Living it up in Hollywood & Beverly Hills

There is another woman sleeping in my hostel room when I wake. She is from Arizona and is here because her son is attending a winter formal in L.A. She heads down to breakfast before I do. When I get down to the breakfast area it is packed, no tables available. I sit with Till (a German guy) and Ben (a guy from Amsterdam). We discuss our plans for the day and the fact that the weather is horrendous. Last night there were tornado warnings in the area, the Hollywood Hills got snow, there was hail in our area, strong winds and insane rain. It is raining again and no one knows what to do in this weather. I suggest we all travel together to Rodeo Drive and the rest of Beverly Hills, before we head to Hollywood to check out the Walk of Fame. We catch one bus and then another to get to Beverly Hills, but we finally arrive and it is raining so we have a lot of room on the sidewalks. We stroll past Harry Winston, Prada, Gucci, Emporio Armani, DeBeers, and so many other exclusive beautiful expensive stores. Each store seems to have an impeccably clad man ready to tend to your every shopping wish. We stroll the streets, taking photos of the window displays, as stretch limos, ferraris, Mercedes Benz, Black Lincoln Navigators, and crazy Cadillac Stretch Limos pass us on the street and park with their engines idoling next to store fronts. We pass a few places, where once the occupants of the limos are inside, the stores doors shut, and you hear the locks in place. Celebrities abound but we really don't see anyone we recognize. There are several funny moments; one where I take a picture of Ben reaching for the handle of the back door to a cream colored stretch Mercedes, as though it is his ride. An awkward moment occurs when we pass an exclusive French store called Bijou or something like that. Ben spots a man in an expensive well-tailored suit standing outside in the drizzle with a calf-length bright yellow rain coat. He is standing with his back to a bright yellow Lambrogini the same color as his coat, looking in a shop window directing the woman organizing the window display. Ben asks him if he will be willing to pose for a photo with the car. The man outright refuses, looking utterly disgusted for being asked. I look at the store window and see that the employees are hanging large photos above the manequins...and the man is in each of them. I realize instantly that he is Bijou...the expensive French designer. No wonder the man thinks we are crude for asking such a thing of him...it would be like asking Emporio Armani to take your camera and take a photo of you and your friend in front of a waterfall...it is simply unheard of. We walk away embarrassed by our ignorance, sorry that we have upset the man. We continue around the streets of Beverly Hills and then through the palm tree clad streets just outside the city center. We take a bus to Hollywood and Highland. We walk past the Ripley's Believe it or not and then take a photo with Elvis. We cross the street and explore the Chinese Theater and play at comparing our hands and feet to the stars who have embedded theirs in front of the theater. Apparently my feet are the exact same size as Harrison Ford, but my hands are a better match for Greta Garbo. Even R2D2 and the entire cast of Star Wars along with the Harry Potter cast all have their hands and feet embedded in cement. Sharon Stone went barefoot for her foot marking, and Whoopi Goldberg even marked the spot with her dreadlock. Everyone has a star on the Walk of Fame as we continue down to the Kodak Theater where tv crews are practicing angles for the next award show. Hollywood is odd. It looks grand on television and probably would have looked better if there had been celebrities, red carpets, and no rain. In the rain, Hollywood is a dreary, cluttered, touristy place. Three separate tour operating groups try to sell us on bus tours...we are not interested. We catch a glimpse of the Hollywood sign framed by the rolling green hills and I am bummed that I have run out of film and can not catch any pictures of it. We ride two buses back to the 3rd Street Promenade and update our email. We are headed to the hostel to get out of the rain before we head to the movies at 9pm and the Irish bar at 11pm. It has been a truly fun day. I never make it to the pub or see these guys again tonight, I instead hang out with a different set of guys, including my new Aussie friend, Luke, as we wander around downtown Santa Monica and the pier. I retire to the hostel and head up to my room, where I end up in a comical conversation with Luke and we spend an hour talking. I love meeting new people in hostels...and he would be an interesting travel companion if we were heading to the same places, but alas we are not.

Had we known the man was a famous fashion designer, we would have left him alone. Or maybe we wouldn't have.