This was a busy day, spent mostly at Universal Studios Hollywood. Please note – it’s not in Hollywood, but Universal City.
I just don’t have the time to write right now and will try and cover it tomorrow as we move to Palm Springs. In the meantime, there are some things about Los Angeles that are just different… maybe even weird.
It’s possible I’m the one living in space, but it seems odd you have to pay for parking everywhere you go. I’m talking about the mall, restaurants, everywhere. In Connecticut, this is just not the case. A mall that tried to charge for parking would be laughed out of existence.
I mentioned this a few days ago, but it bears repeating. If you go for an expensive meal, can’t they hide the $3-$5 they’re going to charge for parking in the bill? I don’t like paying for it after my meal. It seems cheesy.
I’m not picking on any one, because this is an everyone situation.
In many ways this is like the hidden fees and charge that mysteriously show up on cell phone bills.
And, if a restaurant validates your parking ticket, then they should pick up the whole tab. Don’t leave me with $1.50 owed, as was the case at breakfast today.
Oh there’s one bright spot to this parking stuff. While waiting for your car to be retrieved, you get to see California’s conspicuous love affair with the automobile on display. There have been plenty of Bentley’s and Rolls, a few Ferraris, Jags, Porsches (including the SUV) and Mercedes up the ying yang (whatever that means) at the valet parking stand.
Cars here are in a perpetual state of clean and shiny! There is never road salt. The humidity is low virtually all year, which reduces corrosion. They have never seen a streaked windshield when the defroster can’t keep up with the cold, or had salty spray thrown onto their windshield from the tires of the car ahead of them. SUVs here are nearly all two wheel drive!
We’re leaving Los Angeles tomorrow for the real desert. I’ve got the forecast for Palm Springs in front of me, and it looks like some rain for each of the three days we’re there! On the other hand a viewer wrote from Connecticut asking, why snowflakes are sometimes huge¹… as they were today. I’ll take a rainy Palm Springs.
I’ve been trying to decide what to write when the vacation is over. I want to write some sort of synopsis of the trip, but more lifestyle oriented than the play-by-play I’ve written for the past week.
My goal would be to illustrate it with some of the hundreds and hundreds of photos I’ve taken. The New York Times has an interesting technique using Macromedia Flash with which they create narrated slide shows. I’d like to try that. We’ll see if it’s over my head.
It probably is.
¹ – Snowflakes that fall through a layer with temperatures just above freezing become very sticky to each other. Multiple snow crystals attach and form huge fluffy flakes. This is normally ‘wet snow’, with a low snow to water ratio, and very good for packing as snowballs.
The Stamford mall charges for parking, also the Target down the street from there charges to park your car. I find it hard to believe that people are thrilled to pay $5 or $6 to run into Target for some milk.