Paco´s Life: Madrid

California Dreaming: Los Angeles

15 December 2006 8:44 PM | In California, ICEX, Nightlife, Travel |

All pictures here!

The next stop of our trip could not be more cinematographic: Los Angeles, capital of the cinema and one of the most worldwide known cities. Once you pass the cliffs I was talking about in the previous post, the road 1 continues through the wine region of California, most of the wine produced in the States comes from this place. Which actually we did not really care about since we didn’t stop here but in Santa Barbara, a place I guess you all heard about. This is the funny thing about the american supremacy in cinema, you come here and all the time you see names that sounds familiar. In any case, we hang around for a while there, nice city with a beautiful beach which must be great in summer. But it was not summer and the weather wasn’t good enough to take a bath so we just visit a couple of historical Spanish buildings.

Patriotic moment

What the fuck he was talking about?

One hour after that we hit LA. The first impression you get about the city is pretty negative, the neibourghoods in the outskirts are very ugly, lot of homeless walking around and pollution everywhere. The city is huge and you don’t know where to head. But, an ICEX guy always has resources for this kind of situations, before we started this trip I got in touch with one of the interns in the commercial office of the Spanish embassy in LA, María, who happened to be a very friendly girl who told us the route we should follow. So we called her asking for advice on finding accommodation in LA and she recommended us to go to the Santa Monica area. Hotels there are pretty expensive so we ended up in a youth hostel, not very luxury but close to the beach. The ICEX help did not stop there, they were so nice to take us out that night. Around 10 pm the plan was already organized, they picked up us in the hostel and it didn’t matter we were six in a car. We had dinner in a Chinese place and then we head to a club they knew. The place was really cool already from the beginning when these two huge black bouncers asked us for passports. When they saw we were Spanish they did some jokes. Same as the Swedish ones eh? So, the night passed very happily inside there, chatting and laughing with all the LA ICEX interns and another visitor, a very funny guy coming from New York. We even managed to socialize a bit with the locals. However, at 2 o clock the place closed down and then they took us to a libian place, opened till very late, to smoke pipes. Kind of weird place, it was not the total party but ok for been there smoking and chatting. When we felt too tired we took a taxi back to the hostel. Thanks a lot to Montse, Juan Andrés and cia, very welcoming people!

I just realized I dint speak about the jetlag yet. There is a 9 hours time difference between the USA West Coast and Stockholm and you can feel it. Is a funny effect, you can´t sleep longer than 7-8am which is actually great for doing tourism so we were on the road pretty soon. However, at 6 pm you are totally fucked up. So we spent this first week having to sleep a 1-2 hours nap every day.

Anyway, let´s continue with LA. After the great night it was the time to get to know the city. As we only had one day we decided to hire one of these tours you get into a bus and they show you around, the driver explaining about the city. He was, of course, a very friendly guy (working for his tip) and was saying funny stuff at the same time he was describing the different places. We started in Sunset Boulevard where the rich guys and the cinema stars live. We saw Spielberg´s house, Kurt Russel´s and a few more whose owner I don’t remember. We ended this first part of the trip in Beverlly Hills were poor people go shopping. Everything very touristic. During the trip the guide was saying interesting stuff, for example “that corner over there is where Hugh Grant got a blowjob” or “this is where Michael Jackson got arrested”. Very instructive. No, we didn’t see any famous people but we did see some guys going to the shops by limousine. Exactly the same that I do when I get down to my local supermarket to get some frozen pizzas… After that the bus left the city and started to drive up to a hill and… opps there it was, the very famous Hollywood sign. The view over the city from there is pretty impressive too, you can see how big it is.

After the hill, the bus stopped in the Universal Studios where I could not resist the temptation of getting a couple of stupid pictures. You may be wondering why usually I am the one to show up in the pictures, well Giorgos does not like it too much and I thought so many lonely landscapes and monuments would end up been boring. Therefore I fool around as soon as I got any chance. We did not get into the studios cause it was very expensive and we didn’t have time either but I don’t think we missed much. Instead, we got down the city to the very famous “Walk of Fame”, yes where you find the starts with famous names on it all over the floor. Drinking all the rum in the world is not enough for getting a start there, you are required to have a certain amount of success and also, of course, to send a very big check to the LA city hall. There was plenty of people dressed like Elvis, Donald Duck and stuff like that hanging around over there, trying to get some dollars. So, the typical place, compulsory to visit, you get the pictures, hang around for a while and leave.

Of course, Captain Flint´s legend made it this far

The visit ended in LA downtown, that means, the bunch of skycrappers in the centre of the city, nothing new here, once you have seen one you have seen all. I like more a small street with Mexicans shops close by. I was about to buy a very cool poster with all the mafia guys of the american cinema until I understood there wouldn’t be any way to get it into the plane. In the meantime I was chatting with a couple of local Mexicans, funny thing, they were switching from Spanish to English all the time without realizing themselves. Here they started to scare me about our next destination: Tijuana, “be careful there”, “don’t get drunk”, “stay with more people”. I had already heard it was the most dangerous city in Mexico and these guys seemed to agree. We would see…