A Day in L.A.

I have long assumed that when I first visited California, San Francisco would be the destination. But a variety of things conspired to make L.A. the spot -- largely Disneyland, my love of the movie La La Land, its relative proximity to New Mexico (another state on my list to visit). So L.A. it was. 

While most of our visit to California was spent at Disneyland, we set aside two days to explore: one in the city (today's post) and one at a beach (a future post). 

We started out at Griffith Observatory -- it was closed, but parking is free on weekdays before noon, so we took advantage and took in some great views of the city and the Hollywood sign.

After lunch we sprang for a Warner Brothers Studio Tour and enjoyed it -- about an hour tour of the backlots (including scenery from Friends, Gilmore Girls and La La Land) and the set of Ellen, followed by a couple of hours of exhibits. It was fun to hear how the same fronts and buildings are used in so many different ways. Plus we got a photo in front of the Friends fountain! The La La Land "cafe" was no longer set up, but I got a photo of the building that was transformed into it.

The La La Land cafe

Gilmore Girls

Ellen set

There was lots of Harry Potter stuff too!

Even managed to find something from one of my favorite shows of all time.

I wanted to see a bit of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so we walked a couple of blocks of it and came across the movie premiere for Shang-Chi. It was kind of surreal. After we got home, I came across some photos and a write-up of the movie premiere, and it was really weird to see the glamour without any of the workaday stuff behind it.

The studio tour was that way too, making abundantly clear that these are people's jobs -- albeit ones whose products are seen and judged by millions. But there are also the extras, the caterers and the ones carting around supplies. Jobs, too.

We ate at In-N-Out Burger before heading back to Anaheim -- how could we resist? Los Angeles isn't my favorite city in the world, but it was fun to see what the city is famous for in the limited time we had.