Heading back to Tinsel-Town

Scenic view on the way
back to Los Angeles

After visiting Santa Barbara, we continued along the coast and spent the night in Santa Cruz.  The following morning, we turned around to work our way back heading south towards Los Angeles.  The scenic drive is much more breath taking traveling south than traveling north.  Since we had a nice stay at the Best Western in San Luis Obispos earlier this week, we decided to stay there again on the way back.

On our last day driving the PC HWY, we drove straight to our hotel in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, close to Burbank.  We were up bright and early on Thursday morning, trying to get same day passes for the taping of Ellen.  When I called shortly after 8:00 am, all tickets for the day were gone so we decided to drive to Santa Monica, which is adjacent to Venus Beach, where we stayed during our time in Los Angeles on our 2009 road trip. 

Marker at the end
of Route 66

We took the long way to get there, avoiding the freeways winding around the streets of Burbank, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and places in between until we reached the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica.  It was a very nice sunny day and totally enjoyed the one and a half hour drive to the Santa Monica pier where the old Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles ended.



Lunch at Miguel's on
the Santa Monica Pier



Live music outside
Miguel's Restaurant



Our afternoon in Santa Monica started with an excellent Mexican lunch at the Miguel Restaurant at the end of the pier.  The sun was warm, the view on the ocean spectacular and the live music on the perimeter of the outside patio was easy on the ears.



Santa Monica Beach Pavilion



We then took a long walk along the beach, taking in all the activity, people walking, jogging, riding bikes, kids skateboarding. young adults playing volley ball, people of all ages frolicking in the water everyone here, were like us enjoying the surroundings.

Gateway to he Americana Shopping Mall

Friday in Los Angeles, today we attended the taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  Although we didn't have to be there until 2:30 pm, we decided we would get there by 1:00 pm to be sure we had good seats.  Since we had a few hours to kill, we made our way to the Americana Mall in Glendale, a very nice place with lots of upscale shopping, boutiques and restaurants to do some window shopping.  Rosella went into a few stores, tried some things on but didn't find anything she liked.  We checked out of our hotel and headed for Studio 11 at the NBC Studio in Burbank.  Tonight's show was dubbed "Bieber Fever Night', because Jay's special guest tonight was Canada's own teen age sensation, Justin Bieber.  We stood in line till 2:30 when they let us into the studio for the 4 o'clock taping.  Jay came out on stage dressed in his denims 25 minutes before the start of the show and did his own warm up just like he did when we attended a show taping during our 2009 road trip.  Again this time, we really enjoyed the excitement of seeing how these programs are produced.  After the show, before going to our hotel in the Los Angeles airport area, we went and had an excellent steak supper at the local Outback Restaurant; the food and service were very good. 

We got up bright and early Saturday to get ready for our flight to Honolulu.  Rosella was busy repacking the suitcases for the trip while I got the paper work ready for our 2:05 pm departure.  We both went to the Hertz office literally around the block from our hotel and brought back our little Mustang convertible that we thoroughly enjoyed all week long.  We were back in our rooms by 9:30 and took the 10 o'clock shuttle to the airport. 

The stakes are high at the LA Airport

Since we had lots of time to kill, we took out the deck of cards and played a little "Dame de Pique"  I took the series two games to one and before we knew it we were on our way to Hawaii.  Although we didn't have as much leg room as we did during our trip from Montreal to LA, we were sitting in the middle of the plane with three seats and the other seat in our row was vacant so we were able to spread ourselves a bit and the flight went well. 

Welcome to the Ilikai Towers

Arriving in Honolulu about 30 minutes early, we picked up our car at Hertz and made our way to our home away from home for the next three months.   The apartment is very nice, located two minutes from the beach.  The owners had arranged to have a nice welcome banner on the bed for our arrival along with a few Hawaiian treats.