Upon landing, I got my bag and made my way over to Avis to pick up my car. I got a Nissan Altima, which had one of those new-fangled (well to me) keyless startup systems, which took me much longer to figure out than it really should have. From there, my first stop was the hotel. For the LA leg, I was going to be teaching in two parts of LA, Downtown and Century City. Since Century City was up first, I stayed over there first. My two choices of hotels where either the Hyatt or The Intercontinental. Oddly, pricewise, they were about the same, so I opted for the Intercontinental, remembering I had a good stay at one in Chicago. This turned out to be a good decision, as I was not disappointed at all when I checked in.
I had a nice sized room with a great view of almost all of LA. In fact, from my room, you could see the Hollywood sign way off in the distance. This in fact, meant that I was able to do the one thing that I did not do the last time I was there: See the Hollywood sign. You see, somewhere in this blog below, there's mention of a trip where I spent a few hours in LA on a Thanksgiving weekend, drove around Hollywood, and somehow missed seeing the friggin' sign!
But I digress. I was starving and it was only around 5, so I decided I needed to do stuff. You know me, I always need to do stuff when I travel. Really, the mini quest started out with a desire to buy some bottled water so that I could save my company a bunch of money. I got back in the rental and made my way over to Wilshire Boulevard, calling me friend Lee in NYC who guided me on Google Maps. I drove through the tail end of Rodeo Drive, and finally tracked down a Rite Aid drugstore, where I picked up some bottles of water (I mainly needed them for when I teach) and some snackage.
Afterwards, my stomach reminded me that it was in need of sustenance, so I listened to a suggestion from the Rite Aid checkout cleark and wound up at Callendar's Grill on Wilshire. (http://www.mariecallendersgrill.com/index.html) Where I ate that meat item you see on the main page. While I was there, I caught the end of the Superbowl, watching the Saints beat the Colts (sweet!)
After chatting with the waitress, I realized I was literally right next to the La Brea tar pit, so I figured I'd better go and check it out. I can safely say it lived up to it's name. It's a big 'ole pit of tar.
Figuring that I should make my way back, I hopped in my car and decided to take the long way back, passing by Hollywood Boulevard, which was still quite busy on a Sunday night. And still dumpy.
Back at the room, I snagged some zzzzz's and pondered what the heck I was going to do on Monday.
Monday
As readers of this blog are well aware of, I never really have a plan of what I'm going to do when I have some free time. I did know that first I had to go into the office to make sure everything was set for my classes the next day. Since the building was only 2 blocks away, I walked it, taking pictures of Fox Plaza (Nakatomi Plaza in the first Die Hard movie! You can't really comprehend how excited I was by this...) along the way. After spending some time with the really nice people in the office, I made my way back to the hotel. (I seemed to have skipped breakfast, but didn't really miss it.) All I knew was that today was going to be the day I FINALLY saw the Hollywood sign for real, since, like I said earlier, I missed it completely on a previous trip.
Nakatomi Plaza!
Little did I know how close I'd get.
More to come...
