Tinsel Town

A Twilight Zone: Hollywood

The drive to Los Angeles from San Diego already prepared us for what initially proved to be a rather drab city.  Hollywood is a district in central Los Angeles.  On the face of it this is just another city with a fairly busy commercial centre.  No fairy would choose this place for its looks.

Notice the signs!

The cars reminded us we were amongst the rich and the famous.

On Thanksgiving we were kindly invited to dinner by acquaintances, professors at the University of California.  They only expected us in the afternoon so we still had a bit of time for sightseeing.  Chris and I wanted to see the Hollywood sign. According to the Internet, residents do not exactly welcome the throngs of tourists who all want to drive and climb all the way to the sign. Pieter suggested we go to the Griffith Observatory situated in Griffith Park from where one can clearly see the sign.

Griffith Observatory

Downtown Los Angeles

Getting closer to the Hollywood sign

This was a brilliant idea as Griffith Observatory commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin with Downtown Los Angeles to the southeast and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest not to mention Hollywood to the south.  It is a popular tourist attraction with an extensive array of space and science-related displays - on Thanksgiving though, it was closed.




People parked in droves at the bottom of the hill and then hiked to the top. It was a hot day, we basked in the brilliant sunshine and it was dusty.  Los Angeles is arid and Hollywood Mountain is not far removed from a sand dune which partly explains why climbing to the Hollywood sign is not a good idea - it dislodges more of the sand.  We drove all the way up fearing that we might not find any parking, but we were still fairly early and could park not too far from the Observatory.


Nothing could stifle our excitement at seeing the Hollywood sign from quite close.  Is it not amazing how imagination and storytelling changed this place from not very inspiring to the stuff of dreams? Standing there in the heat and dust should not have been wonderful at all - but it was!

Pieter Botha and Chris de Wet

The next day we were to move on to Buellton in the Santa Ynez valley to be closer to the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California.  Before going, Chris asked about the Walk of Fame and we decided, having driven past Hollywood Boulevard the day before, that we could make a stop there first.  We had the same experience as with the Hollywood sign.  We parked in front of a construction site in a very unremarkable city environment.  The Walk of Fame itself is nothing but the pavements of a city street with blocks containing stars with the names of celebrities on them. Still, it felt as if we had personally met Tim Rice and the astronauts that had landed on the moon, such is the magic of the place.

A very ordinary street

The Walk of Fame

Stars from real life as well as films

Sir Tim Rice's star

One is reminded that countless films and television series are filmed in Los Angeles.  If you look them up they are listed in alphabetical order - they are so many.  Just looking at films and series with a Los Angeles setting one remembers The A-Team, Baywatch, The Big Bang Theory, The Bold and the Beautiful, Charlie's Angels, The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air, Hannah Montana, MacGyver, need I go on? The city of angels certainly provides us with a lot of joy and many hours of relaxation and inspiration.  The name is not such a misnomer after all.

A lovely old theatre in Hollywood