HIKING TO HOLLYWOOD

Los Angeles, CA

(April 10, 2012)

 Day four in LA and we woke up ready to conquer a mountain! Well, hike a hill, really.

Sal told us it was possible to hike up pretty close to the legendary Hollywood sign, so we did a little research and set off early in the morning in order to beat the heat and the crowds.

(If you are looking for directions to the Hollywood sign, scroll down to the bottom of this blog post.)

The Hollywood sign is located by Griffith Park and can be reached by taking Beachwood Drive to the Hollyridge Trail. Basically, find Beachwood Drive and keep driving all the way to the top. The beginning of the Hollyridge Trail is right by Sunset Ranch, so we parked right outside the entrance to the ranch.

We were warned there was limited parking, so we made sure to get there early in the morning. We had a prime parking spot right by the start of the trail. Woohoo!

The trouble with the trail being right by a ranch that offers tours by horseback is that we shared part of the trail with the horses. And that meant one thing: poop. We learned very quickly to avoid it...there was a little bit to avoid.

We walked for a little ways and then there was a drastic split in the road. A U-turn option, if you will. A road met up with ours, looking as though it headed back in the direction we had come but going up the hill instead of down. One would think we should just continue going straight, but one would be wrong. If we were to continue straight, we would be following the horse trail around the hill and not at all where we would want to end up. If we took the trail that headed up the hill going in the direction we had just come, we would get to the Hollywood sign. It had a big ole Labyrinth feel to it—“Which way do you want to go? Up or down?” Rule of thumb: If faced with taking a road covered in horse poop or a road devoid of horse poop, take the road devoid of horse poop.

So we took the sharp U-turn and headed up the hill. It was nice being able to look around without worrying about stepping in manure. The road continued for quite a while, following the natural curve of the hill and providing us with views of LA and glimpses of the Hollywood sign growing ever closer. We were tempted by an incredibly steep shortcut that traveled almost straight up the hill, but we weren’t sure exactly where it would lead us, and we were nervous about how steep it was. We decided to stick to the safe and easy path.

Admiring the plant life 

People carved their names into the cacti along the way

Eventually we came to another fork in the road. Here’s where we had options. Option 1: Go to the left and get up relatively close to the front of the Hollywood sign. You can’t get too close, since it’s private property and you can get arrested for trespassing, but you can get pretty darn close. Option 2: Go to the right and get right up behind the Hollywood sign. You can get a whole lot closer to it from this angle, but then you can’t get pictures in front of it.

We wanted our pictures to have the front view of the Hollywood sign, so we took Option 1 and followed the road to the left. The trail got a little steeper, but the views were pretty cool. We had been walking for a while when we came across another shortcut, this one not as steep. I looked up ahead and saw that our walk would take us to where the road curved and went uphill. The shortcut looked like it would cut out all that extra walking, so I chanced it and scurried up the hill. Once I got to the top, I saw that it landed us at our end destination: the Hollywood sign! Yay! So I gestured for Miriam to come on up.
There are big fences and a really steep hill that keep you from getting close to the Hollywood sign, so we stayed where we were and had fun taking lots of pictures.

Once finished with our goofy photo shoots, we headed back down the hill (the easy way, not the shortcut way) and came across a big, metal gate across the road with giant signs on it. We were coming at it from behind, but I had a feeling I knew what the signs said and started laughing.

Sure enough, the signs all said No Trespassing. Whoops. We took the shortcut and bypassed all this signage. We were trespassers. How were we to know?!

After having a good chuckle, we started heading back down the trail. Miriam had been on the lookout for snakes falling from trees ever since seeing the warning sign that snakes were in the area at the beginning of the trail, but I told her we would definitely know if snakes were around (how? I don’t know—I was trying to calm her down!). At one point I said that snakes won’t be falling out of trees on us…and then a snake fell out of a tree. Not on us, but right next to us. And Miriam bolted like a scared horse and almost jumped off the cliff. Not even kidding. I’ve never seen her move so fast!

From that point forward she refused to go by any trees and stuck to the edge of the hill, just in case something came slithering out of the holes in the rock we were walking next to. It was pretty funny stuff.

