California Trip - Day 4

Monday, 21 September 2009 22:18

Today was a bit of a slow start, with my not getting up until about 9:00am local time.  Probably a good thing since we didn't have a whole heck of a lot planned for today, since Griffith Observatory is closed on Mondays.

After a breakfast at IHOP, Gord and I proceeded to drive around LA, starting out with Sunset Boulevard, and eventually ending up on Hollywood Boulevard.  Being so cloase, we ended up at Mann's Chinese Theater, and took some shots of the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, although that has absolutely nothing to do with Astronomy, unless of course you consider that it's pretty much the only stars you can see from Hollywood...

Gord suggested we check out Madame Tussaud's wax museum.  Talk about really cool.  Much better than the wax museum in Niagra Falls.  Maybe not worth the $20.00 entry (after a $5.00 coupon), but cool nonetheless.

We met up with Mike after lunch at California Institute of Technology (aka CalTech), where Mike gave us a very interesting tour of things that no longer exist.

The old astronomy and astro-physics building has been emptied and moved into the new Cahill Building.  An architectural disaster that looks like it has fallen apart.  The Athenarium, which is the staff hang-out was gutted (in a manner of speaking) in preparation for a movie shoot.  The book store has given up on selling books (having gone to an online book store model), and really just sells souvenirs and stuff.

For supper, we went to the Thai place next door.  Very good food.  I'll have to take my wife to a Thai place when I get home.

All in all, it was an interesting day with filled with lots of walking and image taking.