Venice to Hollywood (Ch 4)

Chapter 4 of the ongoing FairyBlogTail about our Aussie Family who find themselves in the City of Angels.

Caffeine, a comfy seat and nibblies recommended..

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So after dining on ‘shrimp’ (like Aussie prawns) and correctly answering a Forrest Gump quiz, the Family headed south to explore yet ANOTHER famous LA site, that of Venice Beach.

Now both the Mother and the Father have been to the original Venice (the one in Italy) and it was absolutely one of her favourite places on Earth.  (He liked it to, but mostly because of the food!).  THIS Venice had a beach, which the original most definitely did not.  It had to be said that the Mother might also have been intrigued by stories of musclemen on said beach.. so they set off, Nikon at the ready.

Their were certainly some Roman-type columns decorating the beach-front facades…

And a fabulous spelling mistake on the wall…

(Can you spot it? Am sure it must be well-known, with the ‘Wrold’s Best Funnel Cakes’ emblazoned on the menu board).

And they ambled along the ‘happeningst‘ beachfront which appeared for all intents and purposes to be mostly asleep…

Because (as we mentioned earlier) it wasn’t REALLY the beachyest weather …

(Does anyone else expect David Hasselhoff to leap from behind one of these lifesaver lookouts?)

Ad as they wandered they DID happen across some rather interesting beach businesses…

And the Mother wondered if perhaps the business on the right REQUIRED clients to work their way on from business on the left?

And despite the lack of musclemen to entertain them/her, she found delight in the oh-s0-American structures and billboards they happened upon…

(Actually this shot is among her very favourites from the whole trip – but she is a bit of a pop-culture weirdo like that!)

And then the Father pointed out THIS little gem …

Touting itself as the World’s Smallest Art Gallery (and we can confirm, Gentle Reader, that it was in fact the size of a small walk-in wardrobe.  i.e, not Oprah’s)

Then the Prince discovered some street art which appealed to warrior within.  He was really rather groovy in a violent, rusty kind of way…

And they walked.

And walked.

And the Mother lagged behind… ostensibly to get groovy palm-tree-ish photos.

But mostly she was sick of walking.

Then they came across a lot of Very Big Trailers in a beachside park, and the idea was put into their heads that perhaps a movie was being shot somewhere nearby.

But if there WERE any superstars in those trailers, they were staying well hidden from nosy Aussie Families wandering by.  The Mother likes to think that perhaps Hugh Jackman was in there.  Or perhaps it was Anthony Hopkins.  Or maybe it was just a convention of trailer-owners.

They Mother decided that THIS van was among the coolest she had seen.

If you like your campers all bubble-like.

So they shook things up and walked away from the beach and saw some rather cool homes with the proverbial white picket fences.

But as this still involved walking, the Mother soon insisted on hailing a cab for the last 500 metres of the journey.  (Hush, her wrecked ol’ knees were sore!)

And seeing as how it had been a while since the Princess had discovered an acceptable alternative to Weet Bix…

And the Prince had devoured his King-sized breakfast…

(Yes these are gratutitious food photos plonked unneccessarily in the middle of this Chapter)…

And the Family had Forrest Gumped their way through lunch…

They set sail (or rode Tourist Bus) back into the bowels of Beverley Hills …

Before getting on ANOTHER tourist bus to investigate…

HOLLYWOOD!

The Mother took some shocking photos out the window of the bus in the dim late-afternoon light (deciding along the way that she really MUST read her Nikon instruction manual when she got back to the hotel)…

Among the questionable images she ‘captured’ were:

The Writers Guild of America – home/channel of many great screenplays.

The entrance Paramount Pictures (sorry Paramount – you deserved better as the bus whizzed by!)

The Hollywood sign… yes, she knows. She’d pretend that all those ‘in the know’ refer to it as ‘YWOOD’ but she just doesn’t think she could pull that off.

(She also knows this photo definitely ain’t worth publishing. But then, despite this being a FairyBlogTale, the art of Keeping It Real should also be acknowledged.  Take it up with the editors, okay?)

And then the neon takes over and KA-POW!

It’s All-American and Soda Fountain City.

And then our Oz-in-Yankee Land Family felt their tummies begin to grumble again…

So they alit from the lolly-red (or was it blue) tourist bus and walked smack-BANG into/over Marilyn.

She wasn’t very talkative.

And wouldn’t you know it, Michael was there too…

(The Prince fancies himself quite the Jacko impersonator and gives an excellent account of a moonwalk plus other dance moves the Mother ISN’t so keen on encouraging).

And just as they thought they might faint of hunger, they spied this…

The Hollywood Hard Rock Cafe.

Where they took up a booth, and bopped and ketchup-ed till they dropped.

Okay, not quite, but they DID find something the Princess would eat (pasta)…

And enough Buffalo Wings to satisfy a Prince…

Apparently, Buffalo Wings also transform little boys into the Prince of Darkness…

And on that note, the Family hailed a cab back to Rodeo Drive and nestled into their beds in readiness for their final Beverly Hills Day Out.

(And it was a doozy, but you will have to wait for Chapter 5, Gentle Reader.  And for this narrator to ignore her other work for long enough to belt it out for you. *Ahem*)

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