As I have mentioned, my mom was here for a month, it’s been a month since she went back to Israel, leaving me all alone in a foreign country. Lol I made myself laugh 🙂
My grandmother called me at WhatsApp to tell me that my mother said she had really enjoyed her visit, but “You put a hole in her heart with your crying.” It was indeed hard that she left, so what better than sitting and remembering it by writing?
As I have said, Mother had a fairly intense month here, we took her to Sedona, Flagstaff, Vegas, Grand Canyon, Tonto National Bridge and many more beautiful places. We also went to visit my cousin in San Diego, and from there we went to pick up Dima from a course he had in a small town, an hour north from there. We decided to drive to LA it’s only an hour away, and hey, we were close and we had to see what everyone was talking about.
LA is very reminiscent of Tel Aviv, so I understood very quickly why Israelis feel so comfortable there.
It is crowded and busy, there is no parking anywhere, and when there is, you gonna pay – and a lot, hysterical heavy traffic, and I admit when we just got there and stood in traffic jams trying to get to the hotel I thought to myself “what have you done?” In general, LA doesn’t have the things we love in America: quiet and comfort.
We started the first morning by driving to the Hollywood sign. You can reach very close to it if you park the vehicle in the appropriate area and climb the whole way up on foot. We didn’t do that, not just because my mother was with us (it a big steep rise) the truth is, it was not so important for us to have a close look at it. What was interesting was to see the residents of the area trying to avoid any contact with unwelcomed tourists.
Then we drove to the “Walk of Fame”, the famous street with the stars on the ground, we wanted to see what all the fuss was about. We paid $25 for parking, to stroll uneasily on a busy, crowded street filled with tourists like us, homeless people, merchants and some street artists. Now, this is the place to say that I’m not some small town kid that never saw a big crowded city. I’m from Jerusalem, you know the capital of Israel (Trump just admitted the fact that everyone already knew), it is the biggest city in Israel, and it can be busy as hell (let’s see how brave you are to go to Machane- Jehuda market on Friday), but still I have never felt as suffocated as I felt there.
A talented young man, who looked like an actor of some Netflix TV show, drew our caricature. While he was doing the caricature, a homeless teenager stood next to us with a sign saying “Homeless kid, will work for food or money.” I wondered out loud, “should we give him some money or at least a granola bar?” Dima didn’t think it was a good idea.
And while we were sitting, one of the tourists began a loud argument with the homeless whose bag on one of the stars. And anyone who wanted to be photographed or to photograph that particular star had to pay him. It was a little disturbing and unpleasant but how did the artist say “Welcome to Hollywood”.
After that, we wanted to make the most of the fact that we had paid so much for the parking ticket, and the fact we were already there, so we decided to enter the Guinness World Records Museum, that was really good. The records are somewhat old and not updated but it was still fun and amusing. The entrance fee is $21 per person. If you want to enter the wax museum as well, there is a combined ticket that costs $33.
When we left, we saw that the aggressive homeless had moved his bag, so we could see the star he was hiding was of Marilyn Monroe.
We felt like we just have to get out of there. I had a list of things I wanted us to see there but it was too crowded and dirty, and it were my mom’s last days in the US, so I tried to get the best out of the city everyone was talking about.
So we drove to Santa Monica. Santa Monica was just a magical place. Don’t get me wrong, it was busy and there were homeless people, street artists, tourists and many locals, and there were hardly any parking spots, but still it was different. We strolled through the downtown stores and had dinner at a restaurant called “Del Frisco’s Grille” that was really good in my picky opinion, and when we finished eating we went down to the pier. Perhaps it was the sea that compensates for the amount of people that restricts our movement, because despite the crowds, we enjoyed Santa Monica very much.
The next day was Sunday, on Monday we were supposed to drive back to Arizona, and on Tuesday my mom had a flight back home. I wanted this trip to end having a good feeling and a desire for more. We planned to go to Universal Studios, our hotel was on the street parallel to the studios and it wasn’t a coincidence. But I was pretty disappointed about LA, and I read online that on weekends the lines there are endless (between 40 minutes and an hour and a half for every ride), and so I decided that we were not going to pay so much money to stand in lines on my mom’s last days in the USA, so we made a slight change in our plan.
We drove two hours north to a town called Solvang.
The drive to Solvang itself was along the Pacific Ocean, with breathtaking views.
As we got out of the car, we breathed deeply and realized that we had arrived at a special place.
Pure pleasure- that what it was. I felt this place literally saved our last trip.
Solvang is a Danish town that looks like the small villages in the Netherlands (they sell even the same souvenirs, but cheaper), with spectacular wind turbines and colorful roofs. Most business owners there are ironically Turkish, who sell Danish pastries that are really worth their calories. The town is surrounded by a number of wineries, so you can see many wine boutiques and wine tasting.
We even found there a Turkish- coffee- style ice cream, and it is called “Mussolin” ice cream in Jerusalem.
All in all, we spent 5 hours in this town, walking the streets, eating Danish pastries, eating nutritious lunch (just to feel better about ourselves later with the pastries), passing through the various souvenir shops and especially enjoying the buildings and the landscape.
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