California 2025, Day 2, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica Pier

Tap LA

After a hearty breakfast at the hotel (Embassy Suites El Segundo, highly recommended), we took the Metro towards Hollywood. Unfortunately, the payment system 'Tap LA' is quite a mess. Ideally, one should just - whether on the subway or the bus - check-in using the Tap App when boarding, and then a one-time charge of $1.75 should be deducted every 2 hours, and there should be a cap at $5 per day... in theory. In reality, tapping works only in about 50% of the cases (which is why some bus drivers just wave you on), the deducted amounts vary between individuals (!) and range from 50 cents to $2.50, and despite a supposed cap at $5, I ended the day $6 poorer on my card. All in all, one must regrettably say: good idea, poorly executed. Other takeaways: First: The German public transport system is certainly not perfect, but still light-years better than LA's. Departure times are more like rough estimates here. Second: We will surely encounter some not-so-nice Americans, but so far everyone has been super helpful and friendly. Third: The Appenmaier family does not like bagels. Whether from the hotel or the supermarket, none of us is really keen on them.

Hollywood

Despite the difficulties with Tap LA, we arrived in Hollywood around 9:30 and walked the Walk of Fame. It's a bit of a shame that the orientation of the stars is inconsistent, so the names are often upside down. And since there are really a ton of stars, and you don’t know every one of these stars, it does get a bit tiring at times. We found the Chinese Theater with the hand and foot prints of the stars more interesting (by the way, my handprints fit perfectly with those of Captain America Chris Evans. Coincidence? Probably not). Other highlights: The Capitol Records building and the Dolby Theatre, from which you get a good view of the Hollywood Sign. As someone who has been looking forward to this expo every year since the start of E3 (for all non-gamers: E3 = Electronic Entertainment Expo = the formerly largest and most important video game fair in the world), my personal highlight was already seeing: the LA Convention Center ❤️ on the way to Hollywood.

Beverly Hills and Santa Monica Pier

After Hollywood, we continued on to Beverly Hills (pretty nice) and the Santa Monica Pier (also quite nice). On the way to the pier, we somehow spent a whopping $46 for 3 soft serve ice cream cups, probably due to the high influence of Beverly Hills; a true side effect. From the pier, we quickly made our way back to the hotel (quickly means '2 hours' in this case), where, after a brief stop at Ralph's (a supermarket chain), we wrapped up the day with a tasting of well-known American sweets: We found 'Reese's Peanut Butter Cups' quite tasty, Nestlé's 'Butterfinger' was okay, and 'Hershey's Milk Chocolate' ('What could possibly be wrong with chocolate?', Daniel Appenmaier, 14.08, 18:45) was just 'disgusting', Daniel Appenmaier, 14.08, 18:46.

To be continued...

Miles walked: 14

Steps taken: 19,500