We were out hiking for about an hour and a half and were good a sweaty by the end, so we headed back to Sal’s to freshen up and then we were out the door again, this time in search of Little Tokyo.

Years ago, Miriam worked at Tokyo Disney Sea in Japan, and while there she fell in love with a cookie by the Bourbon company called Alfort. It’s a shortbread-type cookie with a layer of delicious milk chocolate on top. There are plenty of cookies like that out there in the world, but to Miriam, nothing compares to the Bourbon Alfort cookie. And wouldn’t you know, it’s impossible to find in the States. We have scoured the country, visiting all sorts of Japanese grocery stores and websites, and have come up with nothing. Well, not nothing—I did manage to find it through a website here in the States, but their shipping costs were three times the cost of the cookies—not gonna happen. So, we were determined to search through Little Tokyo in LA to see if we could possibly find these dang things. 

I asked my handy little Siri where we could find Japanese grocery stores, and she was able to pull up a few options, so off we went. Our first stop was the Marukai Super Market. The place was huge compared to other Japanese grocery stores we’d been in, so we had our fingers crossed. We looked everywhere. We checked every aisle and spent extra time down the cookie aisle in the hopes of finding what we were looking for. Alas, we could not find them, so Miriam approached an employee and pulled up a picture of the cookie on her phone. The employee brought her over to the cookie aisle and said they didn’t have the exact cookie she was looking for, but they had something close—Bourbon Alfort chocolate cookies with white chocolate, as well as Alfort chocolate cookies with dark chocolate. Close enough! We bought one container of each just so we could try them, left the store, opened them up on the street to try them, and promptly went back in to buy every package they had. So good!

Little Tokyo

We then wandered around Little Tokyo some more, venturing into other stores along the way in the hopes of finding the exact cookies we were seeking, but we struck out. At least we had the chocolate cookies, though! Miriam was very excited.

Then we were off to Santa Monica. We couldn’t travel all the way to the Pacific Coast and not put our toes in the ocean! We parked near the 3^rd Street Promenade shopping area and sauntered through the open-air plaza for a while before making our way to the beach.

Miriam next to her favorite flower, Birds of Paradise, by the 3rd Street Promenade

A fun dinosaur fountain on the promenade

Let me tell you, the beginning of the beach to the actual water is a bazillion miles away. It was crazy! I can only imagine how much those beaches fill up in the summer. Nevertheless, we kicked off our shoes and trudged through the sand down to the water, taking a lot of fun photos along the way. Once at the water we started walking towards the Santa Monica pier, which was way off in the distance. We had no intention of visiting the pier and its amusement park, since we’ve seen it before, but we did want pictures of it in the distance.

See? A bazillion miles away!

We made it fairly close before we decided it was time to head back. We had to beat the rush hour traffic since we had a show to go to later that night. So we left the beach and hiked back to the 3^rd Street Promenade, stopping for an ice-cold coffee drink, then jumped in the car and made it back to Sal’s.

We managed to get back to his place really quickly, so we took our time getting gussied up for our show, and then we were out the door and headed back to Hollywood. We went to pick up our friend James at his office—it’s where all the magic happens and Jerseylicious is turned into an actual show. We got to hang around in the lobby for a little bit while he finished up work, and he was surprised we didn’t see any celebrities hanging around while we were out there. Apparently, they hang around all the time. Oh well!

This sums up our dinner with James

Miriam and I had tickets to see Cirque du Soleil’s show, Iris, at the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, so we wanted to grab dinner relatively close to the theater. We settled on Mel’s Drive-In, a 1950’s themed diner, which was conveniently right around the corner from the Kodak Theater. All three of us ordered burgers sans the bun—we were in LA, after all (gotta watch our figures)— and had a lot of laughs over dinner. There are always a lot of laughs when James is involved. But soon enough it was time to say goodbye. James started his walk home (he lived nearby) and we made our way to the Kodak. 

