Mission Accomplished: Part Two

Before regaling everyone with our adventures in Los Angeles, I must quickly recall our day trip to Tijuana. For the record, noone wanted to go to Tijuana except for me and I was misled. I based my decision on an episode of "The Simpsons" where a remorseful Krusty takes the kids to "the happiest place on earth, Tijuana!" The experience has taught me not to believe cartoon characters with questionable morals.

Getting there was easy enough. A trolley from downtown San Diego took everyone straight to the border and we passed through some rusty metal turnstiles into Mexico without even a security check. There were delightful billboards proclaiming "Drug Discounters" and "We Will Beat Any Price". Then came the less delightful three year old beggar and eight year old hawkers of cheap bracelets. The poverty was harrowing and when we finally arrived in the main shopping strip of Tijuana, aggressive shopkeepers had us running for the border after a mere 45 minutes.

Returning to the U.S. was an exercise in torture as we stood in line in the hot baking sun, along with everyone else trying to enter the U.S. on a work visa, for over an hour. That's right: we spent more time waiting in line to leave Tijuana than we spent walking around in Tijuana.

If the trip to Tijuana taught us anything, it was that when one smells urine, one should turn around. Joe recalled encountering the scent within minutes of entering Mexico. It was a lesson that would have served us well in Los Angeles.

During our trip, California was in the midst of a heat wave and while San Diego seemed relatively cool, Los Angeles was fully immersed in the stifling heat. Like stupid tourists, we walked around a deserted Downtown L.A. on a Sunday and quickly became dazed and confused. After visiting Little Tokyo, we took a wrong turn into the Toy District and the smell of urine pretty much slapped us in the face.

The Toy District was nothing but a corridor of sheet metal store fronts and a cardboard box housing complex. The homeless populated the area to a degree that I had never experienced in person before. We walked as quickly as possible and avoided eye contact, yet I noticed a repeating tableau of whopping piles of feces on a square of cardboard as we went along. Someone in the area had a sick sense of humour, or maybe artistic ambitions. When we had finally escaped the Toy District, we found the Los Angeles Public Library and comforted ourselves with free internet and educational exhibits.

In a previous blog, one of the directives was to visit In-N-Out Burger and Roscoe's House of Chicken' N Waffles while in California.

As you can see above, I fulfilled the first request after much difficulty. It seemed that wherever we were, there was an In-N-Out Burger nearby yet just out of reach. I am happy to report that we finally made the time and it was worth it. Cheap and delicious!

Roscoe's House of Chicken'N Waffles was also on the list of things to do and we actually passed it during our double decker bus tour of Hollywood. See the photo! But when we consulted with a local, he told us that the grease that dripped from the Chicken was legendary and he convinced us to go eat Argentinian food instead.

Whatever grease we missed out on was made up for by Alex and his bowels of steel. After 12 hours of enforced starvation for the sake of Comic Con, Alex bought a burger from Jack in the Box. It came on a ciabatta bun and looked good but with his first bite, Alex claimed, "I can feel my arteries hardening." It's all good fun until someone gets a stroke.

As mentioned briefly before, we took part in a double decker bus tour of the Hollywood neighbourhood. The first 15 minutes of the tour was quite interesting as we passed the Mann's Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre (new home of the Oscars).

15 minutes into the tour, we had lost our minds to the heat and the sun. In a daze, we passed the place where Marilyn Monroe had her first photo shoot, where some other star had his office, where something something something. All I could think about was the end of the tour.

Other passengers caved in to the torture and started retreating to the lower level while the bus was in motion. The bench two rows in front of me collapsed and sent its passengers tumbling to the ground - and I didn't even blink. My friends proved to be in equally bad shape when my optimistic suggestion, "Oh! Melrose! We should go there later!" was met with silence and sweating.

At the end of the tour, everyone jumped up and ran for the exit. As I stood up, I realized that I had completely drenched my shorts in sweat. I covered up the mess with my bag as much as possible then ran to the movie theatre nearby. For the price of having to sit through Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was able to enjoy the air conditioning and give my shorts a chance to make itself presentable.

My advice for anyone who decides to visit San Diego and L.A. is the following:

• go to Comic Con - it's worth it!
• otherwise, do not go to Southern California in the middle of summer
• and if you smell urine, run in the opposite direction - words to live by