LA Vacation

Hollywood Walk of Fame. What? I was excited when I saw it. It's Yankee Doodle Dandy!


This was next door to the super-awesome Hollywood Museum in the old Max Factor Factory building and across the street from Hollywood High School. I didn't eat there. I just thought it was a cool sign.


Union Station
























Celebrity Sightings in Hollywood


Mural across the street from the Bradbury Building downtown. I love this. The Bradbury Building was pretty cool, too.


A fountain at the Adamson House in Malibu. The Adamson House was my favorite thing of the whole trip. Beautiful and interesting and educational and the tour was only $5.
The grounds of the Adamson House in Malibu. That's Surfrider Beach in the background.
Grounds of the Adamson House.
More Adamson House.

Ghost Town at Knotts Berry Farm.

Crazy-steep water ride at Knotts Berry Farm. I didn't ride it.
Rooster at Knotts Berry Farm. There were a lot of them by Independence Hall. I don't know why.

California Adventure Theme Park. There were these three singers and dancers that did a whole show and no one took any pictures or anything and then Mickey comes out and everyone starts snapping away.

From the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. This is where they filmed "The Music Man". And it was Stars Hollow from the Gilmore Girls. Which would be beyond cool except that it's where they filmed "The Music Man" and that trumps anything else. Robert Preston sang and danced right there!

This is what Friends used for Central Park in the scene where Phoebe runs funny. The place where they play Thanksgiving football was around the corner. On a related note, I saw the guy who played Phoebe's cop boyfriend in front of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

Street where they filmed parts of the movie "Rent". Namely the part where they dump all their flaming garbage out on poor Taye Diggs because they're not gonna pay rent. I love that movie. I really do. But I think they should probably just pay the rent.

Scooby and The Mystery Machine from the WB Studios Tour. This room also had the new Batmobile and the Weasley's car from Harry Potter and the General Lee. Fun.

Griffith Observatory. I really recommend the Leonard Nimoy movie in the basement. It's a very interesting look at the history of the Observatory and how they remodeled it. Plus, Leonard Nimoy is funny in it.

View of LA from Griffith Observatory.




I also went to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens on the same day as Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell. They seemed really nice and happy. We were supposed to go to Universal Studios but we weren't much into after it caught on fire so we went to Disney that day instead. We drove down Sunset Blvd to Malibu and went through Beverly Hills and Bel Air and past a bunch of fancy houses. I actually liked the fancy houses in Pasadena better, though. The Pasadena ones all look like The Great Gatsby lives there. On the way back from Malibu we ate at Callahan's Diner in Santa Monica that opened in 1927 and didn't look like it's had a whole lot of remodeling since then. It was pretty cool. We went to the Tar Pits. They were interesting but smelled strongly of tar. Farmer's Market was great. I bought some chocolate coconut macaroons there but didn't eat them until I got home and they were incredibly delicious but it was too late to buy more. We drove down Melrose which was crazy and passed Paramount studios. Rodeo Drive just seemed like an outdoor Forum Shops so we skipped it. We rode the train and the subway from Pasadena to Hollywood. They were nice and clean. I think that about covers the main touristy things. We took surface streets most everywhere so we got to see a lot of the neighborhoods. It was fun but a little cramped and messy for me. It felt good to get back into the wide open emptiness of the desert on the way home.