Muscle Beach

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Since Charlotte arrived from St Louis after Christmas, and would have been travelling alone, Brandon & Ally asked Ronnie if he would travel with her. This would be less stressful for Charlotte and would give Ronnie time to spend with his son. Ronnie really wanted to see Muscle Beach (at Venice Beach) so we planned a trip to Hollywood. On Jan 2nd we headed up to Muscle Beach. The plan was to see Muscle Beach then head over to Rodeo Drive and then to Hollywood Blvd and check out the Chinese Theater and the Stars on the sidewalk. I also wanted to see the HOLLYWOOD sign.

From Hollywood we planned to head on over to downtown Los Angeles. We wanted to see The Angels Flight Railway, The Last Book Store and the Grand Central Train Station and eat at Phillipes because they are all supposed to be cool. We were running out of time so we dropped Angels Flight Railway and Grand Central Station and chose to eat at Phillipes and check out the bookstore.

Muscle Beach was quite interesting. You have to be pretty confident if you are going to work out there.

I did think that this body builder looked pretty good.

While chekcing out the shops at Muscle Beach, we came across a street show. It took a lot longer than I wanted to be waiting, but it was a great show. The grand finale was this guy jumping over the backs of eight men. The guy third from the left is Ronnie.

This is Rodeo Drive. From here it looks pretty much like any other fancy street, but the names of the shops are all big names and you can’t just walk into many of the stores. They need to come to the door and let you in.

The stars on the sidewalk. We didn’t have time to stop and check them out.

The Hollywood sign on the side of the mountain.

The bookstore was very cool. I couldn’t possibly describe all of the fun little things they have done like making tunnels out of books but the amazing part is that the book store is in what used to be a bank.

 They even have books in the big walk-in vault.

Phillipes was amazing. The place is famous for their Beef Dip sandwich so that is what I went for. It lived up to its reputation. If you’re ever in Los Angeles you should check it out.

They even had old-fashioned phone booths. We found Santa making a call in the middle phone booth. I suppose when this place first opened back in 1908 these phones booths probably really worked. 

We got home very late, and Brandon and his family were leaving early so he made them load up the van before they could go to bed. They were NOT happy, but I think he was smart. They would have been much more upset if they had to load it the next morning at 4:00AM.

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A Scram Jet could fly from New York to Beijing in 19 minutes

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