The cab dropped me off in Hollywood in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. This was the pickup point for Starline Tours and my first, albeit cheesy, Hollywood tour: the Movie Star Homes tour. I made sure to get into Hollywood in plenty of time to tool around and see what I may see. The rain made Hollywood Blvd. awfully slick. The stars on the Walk of Fame are embedded into a marble-ish type material that becomes pretty slippery when wet. So before my tour began, I snapped some photos of stars close to the theatre that are near and dear to my heart.
It's 9:45am, time to load up tourists into a mini-bus/large-van to ride up into the residential streets and take a Star Homes tour. The ultimate in cheese, but you're in Hollywood...how can you NOT take a tour to see the homes? The homes portion was rather anti-climactic when all was said and done. Hey look, there's the front gate of Madonna's home surrounded by enormous hedges! Ooooh, look here, Neil Diamond's front gate surrounded by similar enormous privacy hedges! And over here, if you look up, you can see the tops of the chimneys of the Playboy Mansion! Oh well. Couldn't really see crap, but it was still fun to be driven around through the neighborhoods.
So we drove up into the Hollywood Hills, the Holmby Hills, and through Beverly Hills. The spots away from the winding residential roads afforded some photo opportunities that the star homes didn't. In the back of mind I knew it, but I guess I never really thought how close L.A. was to mountainous terrain. And luckily, the weather began to break and actual sunshine was fighting to appear!
When we made it to Beverly Hills and down Rodeo Drive, the sun fully peeked out from behind the clouds and tried to warm us up. It was working, but it never got to be that "warm" in the grand scheme of things.
Back to Grauman's Theatre, and there was some time before my next tour: a 1:30pm open-top double decker Hollywood tour. And with the sun fighting the dark clouds, it would turn out to be a winning order to do things. But first, sliders and a malt at Mel's Drive-In for a Hollywood lunch. Yummy!
The double decker bus tour was a whirlwind throughout Hollywood. We drove by Paramount Pictures, down Melrose Avenue, Hollywood Blvd., all over the place! From the top of the bus, I was able to snap some decent photos, although some are crooked or askew as I tried to frame up the subject matter as we were driving by. An hour that took us around to see what there was to see in the area. Pretty cool. If I had a car, it would be cool to revisit what the tour bus touched on. Like the famous stand, Pink's Hot Dogs:
If I had a car, and didn't have to get back for a baseball game, I would TOTALLY go back and wait in that long ass line for a world-famous hot dog.
In any event, I was able to nab some good pictures from the bus (detailed descriptions of stuff can be found with each photo on the Flickr website):
So I called for a cab, and said I'd meet him at Hollywood and Vine. I had always pictured "Hollywood and Vine" as some elaborate intersection with startling visual detail. Not so. It looks like just another intersection. Underwhelming. The nifty thing is that there is the same Hollywood star (and a larger one to boot) on all four street corners at Hollywood and Vine, which made for a neato trivia tidbit:
Back to the hotel to nab the next baseball ticket, and then walk up that damn hill to get to Dodger Stadium. At least this time I knew how long it would take, and realized exactly when the light at the end of the tunnel would occur, so it wasn't nearly as bad as Saturday. Since it was Sunday night game, it began earlier: this time at 5:30pm. With that insufferable L.A. traffic, the cab got me to my hotel right at 5:00pm, so after the walk and getting to my seat (which of course was on the opposite side of the stadium from where my walk takes me), I missed the national anthems but indeed made it in time for first pitch.
The U.S. pitched like crap (par for the course throughout this tournament) and ended up losing to Japan 9-4. The Americans tried to make a game of it in the later innings, but Japan flicked us away like a lint ball off your shoulder. The U.S. looked awful. Here's the boxscore link.
So it would be a Korea vs. Japan final tomorrow night. With the way these two teams played their most recent games, it stands to be a doozy.
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