today, which was fine. After some wake-up time,Bill broke out the bacon and eggs and a great breakfast was had by all. Brenda & Bill's house above , by the way, is the one with Gary's white Explorer in the driveway.
This day was our discovery of Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert and Cathedral City. These cities are all in a strip through the valley, one blending into another. Everything is low and spread out. We stopped at Jenkins, a fine food store and a consignment home furnishing store which were both interesting.

Then we drove up out of the valley to the surrounding hills to get a good look at the valley below.
For lunch, we chose a Palm Desert restaurant again, this one called the Daily Grill. Great lunch!

The day finished off with a swim and hot tub back at Brenda and Bill's, since the temperature had once again hit the 80's. Cocktails followed shortly and the day ended with a salmon dinner at their house. I could get used to the desert!

Into the Desert

Tuesday morning, we awoke to power being back on after about 5 hours without it last night. It was promising to be a beautiful day weatherwise, but since we were heading in to the desert, we were pretty sure the weather was going to be magnificent anyway.

Our route took us past downtown LA so we took a little diversion to an ethnic shopping area called Sante Alley, which reminded us a lot of the European markets. Dawn & Betty managed to pick up some goodies in our brief stroll through the streets filled with shops spilling out into the streets.

It was actually only slightly more than 2 hours to go from Bel Air to the town of Cathedral City. We drove once again through the impressive area of windmills around Palm Springs. The power from these apparently power Palm Springs.

Thanks to Mapquest, we found Brenda & Bill's place with relative ease and spent several hours catching up around their pool. The temperature by the time we arrived had hit 83 and we were eager to eat up the heat.


For dinner we went into Palm Desert to the Pacifica restaurant specializing in seafood, which we all had. We pretty much closed up the restaurant and then returned to Brenda & Bill's to share some lively dialogue on the state of the world.

Hollywood Stars

The day began very early - in fact, as we were driving into Hollywood this morning, the day had definitely not begun. We were up at 4:30 and parked at the Hollywood Bowl by 5:40 and why? We were going to Oprah Winfrey's post Oscar Show at the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards. Gary is to be commended for finding these tickets on line from someone who couldn't use them.This was a guaranteed star sighting. Of course, going to this theatre meant leaving cameras, pagers, phones, etc. at home - therefore no in-theatre photographic evidence.

As we were waiting in the line waiting for the shuttle to take us to the show a mere few blocks away, we were also reminded to leave umbrellas in the car. Got a present for Oprah, leave it in the car. A script idea - car. A book idea- car.
There were two parking lots full of people going to the show - clearly the Kodak is one big theatre - a couple thousand I'm guessing. After standing in line in the lot for a couple of hours, we took the short bus ride to the Kodak, went in the back door due to a still closed Hollywood Blvd. in front of the theatre and proceeded to stand for another couple of hours to wait for the doors to open.


When we finally got into the theatre, we found ourselves with good seats in the middle of the first mezzanine and we continued to wait for the 10:00 start of the show. Although the show is taped, it is live-to-tape, which meant that the one hour show took one hour to tape - no retakes.
So, our first star was David Foster who was in the audience since, as a pre-show special, we were treated to two songs performed by Oprah's latest find, the 16 year old Charisse, who is recording with David. Then came Oprah! She was great and kibbitzed with the audience off camera.
We didn't know the star lineup for the show, except Hugh Jackman who was first. After last night's Oscars and Hugh's great song & dance work and Slumdog's 8 Oscars, we had a new appreciation for Jackman and on the show he was even nicer.
Next came Kate Winslett, then Sean Penn, Penelope Cruz and finally the cast and director of Slumdog Millionaire. The show finished with a musical number from Slumdog. We felt extremely fortunate to be in the audience for this show and the early hour and long waits ended up being worth it.
We chose to walk back to the car, which was only a 10 minute walk and then famished, since it had been too early to have a serious breakfast, we set out in search of lunch. We settled on an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, Il Pastio, and all thoroughly enjoyed our pastas. Following lunch, we rolled down to Spago, Wolfgang Pucks' high end restaurant and as we stopped across the street from the restaurant, first Sidney Poitier and then Rob Reiner got out of their respective Mercedes and went in for lunch.


In Beverly Hills, it's one Rolls & Bentley & Aston Martin after another, but the 1/2 million dollar Rolls coupe that pulled up to Spago's front door was definitely worth sharing on the blog.

We had a slow afternoon, in fact a quick nap, before we revisited the Oprah show on TV that we'd seen live. We felt that Sean Penn came across better on TV than he did live, as he talked very quietly and was hard to follow. We all agreed that it had been a great Hollywood day!

Getty Centre

We awoke to dull skies again today and wondered if the stars were going to get rained on at the Academy Awards. The blimp could be seen hanging above Hollywood. Any plans for today had to get us back to B&G's before the red carpet coverage.
So, we coasted down the valley to the Getty Centre.

Admission to this museum is actually free which is amazing for such a dynamic museum. After parking, we took a tram up to the museum. There are several display halls, numerous walkways and gardens making up the site. There was some very interesting art work including impressionists, sculpture and furnishings and because we were fairly early, the crowds were not intrusive.

From the Getty, the views of Hollywood & LA and nearby Bel Air, plus the Hwy.405 running north to south were exceptional. We also had a different angle look at Betty & Gary's place, below.


Following the Getty, we did In-N-Out again for lunch and then back to the ranch for the Oscars. Being in LA for the Awards is very cool, but of course our chances of getting close to the Kodak Theatre today were nil, so like everyone else in the world, we resorted to the TV.