Taking 40 hours to get to Boston

Journeying across the globe always takes a while, but it takes a bit longer when your travel agent is pathalogically afraid of missing connecting flights. What began as a 7 hour stop in LAX became an 11 stop when our first flight got moved back, giving us the chance to actually leave LAX and do the ultimate touristy thing - Hollywood! 

I (Eb) look even paler than usual due to jetlag: phase 1. For Boga it mostly produced dishevelment.

LA is a strange place. It's ritzy and tacky but also oddly run down and grungy. Walking down the Walk of Fame street, which mostly hosts very 'offbeat' (and by offbeat we mean sex shops) shops, we got continually hassled by people on comission until we took a little tourist bus that drives to celebrity homes/hedges in front of celebrity homes, and on the way they point out super famous clubs and hotels apparently chock full of celebrities (and hence the sites of many celebrity deaths) and they look like this:

(from Happy Days)

It only got really fancy when we headed into the legendary Beverly Hills -

House of Elvis and then Nicholas Cage

(JLo)

(Hocus Pocus!)

(Cat in the Hat)

(entrance to 14 square mile playboy mansion. The tour guide claims to have overhead a shouting match between 87 yr old Hefner and his much younger bride (24), something about robbing the cradle/grave. Given the size of the property I somehow doubt it. These tours were some quality vapid fluff)

We also went down Rodeo Drive and past apparenty one the world's priciest shops. The owner's car looks like this:

and it's apparently easy to spend $100,000 in one shopping trip. You know, for people who have that much money.

So that was fun in a weird way, it seems like the tour guides have developed this weird fondess for the celebrities - pointing out where they live but also which courthouse to hang out at to see celebrity arrests. Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton were often mentioned. The city council for 30,000 rich people has a courthouse with 6 judges sitting every day. What weird cases would they see?

He also had a moribund fascination with celebrity deaths, and took the time to point out several death venues and the exact bedroom where Michael Jackson died. And discussing the resulting court cases and jail time. oh LA.

So following that we wandered along Hollywood Blvd, still being hassled by salespeople who wanted to show off their knowledge of Australia by mentioned Abbott. Not sure if it's rude to grimace when people do that. They also liked naming all the cities.

By this point our jetlag was kicking in (as in Eb's had already kicked in. Turns out she doesn't fight sleep deprivation well). But we had great fun checking out the Chinese Theatre.

Turns out it was built by a guy named Sid who is not Chinese, but spent 4 years there and became an enthusiast. In the morning the were Falun Gong protesters out front anyway.

It did have a stunning interior, all original and hand painted -

This wall was painted by a friend of Sid who also happens to play the old guy in Gremlins who sells the Morqui.

In the women's dresssing room, still used to this day by actors coming to film premiers.

The hand/footprints out front were also pretty cool

Apparently only 2 stars have ever been removed from the collection - some total unknown who was added as part of a plot to make him famous, and Charlie Chaplin in the McCarthy era.

We also checked out the Roosevelt hotel, one of the oldest in the area which was Marilyn Monroe's residence and the first host of the Oscars. They were setting up for some fancy after party

At this stage we were passing out from jetlag/normal exhaustion/hunger, so we found a restaurant that used to be the favourite haunt of Charlie Chaplin, Hemingway, Huxley and many others. They also did excellent pasta.

Tired Boga

Really tired Eb

Musso and Frank Grill

With that, we were epically stuffed and ready to head back to the airport for our flight to SFO followed by our flight to Boston. Turns out people now take their dogs on the plane, which was great for us - a guy with a dog needed to sit in our row for takeoff and then left us with an extra seat! 4 hours sleep out of 40 travel hours achieved.

We made it through a zombie stye day of smashing the jetlag and are now on Boston time. Next update to follow soon.

Boga and Eb