Two Days In L.A.

During our recent vacation to Palm Springs, I decided to take my son to Los Angeles and show him around my favorite spots in the city and do some photo taking.  As always, click on the photos to see larger versions.

L.A. is only about a two hour drive from Palm Springs…if the traffic around L.A. isn’t too bad.  🙂  We started off Westbound on I-10, passing through the amazing windmill farms in the San Gorgonio Pass – each one of those windmills can produce 300 kilowatts – the amount of electricity used by a typical household in a month.

This wind farm on the San Gorgonio Mountain Pass in the San Bernadino Mountains contains more than 4000 separate windmills and provides enough electricity to power Palm Springs and the entire Coachella Valley.

After making it through the traffic of downtown L.A. (yikes!) we headed straight for Beverly Hills and Rodeo drive.

Here’s the Beverly Wilshire hotel where the movie PRETTY WOMAN was filmed:

We did some window shopping on Rodeo, but it didn’t take us long to get hungry for some lunch.

That spot in the upper left at the top of the stairs is one of the trendiest cafes in L.A. – 208 Rodeo.    We had lunch on the patio:

Before we left the Rodeo area, I had to stop into the Beverly Hills Service Center in the Rolex Building on Wilshire:

Rolex consolidated their service centers down to two (New York and Dallas) a couple of years ago.  However, Rolex still owns this building and a few staff still work here – the location serves as a walk-in collection point for watches requiring service, which are then sent to the Dallas Service Center.

From there we headed out to Venice Beach:

Believe it or not, there’s not an actual person in the photo above painting the word “Venice” – the entire thing (rope, person, sign) is painted.

The board walk of Venice Beach is always an experience in “people watching” – the “fruits and nuts” of L.A. are in full force here:

We went for a walk down on the beach and I got some great shots:

Our next stop was the Santa Monica Pier – another great spot for photography:

We walked around Pacific Park:

Then we walked down the pier:

It was starting to get chilly, and we’d covered a lot of ground – time to head to the hotel and grab a nice steak dinner and recharge the batteries.

Later that evening we went walking around Hollywood Blvd. – we saw the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Mann’s Chinese Theater, and of course, the Kodak Theater where Academy Awards (Oscars night) is held:

The next day we went back to Hollywood Blvd. and went through Madame Tussauds Wax Museum:

I’ve been to the MT Wax Museum in Las Vegas before, and my son’s been to the one in Washington D.C.  We both enjoyed the Hollywood location more than our previous experiences.

Going for the block against Kobe!

Hanging around with Spider-Man:

We were then off to do some more sight seeing, including a drive on the Sunset Strip, and then over to the famous Hollywood Sign:

We then went for a visit to the famous Hollywood Bowl:

After our sight seeing, we grabbed some lunch, then headed back to Palm Springs – we’d covered a LOT of ground in two days…Dad needed to go back and relax in the Springs.  🙂

I hope you enjoyed the photos!