Summer Vacation - Day Two

We drove to Pierce Bros Westwood Memorial Park to see the final resting spaces of stars including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Zappa, Donna Reed, Dean Martin, Natalie Wood, Roy Orbison, Carroll O'Connor, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Don Knotts, Dominique Dunne, Heather O'Rourke, Mel Torme, George C. Scott, Eva Gabor and Truman Capote.


When we got to Marilyn Monroe's grave there was this really creepy guy with his hands on it, trying to "channel" or something. Pretty disturbing. Seeing-Stars.com had a great map of the park and since it was early, only us and the creepy guy were there. We walked through and since we were already in Westwood we decided to do some exploring. We drove down Sunset Blvd (later to find out that we just drove by the scene of Lindsay Lohan's "accident" that happened only a few hours earlier," and Beverly Hills. We realized fast that we had NO sense of direction and got disoriented. We need a compass, especially when Google Map's directions start with "turn south." Without the westward mountains, Chad and I are hopeless! We went from Beverly Hills to Compton and all points in between. It was a definite education- the poverty of LA is often unseen. There were streets that were completely filled with trash, a site I have never seen before. We went from multi-million dollar mansions to shacks and old motor homes turned into homes. I can understand why people leave California for more affordable housing. We ate at Rally's, a fast food burger place. It was awesome. When Chad and I were in Florida for our Honeymoon 10 years ago we loved a place called "Checkers"- and we found out that Rally's was basically the same thing. For dinner, we checked out another local grocery store called Bristol Farms. Another incredible store! It was like Whole Foods, but had some "normal" foods as well. We picked up a Pastis we hadn't tried and some Tortillas, a rotisserie chicken, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, salsa and some chips for dinner. It was wonderful and lunch for day 3 as well.

As we left we noticed a studio right by our hotel. Chad thought they probably filmed "porn" there- but when I came back to the room to look up "Raleigh's Manhattan Beach Studios," I found that they film one of our favorite shows, "Boston Legal," there! It was so exciting...no studio tours or anything, but fun to think that the show is filmed down the alley from our hotel. We were also just a few blocks from the Bed Bath and Beyond that was filmed in the movie, "Click," with Adam Sandler.