The last few days of my trip have flown by. We left LA on Tuesday for Palm Springs. The sprawl of LA that you can only guess at from looking out from within LA goes on for miles once you take the freeway. Eventually the city gives way, initially to farmland and then to desert.
Our experience of Palm Springs was wonderful. A friend of Stephen’s put us up in her home in the middle of the movie colony. It seems that from the 20s stars have been making their way out of LA for some R&R. We just relaxed. I didn’t think I needed to relax any more after almost five weeks of holiday but there was a deep sense of calm at Claire’s. We swam, talked, shared a bottle of wine. We cycled to dinner at Copley’s, which used to be Cary Grant’s guest house. Sensibly, you may think, he had positioned it away from his own home. I woke early on Wednesday morning, enjoyed the view over the garden from my bedroom and got up to wander around a little locally. I was taking photographs of plants when a local resident gave me some of the history of the house’s in Claire’s street. I was touched that he engaged me in conversation, and didn’t reveal that I was photographing flowers rather than homes of celebrities.
Wednesday was very warm so we lazed some more, read and ate and swam and eventually around six as it got cooler Stephen and I went for a short hike in the desert. Dinner followed at the Purple Palm in the Colony Palms Hotel before the drive back to LA.
Thursday I spent an hour in a sound studio watching Stephen at work, abandoned him for some last minute shopping in West Hollywood (WeHo now apparently, and to make matters worse pronounced WeeHo). I had lunch with a friend from London and then rejoined Stephen and his colleagues for their lunch (and my desert). The plants below were spotted as I walked about – no one walks in LA.
After lunch we took Boo and Imogen out for a walk in Runyon Canyon Park. As I was now wearing more suitable footwear we took the more challenging East track. Our reward was an incredible clear view over the whole of LA, out to Santa Catalina Island in the South (yes, swimming friends that Catalina), the ocean in the West and the mountains in the North and East.
In the evening, in the company of Fadia and Jay, whom we had met at Seder on Monday, we went to a very enjoyable fundraiser “Comedy for a Cause” for International Medical Corps, at the Comedy Store. We followed this with “magic” Matzo ball soup from Greenblatt’s. The magic is in its healing properties, I hope it will ward off airplane bugs. And the drive over the hill on Mullholland to see the lights in the valley below.
Friday I finally started to squeeze in the movie experience with a tour of the Warner Brothers Studios, a walk along part of the celebrity stars, pausing at the Chinese Theatre before having lunch at the Roosevelt Hotel.
I’m home in London now and there is be one final post to come.
Natasha's minigap 