Wednesday 19th - Stevie K shines, Canters and Griffith Park

Tuesday was a fairly early start as we were meeting Stephen Kalinich for brunch, along with Paul and Ashley who were over from the UK as well and who had also been at Anny & Nelson's bash on Sunday.

Canters was the place, a really iconic deli around Fairfax, with 60's style booths, one of which becomes the "home" of Rodney Bingenheimer, the Mayor of Sunset Strip at night. Indeed, when we were in L.A. last time we had the opportunity to meet Rodney and sit with him in his booth for supper.

The food in Canters is good, portions are quite the size and you get free refills on coffee and soft drinks. It was fantastic to meet up with Stevie K - he is a busy man and this was the only chance to see him this trip. Talking with Stevie, you soon realise that he knows everyone and the name dropping is not to impress anyone, but because he really does hang out with these people!!!

Time in Canters is restricted by the 90 minute free parking, so after brunch we escorted Paul and Ashley back to their B&B along Fairfax where they dumped their car and we all piled into our rental and headed out towards the Hollywood sign.

On the way, we passed The Magic Castle Hotel

Griffiths Park is home to the Observatory and is one of the closest places to see the infamous Hollywood sign (although now you can apparently walk up to the sign after it was off limits for a long time).

We managed to get parked and walked up the hill to the observatory. It was a really hot and sunny day, it was beautiful.

The observatory is where scenes from "A Rebel Without A Cause" was filmed and there is a statue of Jimmy Dean to commemorate this.




















In the distance, in complete contrast to the sun belting down on us, the mountains had snow caps.

With Minty's 50th birthday looming at the end of the week, the position of the Winter Solstice was quite apt, being the same day as Minty's birthday.