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The Hollywood sign the perfect shot

4th March 20245th May 2024 funtime65

And we’re all looking for it, the tourists, the day trekkers and the cops over the hill, the Hollywood sign the perfect shot.

We’re stationed about 150ft down from the iconic billboard.

Putting thumbs-ups, jazz hands and time-lapse jumps.

When we hear a booming warning over the Tannoy.

‘Please walk away from the sign, you are trespassing.’

Cop that

Our guide Katie, who has walked up the trail backwards, tells us not to worry.

The cops are talking to a couple of figures who have climbed the hill to get up close to the 45ft letters.

I envisage them ready to shoot them down but maybe I watched too many Police Academy films in my youth.

Katie tells us that you’ll get a £3,000 fine and sore legs, it’s a steep oul’ climb.

Us, we took our 2-mile trek up to as close as we could legally go to the sign, in our stride.

All the time learning more about the sign.

Although there’s always one smart ass in the group who thinks they know as much as the Bikes and Hikes LA guide.

Well, I have been following their email drops.

Times of the sign

And know that the sign is in its 101st year and was originally a real estate company’s billboard.

But I didn’t know that Albert Kothe kept the 4,000 light bulbs going.

Or that the Hollywood sign has been in danger of being lost to us a couple of times in its history before being saved.

The houses with the best views of the sign, Madonna’s and Guy Ritchie’s old pad among them, are among the dearest anywhere.

Just as the original real estate firm Holywoodland intended.

Griffith’s free gift

But it is refreshing that the trails, the Hollywood Park open space and the Griffith Observatory are all open to the public.

All on account of Griffith J Griffith, the Welsh born businessman who bequeathed the land which we enjoy to the LA people.

We enjoy a farm to fork on cutdown deckchairs in Hollywood Park in the shadow of the billboard.

It’s the ideal end to an ideal LA morning and I have me the Hollywood sign the perfect shot.

Countries, Cruising

On a ROL cruising around the world

11th October 202311th October 2023 funtime65

Now if you’ve got a spare £1,549 down the back of your sofa and want to get away from it all why not get on a ROL cruising around the world.

The round-the-world cruise is of course the ultimate in travel aspiration though as I’m constantly reminded SHE has already circumnavigated the globe as a child.

Coming back from Australia on a working ship under the stewardship of her parents and visiting Tahiti, enjoying a Neptune crossing the Equator party and going through the Panama Canal.

For the rest of us we need to save our pennies for a lifetime although thankfully our friends at ROL are keen to help us out by cutting the price.

Panama chat

Pitching Arcadia’s official 2026 no-fly Grand World Voyage from only £99 per night it all hinges on that magical Panama Canal crossing.

You will, of course, be 100 nights at sea with six overnight stays and a full daytime transit of the canal.

Now your cruise which sets out on January 2026 will take you from Southampton to an atlas of countries (you do the counting!)

You’ll see Seville (from Cadiz) and one of the most beautiful harbours in the world in Valletta in Malta.

And get your first canal under your belt with a transit of the Suez and take in the Middle East and the Gulf.

Before your first overnighter in Dubai.

Asia and Oceania

You’ll dip your feet in the Sub-Continent in Colombo, Sri Lanka , take in south-east Asia before another overnighter in Singapore.

And that’ll set you up for your city-hopping odyssey of Australia and New Zealand before going all tropical in Fiji.

Say Aloha, or Howiya to Hawaii with another overnighter, in Honolulu.

Aperitifs in the New World

Sign of the times: Jimmy in old Los Angeles

ROL clearly don’t want to make waves with the Californians by getting involved in the big debate of whose city is better.

So they’ll get you off board in San Francisco and Los Angeles for overnighters.

Give you a sight of Manzanillo, Mexico, that unforgettable passaged through the Panama Canal, and a taste of Caribbean life.

SHE likes to regale us of when she visited Curacao, where the sea is as blue as their liqueur, although I hit back with Bridgetown, Barbados.

You’ll see both.

Before you head across the Atlantic and touch ground on the westernmost part of Europe, the Azores.

