So we hit the road early, picking up the rental car about 7:30am. The Monday morning LA traffic was rather bad. We dialled up the address for Paramount on the GPS, and it said our travel time would be 20 minutes. Yeah right! The arrival time crept up as we crawled in traffic in our gas guzzling SUV. Mile after slow mile, our trip was well over an hour. Still we had plenty of time.
Usually the LA air is dense with smog. Mornings are foggy / smoggy, and the air is grey. The overnight rain washed all the pollution out of the air, and today we had blue sky. We actually managed to see the Hollywood sign clearly from multiple angles! I've only seen it a couple of times before, a faint ghostly image of itself through the smog. So I was impressed how clear and white it was.
We had some time to pass before our tour. Taco Bell for breakfast past some time, and the Paramount gift shop gave Helen something to look at - I sufffer from gift shop fatigue after weeks of vacation.
The studio certainly is a working one, there were plenty of live sets, Dr Phil even had his red light on. But this did not stop us visiting any area as far as we were aware.
We got to walk in behind facades in their "New York" streets and they're quite strong. Better than you would expect.
In an unexpected moment, we're sitting in the middle of a New York street when a bunch of what looked to me like kids, hoodies and skateboards, shuffle by. Like a nature documentary, our guide whispers "that's some of the Glee cast". All a bit surreal but made Helen's day. Moments later, another tour guide gives a thumbs up to our guide, obviously it was a rare glimpse. The Glee trailers were all parked up too, obviously filming going on.
We also went into Paramount's own movie theatre. Very nice, very comfy seats and is dead silent inside, acoustically dead apparently. It's used for staff screenings, test screenings, producer screenings, and even used as a movie theatre in movies.
Although interesting, in my opinion the Paramount tour was not as good as the Warner Bros. tour we did a couple of years ago. But it felt more authentic as when we visited Warners, the writers strike was on, so the place was very quiet. Paramount was certainly in use.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon making our way out of greater LA, via Burbank, towards Palm Springs where Helen has booked us in. The drive was typical busy freeways, although we got to use the carpool lane which helped, then suddenly the city was gone and we passed through some interesting desert with huge wind farms.
We arrived at Palm Springs late afternoon and haven't done much since arriving except venture out for a trip to Wal Mart. We will see what Palm Springs has to offer tomorrow (hint - nearby outlet malls).
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