Sunday was Laura’s wedding so we decided to head down early and have some well deserved fun. The drive down from the Bay Area on Friday was long and we ran into Friday LA traffic but it wasn’t too bad. Friday night we ate at Javier’s Cantina & Grill at The Spectrum in Irvine, CA which was probably the nicest Mexican restaurant I’ve ever been to. After dinner we saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in IMAX 3D which I would recommend but just know it isn’t Pixar quality but was still fun.
On Saturday we went to Hollywood to play tourist which was a ton of fun! Since it was going to be really hot we decided we would hike up to the Hollywood sign in the morning. The drive up to the sign turned out to be half the battle because you wind up through multi-million dollar homes via one lane streets and it feels like you are going straight up the hill. I finally opted to park and it turned out to be a block or two from the top of where the street ends which was great.
After the pavement ends the road turns into a gated dirt road but we found out you can get past the gates warning you that hiking to the Hollywood sign is illegal (I think that is what it said) because there were some guys who showed us another entrance to get up to the sign. Turns out the hike is a few miles and most of it was a switchback straight up the hill and it was pretty hot out so the water we bought after filling up for gas came in very handy (my co-hiker was a trooper). The trail splits so you can decide to go to the observatory or the Hollywood sign and we obviously opted to go up to the sign. The awesome thing about the hike is it takes you behind the sign itself so as you can see we not only were able to get some nice shots from behind the sign but also above it. After the hike we went to downtown Hollywood and I’ll fill you in on those details in my next post.