mattSaturday has arrived once again and transfer day begins. The final drive of our California road trip from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles
Day 13 –
An early start to get back to REI with our original YETI to make sure that the second YETI has a matching lid.. it does, we now own two YETI travel mugs. Still no Stanley Cup.
We got back onto Highway 1 and followed the coast south in search of Malibu and Santa Monica. More gorgeous scenery but the coast is still shrouded in the sea fog that has been with us since we were in Monterey.
We made it to Santa Monica in time for lunch and with only a two hour car park place and a hard time limit to return our hire car we found a tapas restaurant called Manchego for lunch.
After lunch we headed down to check out Venice Beach and apart from the grey skies it’s exactly like it’s represented in films and TV shows. Lots of people cycling and rollerblading along the sea front and then groups of people playing volleyball on the beach or working out. No sign of Mitch Buchannon manning the lifeguard stations on the beach
Knowing we would be without a car for the rest of our trip we headed from Venice Beach into LA to check out some of the sights before getting to the hotel. Driving through West LA into Beverly Hills the scenery changed once again. High end shops made way for wide boulevards and gigantic houses. Unbeknownst to us Google had planned a route that took us up into the hills past many a gated residence allowing us to see spectacular views down across the city.
We descended back down to reality and arrived at our hotel. The Beverly Garland. Checking in we had time to drop our bags in the room before driving to Burbank airport to drop off the car. One Uber later and we were back and heading to the restaurant for dinner.
Scallops and Brussel Sprouts to start (yes they are seemingly an all year round dish in the USA) followed by a steak and beef short rib for mains and a banoffee pie to share for dessert all washed down with a bottle of Napa’s finest Cab Sav.
Day 14 – R&R day
For the first time in two weeks we didn’t have a plan, an organised thing to do or really any means to get anywhere. Cue sitting by the pool in the sun and catching some rays whilst reading our Kindles. Poolside lunch was a luxury we hadn’t had yet on the trip and a light lunch of chips and dips and a flatbread were ordered. Unfortunately the flatbread took too long to arrive but did eventually turn up.
Not wanting to eat at the hotel restaurant for a second night we got a cab from the hotel to The Grove shopping centre to have a look around before checking out The Original Farmer’s Market which had a wide range of speciality food beverage and hot sauce shops to peruse. We eventually found some dinner in Medocino Farms sandwich shop before getting a cab back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep
Day 15 – Universal fun for all the family
Now over 50% of our way through the Honeymoon we decided to start week three with a trip to Universal Studios in LA to experience some rides and go on the backstage tour.
Our hotel offered a free shuttle service to and from the park which departed once an hour. We filled our YETI cups and hopped on the 10AM bus to the theme park.
Getting into Universal was much like it was boarding the internal flights. Metal detectors and X-Ray searches on your bags but on a Monday morning during term time the queues weren’t too long and we were swiftly in the park. We were offered the option to upgrade to VIP/queue jump tickets but it was another $120 on top of the $100+ we had paid for each ticket and it really didn’t seem worth it.
Once in the park, first stop was the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Jen managed to avoid the temptation to get the Gryffindor robes as we entered and we headed to the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride. I can only describe the experience as nauseating and reminiscent of my first experience with a VR headset. Giving Universal some credit they did a very good job of bringing the experience of flying on a Nimbus 2000 with Harry, Ron and Hermione and escaping the Dementors and Dragons that are surrounding Hogwarts in a small space.
After letting my stomach settle we took a ride on the Hippogryph which was a more traditional rollercoaster ride and more what I was expecting from the theme park.
The rest of the Upper Lot in Universal is largely focussed on children’s entertainment – Simpsons, Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets etc so we headed to the Lower Lot where Jurassic World, The Mummy and Transformers were located. Loving a bit of Dino action we queued for the Jurassic world ride where getting wet was not optional. A relaxing lazy river ride with a few over friendly herbivores splashing at the boat we entered the RED ZONE where the Indominous Rex, Tyrannosaurs Rex and Velociraptors were causing havoc. No amount of Chris Pratt with his little clicker was stopping them attack our boat. We lost them in a cave but then were thrown over a giant waterfall and crashed into the waters below thoroughly soaking both of us and our fellow travellers in the boat. Back at the station, the staff apologies profusely for the Dino incursion and assured us that it would not be an issue in the future…
We needed to dry off and in the California Sun this wasn’t going to take long so we availed ourselves of the Panda Express in the park for some chicken, noodles and rice. Incredibly generic but also very easy to eat and keep us going. After we finished we had a look at the queues for Super Nintendo World but these were close to three hours whereas the rest of the park was averaging 30-40 minutes. Sorry Mario we don’t like you that much.
Next Stop – The Mummy where we tried to work out as we queued up would this be the Tom Cruise rendition of the Mummy or the Brendon Fraser version. Thankfully it was the latter and we enjoyed the nods to the films that we both really enjoyed as we queued up. Another traditional rollercoaster awaited us but this was in the dark and went backwards… cue memories of X:\ No Way Out in Thorpe Park from the 1990s. Fired around the inside of an ancient Egyptian pyramid avoiding Imhotep in the dark was good fun and the lack of pseudo VR was a welcome relief.
Lower Park done we headed back to the Upper Lot to get on the real thing we wanted to do at the park – the Backstage tour. The queues here were ~15 minutes with a car leaving every 10 minutes or so. I was expecting most of this to be generic “this is a film set” with some extras pretending to do some work. I was wrong, there were live sets shooting for MaXXXine the third instalment in the X film series.
We got to see some of the exterior sets that were used in shows like Desperate Housewives, National Lampoons Animal House (their houses are on the same “street) as well as the plane crash scene from War of the Worlds where the production team actually broke apart a real plane for the film.
We couldn’t get through the tour without more VR experiences so after a T-Rex vs King Kong 4D experience we had the privilege to “Ride or Die” with Dominic Toretto and his Fast and Furious crew as we avoided the Gods Eye finding us. We also experienced the way that they produce torrential rain and flooding on both a western set but also the San Francisco subway scene from Earthquake (and I also think Beverly Hills Cop III). There are also various cars used through the different Universal films through the years on display as we went around.
As the tour finished we headed back to the Upper Lot and had a look at what was left to explore. We walked through Springfield and the other areas but didn’t take on any more of the rides. As we left the park the one final “excitement” was watching the different tiers of law enforcement arrive to look for the male that attempted to steal three LA Dodgers caps from a stall. I think we counted 10 officers from mall cop to sheriff on foot, one canine unit and three SUVs all looking for the miscreant. Sadly we’ll never know if the perp was caught as our shuttle arrived and we headed back to the Hotel.
A couple of small plates in the hotel saw us through the evening and we packed our bags for an early start on Tuesday as we flew to the Lone Star State, where everything is bigger (except for taxes and fuel prices) and that you don’t mess with…. Texas
