My Absoutely Wonderful Hollywood Birthday Weekend!

I was trying to think of something that I really wanted to do for my 30th birthday. I thought about Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, but then I thought about Broadway. But flying to New York for a weekend just wasn't going to work. One of my favorite musicals is "Wicked" and I looked up where it was playing. Luckily, it was on stage in Los Angeles... a very do-able weekend trip. So I asked Steve if he would mind taking me and I was preparing myself for a "no way." But I was a surprised when he said "Absolutely" without any hesitation. Plans were in place and Mom and Dad volunteered to take the kids for the weekend (Thank you sooooooooooooo much). We left early Saturday morning after Steve got off work and headed down to L.A. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn near LAX.

Our tickets for "Wicked" were for Sunday night, so we decided to start out early Sunday morning and walk around Hollywood Blvd. On the way there, we took some pictures of the surroundings and luckily we were able to experience some real L.A. traffic on our way to the Blvd. We kept joking about how we needed to stay away from the helicopters along the freeways: a sure sign a high-speed chase was in route.

Along the freeway there is a section that runs above the freeway. This is the carpool lanes. Now, it's not that we haven't seen this before, but what was interesting about this was the bus stops up there. There are bus stops in the MIDDLE of the freeway in the carpool section. How do the people get up there? They have walkways that either cross above the freeway or come up the middle from the bottom. It's pretty ingenious. Buses don't have to get off the freeway for bus stops and then get back on.

It was amazingly a pretty clear day for Los Angeles. And it was kind of neat to go right through the middle of the city at 65mph on the freeway.

Once we got to Hollywood Blvd, we started to drive around and look for the "Hollywood" sign. When we found it, we tried to drive closer to it. There were actually road signs that said that you can't get closer to the sign. And we started to notice that the closer we got, the more the hills hid the sign. AND the more the houses started to look more and more expensive. We kept waiting to see a celebrity walking their dog or something.

We were able to find a parking spot in one of the make-shift parking lots on the Boulevard. We walked decided to start on the east side of Hollywood Blvd and walk west. I enjoyed taking pictures of the stars. We did discover that there were some doubles of the stars. We also found some interesting sights while we were walking.

Here is one of the tour buses. Hey, all you have to do is cut a van in half and you have a nice open tour van. They are lucky this is Hollywood and not Seattle where it rains without warning.

Steven found this kind of funny: "Discount drugs". But the interesting thing I also notice, retrospectively, is the banner in the top left-hand corner advertising "Headshots".

Steven almost couldn't resist bargains like these: "3 suits, 3 shirts, 3 silk ties, 3 leather belts, and 3 hankies, for $299". . .

And I had to strong-hold him from buying this t-shirt: "FOR SALE: WIFE, (my) house, (my) car, lots of jewelry, clothes (including the shirt off my back). Original owner. All paperwork included. MUST SELL... Moving to bankruptcy court. Body in excellent condition (rarely used, never driven hard). Low mileage. Runs quiet with full tank. NOT AN ECONOMY MODEL!!! Needs tune up and lubrication. Terms Of Sale: Take over payments!"

Now this was interesting. So, let me set the scene. Here's this building and next to it is an adult shop and across the street is a store called "Playmates". On this board it says: "Ecclesia Hollywood. ChurchInHollywood.com. Sunday 11am."

We found the Capital Records building. I was trying to make Steven go in and start singing to see if he would get a record deal. He wasn't having it though.

We didn't go into the Wax Museum, but we did go into another museum - I believe it was the Max Factor museum. There was a lady who looked about in her 80s or 90s who checked in our bags and camera (no photos were allowed). She looked like she was definitely part of old Hollywood and had A LOT of plastic surgery done on her face (her nose was almost gone). They had a lot of memorabilia including clothes people wore and a car Cary Grant used to drive. There was a section dedicated to Jurassic Park and when you stepped in a certain spot, the floor would give away slightly and you would feel it shake (like a dinosaur was near). The really scary part was the section in the basement where they replicated the jail set from "Silence of the Lambs". Oh, it was freaky. And it didn't help when Steven was whispering in my ear, "Hello Clarice."

We got in our car and drove to the far west end of the strip (it was just too long to walk the whole thing; we still had to get back to the hotel to get ready for our play. It was a week before the Oscars, so they starting to set up in front of the Kodak Theater. Here are there the bleachers and next to it were the press trailors.

There were a lot of people at the Chinese Theatre. But we were able to shuffle around to take pictures of all the footprints. It was so neat to compare your own feet to the stars. Judy Garland and Debbie Reynalds had the tinyest feet, while Samuel L. Jackson's feet and hands were huge!

There were a lot of people out on the street dressed in costumes. It was a little surreal. There was a Marilyn Monroe who was almost as old as the real Marilyn Monroe would be if she was still alive, but she was still wearing that skimpy white dress from "Seven Year Itch".

We soon found out though that the people all dressed up weren't there just for fun. They were there to hustle. They wanted money to take pictures with them.

But they weren't the only hustlers. There were street dancers, street singers, and some just handing out their demo CDs wanting people to listen to their work, hoping that their demo would land in the right hands.
The Kodak Theatre was neat to see and the amazing thing that you don't see during the red carpet shows is that it's actually in the middle of a mall. Down the hallway to the theatre there is a Louie Vuitton store.

So, our tour ended with the Pantages Theatre and right before we got there, there was a fire engine in the middle of traffic with lights and sirens going. And when it stopped in traffic, a few guys jumped out in the middle of traffic to put their turnouts on. I guess there really is a "Chinese Fire Drill".

The Pantages Theatre is where "Wicked" is playing in Los Angeles. It was really pretty inside, but the restroom situation wasn't fun. At intermission, everyone got up to use the restrooms that had a que line very similar to Disneyland during the summer. I barely moved down the line and they were already flashing the lights for us to return to our seats.

I absolutely LOVED the musical. It was wonderful. It was funny and witty, and the music was unbelievable. It got a standing ovation, even from Steven. It was just a great show. When we were leaving, I just had tears in my eyes because the whole weekend was absolutely amazing and wonderful. It was more than I ever could have dreamed of.

On the way home, we met Mom, Dad, and the kids in Solvang on Monday morning for some ableskivers. We took Highway 1 all the way home (which was beautiful, but a little too long). On the day of my birthday, it was a nice family evening. Steven got me my favorite cake from The Buttery (but they had to replace the strawberries with tangerines and kiwi because of the fruit season). He was just wonderful the whole week: taking me to the play in Hollywood, the cake, everything.