Early bird

Now what you need to know is that you’ll get on-board spending money of up to £1,910 if you pre-book by 8pm next Wednesday, October 18 to secure the lowest price.

And you’ll be on a ROL cruising around the world.

America, Countries, Flying

Flyday Friday… the City of Angels

31st March 2023 funtime65

The stars come out tonight as they say in Tinseltown which is why for us we’re reviving an old classic, Flyday Friday… the City of Angels.

All on the back of news from our friends in La La Land that even more than ever before we’re flocking back to California.

Weekly flights and seat capacity are both set to eclipse pre=pandemic records this year.

Thanks to new services from Delta and Norse and increased flights from Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, United Airlines…

And Ireland’s national airline carrier Aer Lingus.

Who are there for the good times and the bad.

Fair Lingus

As in when my friendliness got the better of me on board my flight from Dublin to LA.

And I agreed to hold my fellow passenger’s half-full sick bag.

When unbeknownst to me the fuels from it got into my lungs and put me out of action for a whole day.

The good folk at Aer Lingus, of course, got me moved to another seat.

And also looked after my fellow passenger throughout the flight and organised for a wheelchair for at LAX.

Of course as they say in ad world other airlines are available.

LA Story

And on June 30, Norse will launch their first-ever London to Los Angeles service, the first LGW-LAX flight since pre-pandemic, offering seven flights per week with 2,366 seats.

Delta restarted their LHR-LAX route on March 26 after an eight-year break.

They now operate a daily nonstop service, offering Delta’s full range of cabin offerings with 1,967 weekly seats available.

Existing carriers are set to increase their number of weekly LA flights between now and July with forecasts showing that American Airlines will add nine new weekly flights.

Virgin Atlantic adding seven, United Airlines doubling their weekly offering from seven to 14 and Aer Lingus adding two additional weekly flights.

This will take the total number of direct, non-stop weekly flights from the UK and Ireland to LA in July to 98 with 28,119 seats, compared to 83 flights and 23,963 seats in 2019.

So there’s no excuse for not getting yourself taking the advice of Flyday Friday… the City of Angels.

And write a new chapter in your LA Story.

And do get out as close as you can to the Hollywood sign which will be 100 years old this year.

I know next time back I will, having missed out last time. And this time I’ll sit in a row on the plane on my own

America, Countries, Culture, Europe, UK

Five films to escape the Platinum Jubilee

31st May 20221st June 2022 funtime65

And because we’re not all pliant subjects here are five films to escape the Platinum Jubilee.

And other ideas will follow through the week.

Historical

Cabaret: And because it’s only the best film ever made.

Daddy’s Little Girl was my proxy in Berlin this past week where she partied at the KitKat Club, named for the Cabaret burlesque club.

From the opening credits of the MC and Sally Bowles singing Wilkommen you will be drawn into 1930s Nazi Berlin.

It is musical, historical, tragic and comic. In a word it is Magic.

Comical

The talk: Jim and his Dad in the Great Lakes

American Pie: And this is like having to choose your favourite child (btw, it’s the one who buys you the biggest gift).

Who can pass Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Some Like It Hot, Gregory’s Girl, Monty Python and The In Betweeners?

But on the grounds that there are three of these.

Then the classic coming of age trilogy on the Great Lakes will keep you occupied, smiling and gorging in American Pie. Whisper it but Los Angeles doubles for East Great Falls.

Mysterious

Kathy’s no clown: Fried Green Tomatoes in Georgia

Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe: And the title lives up to its billing in this Deep South Classic from Juliette, Georgia.

Juliette, 56 miles from Atlanta, is where the action takes place and you can still visit The Whistle Stop Cafe.

And no, they don’t put on a barbecue.

Feelgood

A Street Cat Named Bob: Now we’ve all binged on movies on transatlantic flights… and often fallen asleep during some.

And a tip here… if you’ve worked out that you can fit in three movies, always pick the one you least want to watch as the last in case you do nod off.

I’m glad to say that I picked A Street Cat Named Bob as my first movie on the way over to LA… and cried.