I’m a huge fan of Cirque duSoleil and try to see every show that comes to NYC. A part of Iris was featured at the 2012 Oscars, also located at the Kodak Theater, and the moment I saw it I knew I had to go to the show. Miriam, on the other hand, isn’t crazy about Cirque. Many say that once you’ve seen one Cirque show, you’ve seen them all, which is partly true. A lot of them have the same sorts of acts—it is a circus of incredible feats, after all—so there are bound to be clowns, contortionists, some high-flying aerial tricks, a balancing act, and trampolines of some sort. The difference is the story they tell with the costumes, the music, and the way the acts all come together. My love for Cirque blossomed at my very first Cirque show, Varekai. I spent the whole evening in awe of the beauty and had to scrape my jaw off the floor at the end of the night. But, I digress…

When I go to a Cirque show, I usually pay to sit as close as possible, since it gets me fully immersed in the show (it’s one of the few treats I allow myself), but knowing Miriam wouldn’t want to pay that kind of ticket price, I settled for the next section back in the orchestra. And I had a coupon. Awesome.

First of all, it was amazing just to be in the Kodak Theater. My thoughts: I see this theater on TV every awards season, and now I’m sitting in one of the seats. It was pretty exciting. 

Iris is all about the history of cinema, as seen through the eyes of two people: a young man in search of love and a young woman with dreams of being a star. The young man falls for the woman and follows her through the ages of cinema. I LOVED it. I’ve seen around 10 Cirque shows, and this ranks up there as one of my favorites—second only to Varekai. The music was amazing (composed by famous film composer, Danny Elfman), the set was stunning, and the talent was out of this world.

A practically empty Mann's Chinese Theater courtyard.

After the show, we wandered around a nearly deserted Hollywood Boulevard, watched as a crew started blockading the boulevard and setting up for the red carpet movie premiere of The Avengers happening the following day, and then took our tuckered-out butts back to North Hollywood. It had been a fun and crazy day, and we were exhausted! 

An almost empty Walk of Fame, with the barricades for
The Avengers stacked in a truck on the street.

Directions to the Hollywood sign:

Miriam is taking the U-turn up the hill.
Down below was where we just came from.

• Get on N Beachwood Drive and take it all the way to the top of the hill. If you are coming from the Hollywood/Santa Monica area, it may be easiest to get on N Beachwood from Franklin Street—Beachwood is not a straight-through street until after Franklin.
• There will be plenty of signs saying that you can’t get to the Hollywood sign and Beachwood gets all curvy and makes you think you aren’t heading in the right direction, but trust me, stay on Beachwood and take it all the way to Sunset Ranch and the start of Hollyridge Trail.
• There’s limited parking, so I suggest going in the morning. I’ve found that a lot of tourists go about their days leisurely and so the trails and the parking weren’t crowded in the morning. I’m all about getting up and out early so I can miss the crowds. And going in the morning means you’ll beat the heat, as well. Nothing wrong with that!
• Watch for the U-turn split in the road not too far into your hike. Make sure to take the road that goes to the left, up the hill. The path that continues straight on ahead is what the horses take on their tour—it doesn’t lead to the sign. Remember my rule of thumb from earlier: If faced with taking a road covered in horse poop or a road devoid of horse poop, take the road devoid of horse poop. 
• After a while you will come to a split in the road. Here’s where you decide what you want to see of the Hollywood sign: the front or the back.
• To the Left: The trail will lead you to the front of the Hollywood sign. You can’t get too close, but you can get some really fun pictures.
• To the Right: The trail will lead you to the back of the Hollywood sign. You can get a lot closer and get cool views of LA, but you won’t get the front of the sign in your pictures.

The left leads to the front of the sign, the right to the back of the sign.

• If you take the trail to the left as we did, you will follow the road for a while and then come upon a little shortcut up a small, yet slightly steep hill. If you’re brave, give it a try. We did. Otherwise, follow the road around the curve where the gate will block the way with its No Trespassing signs. I like to believe the gate and signs were meant for cars only and that hikers could go up beyond the sign. There was plenty of evidence around that told us we were not the only ones who had visited that spot!

Shortcut!

• I believe it took us about 30-45 minutes to hike up to the sign, so give yourself at least an hour to an hour and a half to go roundtrip.

Have fun taking your pictures with the iconic sign!