By Laura Ashley
Los Angeles still
remained a city of interest, the hugest city in USA in area and one of the
hugest in the world by population. Like San Diego it consists of a number of
communities merging together so the city is spreading. Perhaps one day Los
Angeles and San Diego will be one city. I do not wish it, I hope it will never
happen but right now everything is moving towards that direction.
We went to Los Angeles
with a certain purpose: to visit its two missions. Since we decided to take a
look at each of them and if possible take pictures. So we stayed at a motel in
Pasadena, the north part of the city with the closest access to the both
missions. We had little some troubles in finding them as we lacked any detailed
map. The one we bought on our way to the city missed both parts where the
missions were situated and Pasadena as well. Yet with the rough plan of the
city we had we were able to find our way to both of the missions. They are not
very touristic and therefore not in the list of the places of interests. San
Gabriel is an old mission with big garden. n the postcards you can usually see
the side view with the bell tower. Strange that the front view that is no worse
than in other mission is not popular for the postcards. Anyway one can see a
stature of Serra in front of it and it gives to the mission an atmosphere of
old times still pervade.
With the mission of
San Fernando we were not that lucky. We manages to find it with little troubles
but in spite of the early hour it was closed. So all we could do is to buy some
postcard to look at the building. We’ll have something to see out next time.
This mission is kept fenced from the people so you are not even able to see its
front view.
But the best part of
the evening was still coming. We wanted to find some place to eat but none of
the place on the street we were driving attracted us. But when we drove back to
our motel we saw an Indian restaurant and decided to try our luck there, in
other words decided to indulge ourselves in the delights of the eastern
cuisine. Well, it was worth it. We tried a soup which was very spicy. Chicken
curry was not bad but saffron rice is for an acquired taste. It was quite good
in the whole. Not bad at all. A strange thing though was that all the cooks seemed
to be Mexicans and every time you passed the kitchen they looked at you
curiously. So this was our first experience of this exotic food.
Los Angeles as a city
is far fro being a pleasant place to live. It is terribly crowded with people.
Distances are far too long even by freeways that at certain times of day can
get very crammed. Too many cars and too many people. Dust in the air created a
constant haze over the city that is seldom removed. It was there when we’d been
driving through and it cleared immediately as long as we left the last outpost
of this incredible pack of several cities. What is especially depressing is
that time goes slowly driving through and if you want to live long there can’t
be better place to live. As for us we were glad to leave.
Writing about L.A.
it’s almost obligatory to mention Hollywood. Well, we drove Beverly Hills and
Hollywood. These communities look exactly like all the others. The main streets
in Hollywood are all museums and boutiques that are crossed by some residential
streets. One can see many tourists there. The Hollywood as an area is famous
for its stars: pictures of the stars many of which bear name of some celebrity.
They should be famous and rich. Nevertheless there were some blank stars
without any names. One can think that they are waiting for some future
greatness or add some elegance to the whole thing like anonymous graves like in
a graveyard. We passed one of the blocks and found stars with names of Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Marilyn Monroe.
We found out that Los
Angeles is not a good place to live. This city is too depressing and
paradoxically too slow in spite of its high tempo. It takes long tome to get
from one end of the city to the other. Some people commute there every day.
There are still lots
of places to see there But I don’t thing we’ll see them soon.
January 2002