Raining this morning, only light rain and cloud cover, but it was forecast to last the day, so off to the laundry.
Duties and breakfast done we drove to Paramount Studios for our tour. While we waited we were shown a presentation its clips from many of the Paramount movies, sort of telling a story, then it rolled on listing all their movies. It was interesting to see from the list just what we had seen, not necessarily aware they were Paramount's. The tour started well by giving a bit of the history of movie making at the studios and then moved on to today. Very few movies are now made at the studios, it is nearly all TV shows and maybe a few 'location' scenes.
Anyway we were driven around the lot on a golf cart, stopping at various points for a commentary. Many of the sound stages date to the studio's founding in 1912 and still going strong. We were taken into a couple of the sound stages set up for current studio audience TV shows, quite interesting but as we hadn't heard of the shows...... They still have some street scene sets, mostly copies of New York streets, all made out of wood and glass fibre, just the facades, no rooms behind. The two hours passed quickly enough, as our tour guide had lots of anecdotes, plus it took a while to drive around the 65 acre lot.
Hungry now, we headed off up the hill to Burbank where we had seen a street we liked on our way in on Friday. Good lunch, but way too much food, so a doggy bag was called for! Will be a good lunch for tomorrow as well. Down through Griffin Park, which is huge and a very popular spot on a Sunday afternoon, a very pleasant drive away from the traffic in town. Finally back to Park La Brea for a rest. We had discovered La Brea is Spanish for Tar, and indeed there are tar pits close by.
We walked back to the Farmer's Market area to get some dinner. This time we went to a proper restaurant, the Cheesecake Factory. The food was very good, Ruth ordered a salad as she wanted something light and manageable but when it arrived it was huge - another doggie bag job! As we couldn't manage dessert at the table, and it was after all the Cheesecake Factory, we bought our cheesecakes to go, all carefully packaged in a specially made plastic box. Ruth bought the white chocolate macadamia and I the chocolate extravaganza! Absolutely delicious, but we only managed a spoonful or two that evening before we crashed.
