Well the good news is the Didge made it in one piece (it’s supposed to be in one piece) and was there with our luggage at LA. What followed was a frantic hour, changing travellers cheques we had brought from home (in pounds sterling and US dollars) into real pound notes for the next part of our trip – Cuba won’t take any dollars, has hardly heard of travellers cheques, and ATMs are erratic, we’re told). We didn’t want to bring our Cuba money out in pound notes and carry it around with us for three months, for obvious reasons. We told the women at the bureau de change that we were changing it back to English pounds because we were meeting our son in LA and wanted to give him some English currency to take home. We are a bit afraid to mention our trip to Cuba to airline officials in case our American Airline flights from LA to Dallas to Cancun and later from Cancun to Miami to London are then cancelled, as they could be because of our side trip.
I’d booked us what they call a ‘stopover tour’ for today. A tour of LA’s major sights for five hours as we can’t imagine choosing to come to LA for a visit in itself but it seemed silly not to see something while we are here. It was interesting but quite bizarre. Our tour driver, Donald, first took us to Venice Beach which we liked, but it is absolutely mad – the real loony side of LA, street artists, skateboarders, buskers, and a special graffiti wall,
all in a bustling little seafront. Venice itself was lovely – still a few canals with really nice waterside homes. He showed us the house where this really famous sculptor lives (not on the waterside but in what looked quite a seedy part of Venice), but we’d never heard of the sculptor and I can’t remember his name. We have heard of Anjelica Houston and he’s married to her and she lives there too. Impressed? No, nor were we really. We then went to Santa Monica which again was quite nice but nothing special, except that it’s a place you’ve grown up hearing about on TV, in books and films etc. It got even funnier as he was driving us round Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Wilshire Drive, etc and kept talking about people who were REALLY famous, but who we’d never heard of (of course there were also a lot we had heard of). We then went on to Hollywood and stopped outside Mann’s Chinese theatre and went for another walk along the ‘Walk of Fame’ where all the stars are on the pavement, and the hand/footprints of other stars are set in the concrete. All good fun. We then viewed the Hollywood sign
and drove back along Sunset Strip to see all the nighclubs/restaurants etc owned and frequented by more people that we didn’t know. The final stop was at the Farmers’ Market, which is no longer a farmers’ market, but instead a very nice outdoor shopping area with a good eating area with food from every nationality you can imagine and some other strange shops.
So, was it good? It was exactly as we expected, good fun, worth doing if you’re here, but not a place worth visiting in its own right. Just as people had told us, in fact. We’re now at the Travel Lodge at LA airport, which is again, exactly what we expected. Adequate for half a night’s sleep before our flight in the morning and a real comedown from the Intercontinentals. We had to get back to reality sooner or later and this may prepare us for what we’re expecting to be not-very-good hotels in Cuba!
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