It is set around Covent Garden in London and deals with a drug addict homeless man who is saved by a stray cat. And it proves that cats really are better than humans.

Scary

It’ll make you cross: The Exorcist in DC

The Exorcist: And scarier still than the cutesie little girl who turns evil, spins her head and chucks priests down stairs with the power of her mind, is that its true.

The author William Peter Blatty agreed with the family to change the child’s sex from male to female to defend their anonymity.

There are tales too that the actress Linda Blair was psychologically damaged by playing the part.

You can visit the area where it was shot in Washington DC. Head for Georgetown.

So that’s five films to escape the Platinum Jubilee, and we’ll come up with another listicle to plan your altenative Platinum Jubilee weekend.

America, Countries, Oceania

Don’t shake the Cook coconut tree

7th May 20227th May 2022 funtime65

We all want to conserve our favourite destinations’ USP so as we don’t shake the Cook coconut tree.

And that’s why we leave the minutiae of building committee meetings to spreadsheet junkies.

While we fill in the colour of why our landscapes can grow so far but no further.

Climb the tree

The deep blue sea: And you’ll have a devil of a good time

Deep in the Pacific Ocean they understandably measure their growth against their most widespread feature.

And so developers on The Cook Islands are limited to how high they can build.

Against the measuring rod of coconut trees.

Brand new

All of which builds up a picture of an island removed of modern branding.

And, you’d be right.

Its 15 islands are free of global brand hotels, chain restaurants, mass market fast-food outlets and traffic lights!

And people… with only 17,500 scattered across the isles.

Ready, steady Cook

You interested? Then you’ll be glad to hear that you can fly to the Cook Islands direct from Auckland with Air New Zealand and from next month Jetstar.

News on the return of direct flights from Sydney and Los Angeles will be released later this year.

And you’ll be good to go with a double vaccination, and without the need for a PCR or Antigen requirement.

News of which I hope to share with you for other travels I am planning and tearing my hair out trying to get over the line.

Back to quirky planning regulations and tales of keeping the skyscrapers down.

Philly steam ahead

Now proud Philadelphia doesn’t defer to its more celebrated east coast neighbour New York on anything.

Except on the size of its buildings… and with good reason.

Because their founder, William Penn, is keeping a watchful eye on his descendants.

The convention in the City of Brotherly Love is never to build higher than the peak of Billy Penn’s hat.

But somebody in the committee obviously had forgotten to read the memo.

Because with the 1987 construction of the One Liberty Place skyscraper they exceeded the height of Billy’s statue atop Philly City Hall.

And they lived to regret it when their sports teams failed to win a title until 2008 when the Phillies took the World Series.

Quirky buildings

So how did they do it?

Well, a year and four months before a statuette of the William Penn figure atop City Hall was affixed to the final beam of the Comcast Center.

And this made it the highest William Penn figure in the city at the time.

All good to know for when I come to be immortalised in my home city of Glasgow.

Tell us too about your destination’s quirky buildings superstitions and we’ll get this conversation going.

For now I’m back to these pre-departure tests and thinking how stressless the Cook Islands and others are making it.

And I’m happy to promote them because you don’t shake the Cook coconut tree.

America, Countries, Europe, UK

John Glenn and other space cadets

20th February 2022 funtime65

Many have said it about me, so on the 60th anniversary of his becoming the first American to orbit Earth here’s to John Glenn and other space cadets.

And a nod, of course, to NASA HQ in Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

And our friends, a visiting spaceman among them, who shared their world with us.

Including witnessing multiple sunsets.

Take me to space: Bandanaman and Spaceman

The bould John, 95 years young, last went into space when he was 77.

Now that space tourism is a thing and is no barrier to age as Captain Kirk, William Shatner, 90, proved let’s look to the stars.

Through the Rainy Days and Songdays songs that have inspired us the Space Race generation.

A Mars a day

Life on Mars, David Bowie: And no, not Bowie’s first space song, nor his last.

Think Space Oddity, The Man Who Fell To Earth and Ashes to Ashes.

