Los Angeles – Saturday 13 June

From our beachfront campground just outside of Los Angeles we drove along the coast through Malibu and Santa Monica. There are some incredibly flash houses along there – no shortage of money in those areas! Justin was pretty pleased with all the car watching to be had – several Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Cobras, Dodge Vipers etc, and Porsches are about as common there as Commodores or Falcons in Aussie or NZ.

We have both read heaps of books set in Los Angeles (Michael Connolly in particular) so it was kind of interesting to see some of the places like Mulholland Drive, Laurel Canyon Blvd and a bunch of others – even the Parker Centre police headquarters for any other Michael Connolly fans! We drove around Beverley Hills and Hollywood and along Sunset Boulevard. There are some amazing houses, although we were both left wondering why if you had that much money you would choose to live in an area as drab as Los Angeles! Pretty much just desert all around, the Hollywood hills are just kind of scrub and tussock with no colour at all.

Los Angeles in general wasn’t our favourite place to hang out... The city centre itself isn’t that large with only a few high rise buildings, but the city just sprawls out for miles and miles – judging from the map I think it would be well over 100 miles across. Justin got pretty over the city driving after a day of horrendous traffic. Even the 12 lane freeways were pretty much crawling, and that was on a Saturday. I shudder to think what peak hour would be like.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall