Strom Travel Diaries

Day 10 – Sunday, December 26, 2021

We took the opportunity to have a little lie-in since the only thing we had planned in L.A. was a hop-on-hop-off bus. We got up and got ourselves down to breakfast around 8 and had breakfast sandwiches at the Starbucks café that ran around the center tower base in the lobby. This was a pretty snazzy Starbucks, though, with what seemed like nicer than usual breakfast sandwiches and London Fog on the menu rather than just something you have to know to request. Mom saw the first hop-on/hop-off go by, and I looked up the schedule and realized that we’d have to get a move on if we wanted to do two of the three tours. Since we’d be heading out on the next train that evening, we got our stuff re-packed, took it downstairs to the bellhop desk, and we went out to the hop-on/hop-off stop that was just outside the hotel. It turned out that the bus actually stopped at the hotel twice: once at the beginning of the Downtown L.A. loop and once at the end. The bus, when it came around again was at the beginning of the loop.

The 2-hour loop took us past all kinds of recognizable landmarks from Chinatown to Olivero Street to Union Station. We went past the fashion district and the theater district and a bunch of government buildings. One thing that struck me was the sheer volume of art around the city. Just about everywhere you looked there was a statue or a mural or a fountain. The buildings themselves were more often works of art than not. Architecture in just about every style imaginable. And the commentary on the tour was much better than when we were on the hop-on/hop-off in Chicago. Just a woman narrating what you were seeing as you went by, any significance to it, and if you might recognize it from any movies or TV shows. Of course, from different vantage points we could see the Hollywood sign peeking through.

At the end of the loop, the bus went by the first two stops again before proceeding to the meeting point for the Hollywood loop. Of course, I had been on the top deck of the bus the whole time and Mom had joined me pretty soon after since the weather was so nice (though chillier than I would have expected for L.A. since it was in the mid 50s—we were definitely wearing our jackets). So we ended up going down the freeway to Hollywood on the top deck of the bus. That was an adventure!

The bus dropped us off in front of the Dolby Theater, and we were told that the next bus on the Hollywood loop wouldn’t leave until about 12:45, which gave us a good 20 or 25 minutes to wander around. We were smack dab in the middle of the Walk of Fame and had already passed a souvenir shop at the corner. We used our time wisely, by-passed all of the people dressed as superheroes and other movie characters, and went to the souvenir shop as I pointed out the stars of people of interest on the way. Souvenirs bought, we went up the other side of the street, still pointing out stars of people we recognized (no I didn’t take any photos of specific stars, the crowds were making me anxious). We crossed the street ahead of where the buses were parked and walked back in that direction, past Grauman’s Chinese Theater. We got on the bus and grabbed some good seats. Our first tour of the day had been pretty quiet, just us and another family on the top deck and a few people on the bottom deck. Well, not so on the Hollywood loop. People got on and they just kept coming. I kept looking at the time on my phone wondering if we’d ever get going. The reason I was a little concerned with the time was because the last bus going back to downtown L.A. was leaving at 3 p.m. and the Hollywood loop was set to be another 2-hour tour, so we would already be cutting it a bit fine, time-wise. On the other hand, I knew that it wouldn’t be impossible to get back to our hotel, just a little more inconvenient than originally planned. So I decided to sit back and enjoy the tour.

The Hollywood route took us by yet more recognizable landmarks. Of course, one of the big parts of the loop was Beverly Hills, where they paint their fire hydrants silver and keep their trash bins in little alleys so that the garbage trucks won’t have to come down the residential streets. We went past Rodeo Drive (tour buses aren’t allowed to drive down it, apparently) and I got lots of photos of the Beverly Hills Police Department, because it was pretty snazzy. The end of the Hollywood loop went past things like the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Original Farmers Market and the Grove, Melrose Trading Post (a Sunday-only bazaar at Fairfax High School), Melrose Avenue,and Capitol Records.

We came back along the Walk of Fame (I saw Angela Lansbury’s star from the bus!) and ended up back in front of the Dolby Theater at just about 2:55. We ran off the bus and I flagged down one of the Starline guys, who was able to tell me that the bus back downtown hadn’t left yet and pointed out which one it was (there were about three in a row). We hurried on and decided to sit downstairs for the trip back. Of course, the drive on this leg ended up being more of a tour and didn’t go on the freeway at all, so we could’ve gone topside. But that was alright. We saw everything just fine and I was OK taking a break from turning every which way to try and get photos of as many things as possible.

The bus got us back to the hotel around 4 p.m., and we decided to get some linner (lunch-dinner for anyone not in the know) since we’d skipped lunch. But first we really needed to use the bathroom. The bathrooms on the second floor, where the hotel entrance was on the street and the bus had its hop-on/hop-off stop, were bolted shut. Ok, fine, we’d just go downstairs. We got downstairs and the women’s restroom was blocked off with one of those folding wet floor signs. We were getting a little desperate at that point, so we moved the sign aside. Well, it wasn’t just a wet floor. They were installing at least one toilet, as evinced by the giant hole in the floor of one of the stalls and the toilet sitting in the middle of the restroom. So we went into the men’s room, which was thankfully empty. Business done and hands washed, we came out and walked around a corner to readjust our bags and jackets. And thank goodness we did because a guy went by us and straight into the restroom. Close call!

We went back to the same café for linner (there were others, but one only did breakfast and lunch and the other was closed due to COVID had hadn’t reopened yet), which was more than just the Starbucks at that point and actually provided a sit-down service. I got pasta and Mom got the biggest club sandwich I’ve ever seen. I think it was the biggest club sandwich she’d ever seen, too. After linner, we found the hotel gift shop and wandered around there for a few minutes—I got a movie quiz book where you have to guess the movie from six hand-drawn illustrations. Then we got our bags and I called a Lyft.

Back at Union Station, which was much closer to Olvero Street than I realized, we checked our big bag and got to go up to the Metropolitan Lounge to wait. The train wasn’t due to leave until 10 p.m. so we had a little while to wait. The biggest downside to traveling in winter is how early it gets dark, which can be a bit of a deterrent to exploring things when you’ve got time between doing one thing and doing the next thing. So we sat in the lounge, drank some tea, and watched the Sunday night line-up on ABC. America really does have some funny home videos.

At the previous train stations we were asked if we needed Red Cap assistance and turned it down each time. Well, we didn’t get that choice in L.A., and it soon became apparent why. Each time we had the opportunity to use one of the first-class lounges, someone would announce when a train was ready to board and then would lead anyone in the lounge who was taking that train to the platform, often through a different door than the lounge entrance. In L.A., you exited to a ramp down to the Red Cap golf carts, which then drove the passengers about ½ a mile around the back of the terminal to the platform.

We didn’t have to wait long for the train and the Red Cap had dropped us off pretty close to where our car was on the train. It was another long train as it would split in San Antonio, with the front half going to New Orleans and the back half going up to Chicago. We were waiting for the sleeping car attendant to be ready for us to board when she got off and came around asking for the passenger in room 15. Well, that wasn’t us, and she seemed miffed when she asked me that directly and I said, no, we were in room 14. There was a little more confusion about our tickets, which did not endear her to us or us to her, but we finally got settled in our room. The beds had already been turned down, so once the train got under way and we had passed any sights of interest that we could see, we got ready for bed, read for a little while, and turned out the lights.