Monday 4 April 2011

Friday - Day 2 L.A.

After a good night's sleep we woke up naturally and set off to hunt for a decent place to have breakfast. First on our list was Uncle John’s Cafe, which was literally down the road and it was a good choice. Their speciality is spicy pork chops, but we settled for the omelettes and toast.

This set us up for the rest of the day and next, we headed down to Figueroa Street and to The Grammy Museum. We were a bit early (the box office doesn't open until 11.30) so we killed some time by having a coffee in Starbucks.

Once the doors opened to the Grammy Museum, we  went in. The museum is on 3 floors, and among the exhibits was a 78rpm of George Gershwin's 1924 recording of Rhapsody in Blue. The John Lennon exhibition which we thought had finished yesterday, has been extended to September so The Beeb was pleased to find he would be able to see it afterall. The exhibits were mainly handwritten lyrics and videos / film of John and Yoko from the later years.

At the end of the exhibition, you are invited to write on a specially prepared tag which you can hang up as part of the exhibition..... "Imagine a World....." The Beeb, cheekily wrote "where LA had a Greggs" and stuck that up!!!!
What surprised us was, with 60 years of Rock and Roll history, they managed to have one of the three floors totally dedicated to Hip Hop music yet not a mention of The Applejacks anywhere.

The Beeb outside The Grammy Museum
After wandering around The Grammy Museum for over 2 hours, we found a good watering hole in Trader Vics, where Minty had a Singapore Symphony and The Beeb sampled some Mexcian Pacifico beer.


Billy the barman was a useful source of information on getting around LA and where not to go!

Next up Minty went hunting for a pair of shoes. Luckily the shop only had about four thousand pairs on display, so by the time she tried on almost three and a half thousand she got what she wanted.

El Pueblo is the oldest part of Los Angeles and Olivera Street is a small Mexican version of Portobello Road. It is crowded with market stalls filled with local produce, works of art and tacos. The buildings here go back to 1818, and that makes you realise how young a country America is. Not much older that The Beebs' first pair of Levis!

We went for a meal in the El Peseo Inn where there where local musicians playing indigenous music for the diners. The Beeb was adventurous ond ordered fahijas, but then became apprehensive about the green bean sauce thinking it looked like green mince.

The Beeb with his vegetable fahijas and refried bean stuff!
After dinner we strolled downtown to catch a live band in an Irish bar we'd came across earlier. Minty was challenged on the door for ID, which made her day, being 20 years over the legal drinking age out there!!!!

We got a decent seat while we waited for the band to set up. As they were doing this a friend of the band came in. He was six feet tall with a dyed black beard and wearing black stockings with hot pants. When the band started he was up prancing about and rolling around on the floor. He definitely thought he was the bees knees, but in reallity he just looked like a sheet metal worker from Scunthorpe whose wife had come home early and caught him wearing her clothes!

We were expecting Irish music, but it was actually rock music and we left after half an hour.

The tiredness from all the walking around today was kicking in so it was back to the hotel for the night.

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