But Life On Mars from the album Hunky Dory is certainly his best.

And to bring it back to earth Bowie name checks Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads … both stop-offs for this space cadets.

Rocket science

Making a spectacle of himself: Elton John

Rocket Man, Elton John: Elt was spaced all right when he put the score to his pal Bernie Taupin’s lyrics.

So we can’t place him anywhere though we imagine that the-then coked-up Mr John would have been seeing a lot of The Troubadour in West Hollywood then.

Swing among the stars

Fly Me To The Moon, Frank Sinatra: We don’t know if they’ve got old blue eyes out in space but Frank’s voice is out of this world.

Obvs we want to name check Hoboken, New Jersey and the other cities that he bigs up, New York, Chicago and LA.

But the closest we got was Las Vegas and this inscription to the Rat Pack in Neon City.

All-Hit Radio

Sibling space cadets: Karen and Richard Carpenter

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, The Carpenters: Now this one is a new one on us but this was actually originally written by the Canadian band Klaatu (no us too but they were named after an ambassador from the extraterrestrial confederation in the film The Day The Earth Stood Still).

But it was in the hands of Richard and Karen Carpenter that the song really took off.

And it naturally has that Californian twang with the unique lead-in of Mike Ledgerwood on All Hit Radio.

This song will be heard once again

De Burgh was here: In the Nativity Scene

A Spaceman Came Travelling, Chris De Burgh: Only Chris De Burgh could come up with anything quite as overblown as a space hook to the Nativity Story.

But the Irishman did after reading Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Daniken, with a sprinkle of WB Yeats and his belief that every 2,000 years something cataclysmic happens.

Never mind that the Nativity Story is only mentioned in two out of the four gospels.

And the Monty Python boys went this way too when they had a spaceship land in Bethlehem in the Holy Land in Life of Brian.

A Galaxy far, far away

Which brings us neatly to Eric Idle’s pithy reflection on the human condition in Galaxy in The Meaning of Life.

So it applies to us all, John Glenn and other space cadets.

America, Culture

Daniel Craig on my Walk of Fame

3rd October 2021 funtime65

He may be getting a star but I’m after five goldfingers on Hollywoood Boulevard.. take a stroll with me and Daniel Craig on my Walk of Fame.

Craig, as we all know, is bringing down the curtain on his 15-year service as 007.

And the hunt is on for the next James Bond.

I reckon I’m halfway there already with my name. and age is no barrier.

As my fellow Scot Sean Connery showed when he reprised the role in his late 50s.

For now I’m licenced to scroll instead of to kill.

Although I did get in some practice at Machine Guns Vegas in Neon City a few years back.

And I reckon I could give old 007 a run for his money.

Walk this way

Now seeing I have my eyes on a tribute on the Walk of Fame I’d better introduce you to some of Craig’s, and soon to be my, new neighbours on the famous LA street.

In a town where being first is everything there are various originals.

Eight stars – for Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Ernest Torrence, and Joanne Woodward – were unveiled (temporarily) to the public on August 15, 1958.

While filmmaker Stanley Kramer, who directed It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, was the first honoree to have his star laid, installed on March 28, 1960.

All of which you already knew. Right?

Of course only true film buffs seek them out.. for the rest of us it’s the icons we want to be photographed next to.

And on the day that I visited they were all congregated around Michael Jackson.

Me, I felt sorry for Greta Garbo who just vanted to be left alone.

For the record Craig will become the 2,704th star to be recognised.

Something to ponder as you walk Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

And avoid the celeb lookalikes hustling for money.

Hands of gods and godesses

It’s worth remembering though that while it’s a star status that is afforded our celebrities, it used to be something different.

And here’s where the gold fingers come in.

So come with me to the Forecourt of the Stars outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

And you’ll see Marilyn Monroe‘s hands and Donald Duck‘s web feet and Alvin and the Chipmunks’ paws.

For Star Wars fans there are also prints of R2-D2’s wheels and C-3PO’s robot feet.

And you can see the real thing and enter into a Star Wars world at Galaxy’s Edge just down the road at Disneyland in Anaheim.