The Divot Diva: Beverly Hills California Trip

TUESDAY MORNING, NOV 4

I am making use of my 3 hour flight to Beverly Hills to catch up on my BLOG. Angie is working an event there on Wed evening, from 2:30 til 9:30, but the rest of the time is free time for her. We meet there today (Tuesday) at 10:30 am PST. Today will be a long day, tomorrow morning g will be a short excursion, then Wed mourning and most of the afternoon we'll be scouting the area. My flight arrives 11:55pm CST. I am in for one long day on Wed. Thank goodness I booked a non-stop flight, or it would have been 5 hours.

Since I last blogged, the Firewheel Women's golf league had their two day championship tournament. I decided I didn't feel like playing in it. Sheila is the chief tournament person, and she was also playing in it. Me, being a good "minion", I offered to do check-in so Sheila could focus on getting ready for the tournament by hitting practice balls and putting to warm up. I guess it helped. She didn't win the big prize, maybe came in 3rd or 4th gross, but she did win low net for her flight. Congrats to Sheila. She was in the championship flight, of course.

I have not made progress on the kitchen. However, I have ordered a few new windows for the family room, and a shower door. The parts will come in mid-NOV, and then I'll schedule the installation. Maybe by then I can get back on the kitchen. Sheila and Mark are hosting Thanksgiving for us this year. I will do the turkey (my specialty dish), dressing, and giblet gravy. Angie has her side dishes. Sheila will probably do drinks, salad and bread. We've had our "family" dinner for years. This year, the grand daughters are looking forward to "adult games" after we eat. Especially Morgan. She loves to play poker pool and darts. I like cards, and Eric (my son-in-law) likes football. Lord knows, there will be plenty of that.

We are about an hour out from LA, and the clouds have cleared. There are lots of mountains below. From up here, I can also see a couple of large lakes that are almost completely dry. It was sprinkling when I left home, thank goodness. Not just Texas needs rain. I tried taking a pic, but the wing is in the way. I opted for a seat in the exit row so I could stretch out. Love the leg room.

Guess I'll finish this later. I need to see what's on TV this early in the morning.

OK, I got my flight earlier than Angie's so that I wouldn't miss her arrival. Well, unlike Southwest, American got delayed on departure from Dallas. The reason? It started pouring down rain. Her flight ended up being two hours late. I sat at the airport baggage claim for what seemed like one week. UGH! It wasn't completely boring.... a Jewish man got off his plane and performed raflin prayer. I watched ever so discretely. It was very interesting, to say the least. If you don't know what it is, you can google it, but basically it is praying with a black box attached to the top of your head, while you have a black ribbon (my description) wrapped around your hand and arm, then unwrapping and rewrapping and repeating.

OK, needless to say, I stopped blogging at that time, had a ball, then came home. Then, another long story, which I will tell in the next post. I will finish up this blog about our trip to LA, Beverly Hills.

I don't know if I told you all this, but I use a Southwest Airlines Visa for all my purchases. I then get frequent flyer miles, which I used to buy my ticket to LA. Saved me about $500. Well, I guess that's relative. I did get a free room (thank you Angie and Murad Auctions), but the food and TAXI service was expensive. Anyway, I waited in the terminal at LA for Angie for about 3 hours. Not too boring. We took a TAXI to the hotel, and got all checked in. The cab ride from the airport was about $40. OK, so much for spending someone elses money... I was now on my own dime.

I will admit, the two of us got our money's worth. We walked to Rodeo Drive. Now, before we left, I did sped a few hundred dollars on clothes to wear. Of course, I am basically a BLACK slacks type of person, owning about 12 pair. It worked out great, cause everyone except the "other" tourists wore black. The basic difference between me and the locals, was that they wore black shoes, most with red soles. Jimmy Choo shoes were everywhere. The "other" tourists wore tennis shoes etc.. We did okay with our dressy casual Texas attire. This show was popular. duh!

Because I got so far behind, I am going to add pictures in no particular order, just blurbs of where, etc. The following shots were taken at various times off of our veranda. We had a table and chairs, and our room faced east, south east. Made for beautiful sunrises. By the way, it got down in the 40's at night, and high 70's to low 80's during the day. Just fantastic weather. The bath robes were required at night on the veranda.

We went to Rodeo Drive every day we were there. Here are a few shots. Note the lack of people. We did see one car drive up, a man exited the front passenger side, opened up the rear door, out got a man, the drive remained in the car, then the two men walked up to a store. The man that was in the back seat goes into the store, the driver is staying in the car, and the man that was in the front seat stands in front of the door outside with his arms folded. The other man was evidently going shopping, native style. We were impressed. Also, not the chandeliers for street lights.

So much for how the other half lives. We did the tourist thing and looked up how to go to Grauman's Chinese Theater. It was funny. Only 5 miles away, but google maps showed it would take 2 hours to ride the bus, that was out, 2 hours to walk, that also was out, or 1/2 to 1 hour by taxi. We opted for the Taxi. Again, another $30. See, it is so populated, that there is no free space. There are also stop lights at every corner, and there are crosswalks. NO ONE walks when the "DO NOT CROSS" sign is lighted. Cars never turned in front of us when we had the crosswalk right away, but they owned the intersection when it was their turn. They also honk all the time, cause people are busy texting at every stop. The lights are what causes the delay in travel. In the cabs, you pay $0.30 every time you are stopped for 37 seconds. That runs up fast.

Here are our pictures from the theater trip. We tried to buy me some walking tennis shoes, but they didn't have my size (neither does Jimmy Choo.... just saying), but we did find some good snacks. However, why oh why, would someone put ginger in a drink? Angie ordered a margarita, and they gave her the wrong type. It had jalapenos, cucumber and ginger. UGH!

What a surprise..... World premier of Big Hero 6 that evening

The following pictures of footprints was for my grand daughters

There were street people all over who would pose with you for tips.....

There were also people who you would sneak a picture of.... sorry it's blurry

Honest to gawd.... this was so life like....

The sign is smaller than you'd think it would be. Also, it is on a small residential road, so it it not lighted at night because the neighborhood gets swamped with traffic during the day.... but they pretty much keep it down to a minimum at night.