Whirlwind Trip To Los Angeles
19 May 2017
Last week, Chloë was requested to come audition in Los Angeles. It was a spur of the moment request, ten days earlier than the official posted audition dates were to begin, so I guess they really wanted her. However, we had no way to get her there and figured that would be that. But no! At the 11th hour, my longtime friend Tiffany, who now works for Delta, stepped in with stand-by tickets to get the two of us from Boise to LA! We set it up, dyed her beautiful curls red for the part, and found ourselves on standby at the Boise airport early the next morning!
Once we arrived in Los Angeles, we hopped in the shuttle to our hotel and found that... we actually did not have a hotel room, after all. They had nothing for us. Desperate and freaking out, because it turned out all our bank account funds were frozen for the duration of our trip, another longtime friend - my BFF Shana - stepped in to save the day. Soon, we were in our room, where Chloë took a nap and I waited until it was time to catch a Lyft from our airport hotel into downtown Hollywood for the audition.
In the Lyft car, our driver was really nice... and overly chatty. Chloë wanted nothing more than to rehearse her lines with me, but he kept interrupting to ask about her role, her history with acting, and so on. Argh! We did get a few run-throughs in, and soon she had her "sides," the part of the script that she had to know for the audition, memorized.
The audition itself went really well. The casting director was zenlike, and the whole thing was fairly chill. Chloë and the young man with whom she auditioned did some deep breathing exercises together before delivering their lines, and the director seemed quite pleased with her. We were asked for all of our contact information, and Chloë gave only hers, so I've kind of been all over her to check her email constantly! I did get the feeling they wanted to hire an LA local, though, so I'm not sure how that will go. It was certainly worth the effort to get her name in the hat, though.
After the audition, my phone was dead, and we had no way to get a Lyft back to the hotel or anywhere else. Oops! So we took a long walk down Hollywood Boulevard until we found a busy cross street with many businesses on it. I figured somewhere along that route, we could both get something to eat, and I could charge my phone long enough to get our next ride.
Having decided to grab sandwiches from the 7-Eleven we found on that other street, the cashier let me charge my phone while we ate. Really nice! Chloë was starving and ate a ton, so that gave me long enough to charge in order to secure a ride for us. We had the whole day in front of us, though, and while she had napped in our hotel before the audition earlier, I had done some poking around to figure out what we might be able to do. I had decided to take her to the famed Santa Monica Pier and have some fun at Pacific Park, and she agreed it sounded like fun!
We all like fair food, right? My favorite thing is cheesy fries, while Chloë loves nothing more than a good funnel cake. That's what she wanted, so of course when we found this stand in Pacific Park, that's where we headed. The wait took forever and then it was a little overcooked, but neither one of us cared by that point. We were starving!
Yum!! Chloë was wholly undecided about whether to put strawberries or just powdered sugar or what on her funnel cake, but in the end we decided to keep it simple. Good thing, because though we put a fairly good-sized dent in the thing, we threw out a good portion of it!
I like this pic, because you can really see how red her hair was at that time. A lot of it has already faded out, so she's mostly back to her natural golden brown. We're glad for that, because though Rob and I liked the reddish hue, she hated it with a passion! Oh well. I say, she changed her hair for a movie role; doesn't that make her more of an actor than ever before? Hee.
There were lots of sights and sounds to enjoy while we were on the Pier, including a billion and one pigeons stalking all the crumb-droppers everywhere. They were brazen, as you know those city birds often are, and this little guy was no exception. "Flying rats," my husband calls them.
I was interested in this man, who surely was homeless, having his entire belongings on his bicycle and leaving the whole shebang next to a coffee shop while he went inside to procure for himself a beverage. No one so much as glanced at that bike, let alone messed with it, despite it not being locked up. I felt pretty good about that and wished I could have bought him some food myself.
Another frequent sighting on the Pier were the buskers. This guy, Ben Bostick, had a really interesting voice which I enjoyed. I recorded him playing, but I don't think you can hear him that well with all the passersby going up and down the pier:
Loved him! Throw a couple dollars in his case for us the next time you're on the Pier! ;)
And you can check her out on YouTube, too:
Clare Means was another busker on the pier that day, and Chloë and I both really enjoyed her singing. Check her out!
It was a cold but sunny day that afternoon, so there weren't a whole lot of sights for me to photograph. Hence, you get Mr. Seagull here! :D
We walked to the end of the pier, where there were a few souvenir shops to take advantage of, and that we did.
With the beach right next to the pier (duh), we longed to go in, but it was just frigid that day. Not a chance of that happening!
My beautiful, lovely woman-child admiring the sea
I don't know why, but this sign grabbed my attention. I can't explain it.
Buoy
We've collected pressed pennies for years, at least a dozen of them, so naturally we had to press some in the machine at the end of the pier. I had tons of change, so we made all four:
The view of Pacific Park from the end of Santa Monica Pier
Get your kicks on Route 66! So now, we've been all the way West on 66 and all the way south, to Key West, on Route 1.
One last view of what we saw leaving the pier, before heading to meet our next Lyft back to the hotel
The two of us crashed in the hotel room that night and woke up an hour before check-out the following morning. We had nothing to do but spend all day at the airport, and so we did! Chloë became powerful hungry once we reached our terminal, so we stopped at this French bistro-esque place. She really wanted some crêpes, but apparently we missed when they were available. Booo... I had to adjust her order to Brie and Gruyère grilled cheese, and she didn't much care for that. The apple juice and Moodibars I brought her seemed to make up for that, though!
Right after I took this picture, I attempted to open my Diet Pepsi (blech). However, it started spewing carbonated soda all over our table, our food, ourselves - and the two young Frenchmen at the table next to us! Oh, my gosh, I was mortified! The two of them jumped up immediately and fetched a wad of napkins to help us clean it up, and they weren't upset at all. They were so nice and smiling, so that was a blessing. I felt horrible for soaking them, though - and I swear I never shook that bottle!!
The ceiling in the bistro was covered in lights. COVERED! I had to snap a pic.
Just another selfie (ussie) with my Share-A-Coke for Herrera. Who knows a Herrera?
Our pizza in the airport that night was only about six or seven bucks, but now I can say I've eaten at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant!
As we walked to our final gate, or so we thought, Chloë informed me that I said, "Ooh, nice balls" right when a strange man passed us going in the opposite direction. Hee!
One last beverage before we were told to switch gates for the third time - always in a different terminal!
At 5'1" for me and 4'9" for Chloë, we certainly don't fit the Dutch profile, eh?
When we finally boarded for Boise, we were bumped up to First Class! It was Chloë's first time, so she was super excited!! All in all, even if she didn't get the role, she still deemed this her most fun trip to LA so far. I call that a win.
Thanks for stopping by!
Fin.