Ninth day, June 5: Los Angeles

Tour finished but not the holiday, in fact both Marco and Chiara and I still had an extra day to spend entirely in Los Angeles. On the street from the hotel we called Uber and a Chinese gentleman arrived who had a $200,000 Tesla, with a bucket of bottles of mineral water, gave us one each and we left for Santa Monica. The gentleman’s driving was absurd, with small brake bumps every ten seconds or a little more to maintain a safe distance. We almost missed that. Chiara put him back in the car! In the places where we have gone by motorcycle or in the taxis everyone drives as seen in the movies: safety distance, no dangerous driving, direction indicators used regularly, respect for precedence and much more.

Breakfast at Ugo (!), a kiosk on Third Road, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Broadway. First stop, Apple store on Third Street to pick up a new phone that my son had ordered for me online with delivery to Los Angeles, greeted by a nice salesman. The store was huge, decorated in the same style as other Apple stores. Another stop for Chiara at the Victoria’s Secret store, also on Third Street. Then we met a gazebo of Santa Monica’s Salvation Army volunteers who, on National Donut Day, thanked us for the contributions received on the occasion of the Palisades fire and gave us free donuts.

From there we went to take the red bus with seats even on the top and earphones with audio guide as in many cities around the world, which took us near Beverly Hills: we immediately went to see the hotel where Pretty Woman had been filmed, then we walked on Beverly Drive and Rodeo Drive, with all the most famous shops in the world: Prada, Louboutin, Cartier, etc.! Fantastic! We took the red bus again and went to Hollywood Boulevard, the most famous street in the world when it comes to cinema. We walked a bit of the sidewalk of the stars, saw the Dolby Theater, the Disney El Capitan Theater, saw from above the filming of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the ABC talk show, which would then air in the evening.

For lunch we ate in a typical American restaurant in the style of the 50s/60s, with stools at the counter and sofas with tables on the side. Throughout the day, more than on the other days of the trip, it seemed to be in a movie! Around 7 pm we went to Venice, we ate and drank two Margaritas in a characteristic place. In Venice there are many places dedicated to surfers, as is obvious given the connotation of the area, on the beach there are also equipment and installations to do outdoor gymnastics. The next day we returned to Santa Monica Pier because our planes left in the afternoon, then we went to the airport and said goodbye because we had different flights, me on Monaco and Marco and Chiara on Paris as an intermediate stopover. On the way back I paid a class difference of 400 euros to travel more comfortably and it was worth it.

Here we were at the second Margarita!

CONSIDERAZIONI FINALI

This is a motorcycle trip, on the road, or rather to say it to Jack Kerouac “On the Road”, whether you travel the entire Route 66 or do only the West stretch. You don’t stop in the cities to be tourists and visit monuments, places of interest. You visit small towns along Route 66, sometimes you stop at what was a small gas station, where what was an emporium was transformed into a souvenir shop where sometimes you can still eat something. You wake up early in the morning, after breakfast and the briefing in the saddle and go. The roads run for the most part through desert areas, they are terribly straight and when a curve arrives it seems to go again on the straight. You have to let your imagination run wild, think about the history of Route 66, the pioneers who traveled the deserts of Arizona with the wagons. I, for example, I had a lot of fun when the train driver greeted us from the tracks that ran on the side of the road. Curiosity: one of us took the trouble to count the wagons of a freight, there were 150 and four engines! Note: in the United States the railway lines are not electrified, it would have been too expensive and so the engines are diesel.

During the day you are on a motorcycle from 8/9 and you stop in the hotel parking lot around 17, you travel 200/300 kilometers a day, sometimes even 400. During the day you make at least three or four stops, the longest for lunch is an hour/an hour and a half, so you have a chance to rest. Then there is a stop to refuel, in a perfectly organized way: the motorcycles are put in the column for two one behind the other and on both sides of the distributors’ columns, Stefano and Mick gradually fill up each motorcycle and so the refueling lasts a few minutes. Fuel columns, generally gasoline only, can be even 100 and more for a single service area! So there are never queues. In the service areas you have time to visit any adjoining shops or to drink (water) or eat something on the fly.

The extra day in Los Angeles was a great choice, as I said I was able to see some of the most important points in the city: Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, Griffith Park, the Griffith Observatory. With Chiara and Marco we took a ride on the “red” bus, very useful to quickly see places that not even with a rental car we could have seen, also the parking lots are very expensive. As far as I’m concerned, I repeat what I said before: this was the journey of a lifetime, with the combination of many of my passions.

I lived for a few days the excitement of a trip to America, the experience of a motorcycle trip (even if I did many); the possibility of taking hundreds of photographs in a boundless and fascinating country, with extraordinary cities, particular lifestyles. But, and this is the most important thing, above all I was lucky enough to meet two kind, helpful, nice people: Marco and Chiara. I thank them for supporting me and putting up with me for so many days and so many kilometers on a motorcycle!