USA Holiday, October 30 (The Grove)

The plan for today was to walk down to the La Brea Tar Pits, Farmers Market and The Grove (shopping district) which are all within a few minutes of each other, south of Hollywood and passing through the Miracle Mile district. What wasn't part of the plan was the two hours or so it took to walk in each direction. Looking roughly at the map, I expected a casual one hour walk at most each way. I later calculated the round trip to be 8.1 miles / 13 kilometres. What was the most frustrating is that I wasn't exhausted or even particularly tired, but my foot was so bad I had to stop and sit down for a break every 10 minutes on the way back.

The Tar Pits were full of tar, like you might imagine. Quite an odd sight in a built up area of downtown. I didn't go into the museum so not sure what was in here, probably stuff they found in the tar pits I guess.

As I suggested, it was well and truly lunch time by now, so luckily the Farmers Market was the next destination. The market is a bit like QV Market, a little smaller and more about cafe-type stores than fresh produce, although there was some of that too - including high priced Australian apricots and the like. The Grove is right alongside on the same block, and has some upmarket fashion stores and such. Not much for me. There was also some kind of rail track going through The Grove which was interesting, but I didn't see anything travelling on it.

Outside The Grove.

Inside The Grove, facing down to the Farmers Market.

So all that fun was just the first half of the day, I still had to make it back to Hollywood - I should have worked out what bus was going that way, there's no trains in this part of the city at all.

Several hours later, I made it back to Hollywood. Wasn't much time to do what I had originally planned, so just spent a while checking out the Hollywood & Highland shopping centre and seeing what else what around. One of the fun things about walking along Hollywood Boulevard is all the people in costumes you see. Apparently some of them do it for a living, getting donations off people for photos. Some that I saw included: Superman, Kobe Elmo (Elmo with a Kobe jersey), Bart Simpson and The Joker.

A street off Hollywood Boulevard to the west of Hollywood, where it becomes a normal residential area.

There was a Fantastic Mr. Fox premiere, not sure if any of the stars turned up.

Part of the Hollywood and Highland Shopping Centre.
Also a prime location for shots of the Hollywood sign.