July 21, 2013

Still playing catch-up!
This morning we have brunch planned at a local restaurant. Norm saw this place advertised on the travel channel as having one of the top views. It was located in Burbank, a suburb of LA. The view was amazing!!!! We could look out over the view of the city. It was a champagne brunch with DELICIOUS food. We spent a long time there,just enjoying the view and food. We headed back to our house to change our clothes and then off to our next activity. We scheduled a tour of Paramount Pictures. They are the only studio actually still located in Hollywood. It was fun seeing the different areas of the studio. We toured the lot in a group of 6 with a tour guide. We traveled in a large golf-type cart getting out frequently to walk around. We saw a small park. It is where they film some of the outside scenes from the show Community. Also they have shot scenes from Glee there. We got to go inside the main office building which houses the oscars in the lobby. If the movie wins picture of the year the Oscar we see on TV is given to the producer but the studio can buy a duplicate for $1.00 from the academy. We saw the oscars for Forest Gump, Wings(1st ever Oscar), The Godfather. Glee is filmed there. The sets were on trailers that were outside its sound studio. Sadly, there was a memorial area outside the main gate for Cory Monteith, the actor from the show who recently died. We went in the sound stage for the show, Run Dad Run. We have to watch the show sometime to see the set on TV. They have a huge section that looks like New York. All just fronts-very cool. The studio restaurant turns into "Breadsticks" from Glee for shooting. They have a parking lot that they can fill with water that has a huge blue sky background. The parting of the Red Sea by Moses was filmed there from the movie "The 10 Commandments". It was a very fun tour!!
We then headed off to mail another package home and do laundry.
Norm mentioned the traffic in yesterday's blog. I have to say it is worse then I ever imagined!!! I had heard that LA traffic was terrible but I never imagined this. There are two speeds on the freeways-90 and stop! The motorcycles apparently do not have to stay in the same lanes as the cars as we can be stopped in traffic and one will speed by between two cars. The freeways can be up to 7 lanes wide and even just trying to stay in the right doesn't always work. I tried to hold on and not yell at Norm too many times!!
Early to bed tonight as we are going to Disneyland tomorrow.