Summer Vacation Roundup

Okay, this is long overdue.  Following is the rest of our California vacation summary.  Here's the first part.

I'll get to the life-long goal previously mentioned in the first part (hopefully BEFORE the end of my life).

On Tuesday, we took the Warner Brothers Studio tour.  We wanted to tour one of the studios and were told that the WB tour was the best.  We saw no reason to doubt, as it was tremendous.  The lot was strangely quiet which was interesting.  Our tour guide was informed, interesting and smart.  We had a great time.

We saw the set of Two and a Half Men which we don't watch, and went onto the set of Chuck which we do watch.  It was very cool being on the set of a TV show you've watched many times.  We saw the exterior of the morgue from Pushing Daisies.  We saw the area where they shot the T-Rex chase in Jurassic Park and we sat on the couch from Central Perk on Friends. 

Most cooly, we went into a small house that's been used for all kinds of shows.  As we looked up a staircase with a landing at the top and a room to our right, our tour guide told us that it had been used as Ross and Monica's parent's house in the video where Rachel's date doesn't show up for the prom and Ross is encouraged to take her.  As soon as he said it, we recognized the set.  That's one of Friend's best episodes and one of our personal favorites.  And we were where they filmed it.  Sweet.

Our guide on the Friends' stairs.

Afterwards, I suggested we check out the Griffith Observatory, which has been used in tons of movies, most notably Rebel Without a Cause, and most recently, Transformers.  Thanks to the GPS, we had no problem finding it.  The observatory sits on hills overlooking the entire city.  Unfortunately, the lot was full so we had to park down the ways a bit and walk quite a distance up hill.  Ben was less than enthusiastic.

But boy, we were glad we did.  The view of Los Angeles was spectacular (see below).  The observatory itself was wonderful.  They had just finished a multi-million dollar renovation so there were many modern astronomical exhibits.  It was a great find and well worth spending more time than we did.

After the observatory, we returned to Disneyland where we spent the rest of our trip.  We visited both Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure over the next three days.  More on that later.