Downtown in LA
14th December, Los Angeles, Downtown and rainy
This could be a small diary entry. Well, by my standards, at least!
We jumped on the Metro to take us down to, well, 'downtown'. This is the area that you'll find LA's skyscrapers and big department stores. At 10:30 am on a Sunday, it's unlikely that you'll find much of interest, though, and definitely not when it's raining like it was on this grey old morning. You may well find a wide selection of homeless and crackheads wandering a round. Perhaps they might speak to you, perhaps they'll be happy with speaking to themselves, who knows? The most classic LA downtown loon I saw was the very out-of-it guy wandering along 7th Street, I mean shuffling and limping, while wearing a massive sombrero with the words 'Viva Mexico' on it.
We tried to find out what our options would be and asked some people in Pershing Square - workers putting up tourist leaflets, not the local crazies, of which there were many surrounding the square. We were advised to try the DD Dash bus that would do a complete circuit of the downtown area for 25 cents. We tried several bus stops but couldn't find where to pick it up, and ended up walking in the rain until we found another Metro stop. That was it - let's go back to the hotel!
Slightly at a loss for what to do, we spent much of the afternoon milling around the Hollywood Boulevard area, looking at the tourist souvenir shops (but not buying). Truth be known, we probably spent the most time in just one shop - a place called Brookstones that was selling all manner of gadgets (you know me and gadgets!); Manda tried no less than five different massaging chairs while I kept on returning to the same thing - a stress-relieving cushion called a 'Mogu' that just begged to picked up (I later bought one thinking that the extra comfort that this little pillow might offer could come in handy in the coming weeks when we find ourselves in less salubrious surroundings).
Ian trying out comfy bedding in Brookstones
Later that day, after another stop at Starbucks (and another failed attempt at getting Internet access - T-Mobile Hotspot's sign-up page continually refused to accep that any of my Nationwide credit cards were valid!) we walked back up to Mann's Chinese Theatre in time for a premiere. Steve Martin was there to promote his new film Cheaper by the Dozen. From the opposite side of the road all we could see was the very silver head of Mr Martin and the faces of camera men who had their lenses trained on the actor. Also present was Ashton Kutcher (who is probably better known as the young guy going out with Demi Moore - also there) and probably a bunch of others who didn't warrant screams from the crowd we found ourselves in. Some people had brought binoculars along with them - serial premiere attendees, I would wager!
Dinner was in a place called Koji's, a 'Sushi and Shabu Shabu' restaurant. Yeah, I hadn't heard of Shabu Shabu either. It's basically this - you sit at a place and you have a dish of boiling water and some dips.
Manda eating Shabu Shabu
The food is brought to you uncooked and thinly sliced (the meat is, at least) and you have to do the cooking - just pick up what you want, pop it in the bowl and swish it around a few times. Shabu Shabu! You're done. Incidentally, it means swish swish in Japanese, or so the waitress told us. It was an interesting meal, quite tasty and a surprise for me, given that I 'don't do green' and not a sushi lover either. I didn't finish the meal - left more than half of it in fact. I'd try it again, but I'm definitely more of a traditional roast dinner person!