August 4th. Hollywood.

Second last day of the trip and still a few things to tick off the list, as well as more ‘stuff’ to be bought. First of all was a trip to the local supermarket to stock up on the various sauces, marinades and seasonings that abound here, most of which are full of msg but hey, sure tastes good. We took the Metro up to Universal City for the visit to the studios. It’s basically a theme park with themed shops and restaurants for the various films and characters. It’s designed to part you from your cash, which was ok by me as I now have most of my Christmas shopping done plus a whole new collection of ‘things’ for my house – some major pottering will take place back in Madrid. We took the trip around he back lot with all the western towns, the Bates Motel, Jaws, The Mummy, the earthquake sequence from some film I slept through and so on – a good laugh. We had a great feed of ribs from the Fred Flintstone bar-b-que and grill. You can pick up beers everywhere and they can be expensive, costing up to $11 a pop. We saw a great Blues Brothers tribute, they put on an excellent show. One of the most memorable things was a ‘New York’ couple sitting at a window on a ‘New York’ street, making comments on everyone who walked past, very improv and quite funny. Time to move on and hit the strip. We took the Metro back to Hollywood and Market, this is where all the stars are remembered on the pavement (I refuse to say sidewalk). It’s where the Kodak Theatre is as well as the famous Chinese Theatre with all the footprints and handprints of the famous. It was a bit strange looking at marks made by people not around anymore, I know I’ve touched on this before, it’s not morbid, it’s a curious observation. We hit a great bar near the corner of Hollywood and Market called ’The Power House’ complete with some starlet who had just got a part as an extra in some Tom Hanks film, she wasn’t picked for her looks, or maybe she was. Time for some more impulse shopping, I’m building up a great collection of shirts. Back to the hood for a few beers in ‘Get Lucky’ where we chatted with Dave the barman, who was in Dingle (Co. Kerry, Ireland, my favourite place in the Universe) a couple of years ago. The bang of the latch was had in ‘Ye Rustic Tavern’ where we are now recognised, great.