Good Morning Los Angeles!

I do mean 'good morning.' I woke up about quarter of six and, after some fruitless flip-this-way-and-that, realized I wasn't going back to sleep. So why not blog?
We arrived in Hollywood (OK, we're next door to Hollywood, but still, pretty close) yesterday, around noon, and, first off, the time difference is nuts. Flat out nuts. Weirder than Las Vegas and lemme tell you why: in Vegas, all real life is suspended. Breakfast at four p.m., drinks at ten a.m., gambling all the time. It doesn't seem to matter where you're from- time stops being important.
Here, though, we must still adhere to normal life, i.e. lunch at nine a.m., when I would want it, or bed at eight p.m. does not make sense (not that that stopped us. We were were so exhausted yesterday, after leaving our home at four in the morning E.S.T. to get to the airport, that we came back to the room at seven last night and by eight we were both asleep- mind you, I'd been dozing since about seven fifteen).
But already, in the space of a day, we've managed to pack in, not just flying here, but a trip to Hollywood Boulevard!
Transportation was a question at the start of the trip, as we decided, with only two and a half days here (don't even ask what time we fly out Wednesday a.m.), and two concerts planned in the evening, dedicated, investigative sightseeing was pretty much out of the question. And our hotel is only a block from the subway (she says with false confidence) so why not try this whole mass transportation system and see what it's all about? We'd done it (closely supervised- thanks B&B!) in Atlanta. How hard could L.A. be?
Not bad at all is the answer (you weren't expecting that, were you? Me either). We walked to the station, hopped on, and rode straight to Hollywood/Highland.
Sidenote: Question: The first thing we do when walking out of our hotel? Answer: Run into some University of TN Vols fans. There were two women, one wearing that hard-to-miss UT orange and as we passed I (look, it's in my blood) yelled "Go VOLS!" At which they both laughed and callled back "Go VOLS!"
But they're from TN. And we're from TN. So they had barely passed, before one turned around and called over her shoulder, "Where are you from?"
To which I called back "Knoxville!"
And they called back, "Us too!"
Southern chatting commenced. They told us about some cut-rate place to shop called The Alley and gave us Tennessee-style directions on how to get to there ("it's called The Alley and you take the bus stop right up here and then you hop off at Adams-" friend cuts in "no it wasn't Adams-" "no, that's right, but it was next to that huge building with all the windows-" "that's right, and then a few streets over-" "by the gas station-" "yeah, there was a gas station-" "maybe you should just ask the busdriver"- "that's right, but it's called The Alley") and we told them we were here for two concerts and on our way to Hollywood Blvd, and pointed out our hotel behind them and they told us they were flying out that night at ten and had been there for four days and really wanted to be on The Price is Right but the show was cancelled so they saw Dr. Phil instead and then everyone exchanged social security numbers and passwords and finally parted ways, glad to have met a fellow Tennessean all the way out here in Los Angeles, California.
End Sidenote.
The subway was easy and, as we were only four stops away from Hollywood Blvd., we were there fast and we headed back up to street-level, stepped out onto the sidewalk, into a crowd of millions, it seemed, and started walking. And wondered about where Grauman's Chinese Theater was and how did we get to the Walk of Stars and if we couldn't find it today, we'd find it tomorrow, let's just look around and observe and what sounds good for dinner (at three p.m.) and- oh, look!- an outdoors shopping mall! Which we wandered around, admiring the architecture of the buildings surrounding us a little and talking about where to eat a lot, and somehow we found ourselves four flights up, looking over the street we'd just left, only for The Hubba to announce he wanted to take a picture of the building across from us.
It was here when he looked down and discovered the sidewalk we'd just left was the Walk of Stars.



How about that for dedicated and investigative sightseeing?

And one block over we found Grauman's Chinese theater and the famous hand and footprints.











For you, Knitty Yoda...


We saw the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are filmed every year. There were people on the streets (out of work actors perhaps?) dressed up as superheroes and getting their pictures made with kids.



After about two hours of jumping around and exclaiming, we (i.e. I) realized we were to hungry to go on and so ate at the Pig n' Whistle.



Then took the subway back to our hotel rooms and, well, fell asleep.