It was going to be a busy few days, and the next day, we arranged to take a tour of the Griffith Observatory. This was the building that gained its initial mainstream fame from featuring in the James dean movie,"Rebel without a cause"
It was a beautiful day, and the views over L.A were spectacular with the Hollywood sign visible above and behind us.
Ther building itself has only recently reopened, after undegoing a 4 year, 93 million dollar refurbishment program. During this program, they added more space to the building by adding another floor below the existing one.
We didn't give any thought to how they had actually managed to achieve this until we watched a movie in the theatre there. It turns out that they actually lifted the
entire building up on rams and excavated underneath it and then built what they needed. During the movie, the guy in charge of it casually declared that they had never done this beore, and that it was all theoretical stuff. I don't know how he slept at night!
There was all sorts of stuff in there for us space nuts and we merrily gawped at all the cool stuff, including their very own Tesla coil (not that it has anything to do with space). Tesla coils were invented by a guy called Nikolai Tesla, and initially they were an experiment in trying to make electricity go from one place to another without the need for expensive cables and routing. They were ultimately unsuccessful, but alot of the theories he came up with are in use inthe national electricity grids we use today.
At the end of the day, just as we were going to be making our way back down the hillside in the bus, there was this helicopter that came in really close to the cliffside. Amy took a pic that turned out really cool.
After this, we went to some friends house, where we changed into our posh gear (suit and tie and cocktail dress). We had managed to get an invite to a very exclusive hollywood club called the Magic Castle. As you may have guessed, It's a place where they have magicians. There are several bars and a restaurant where we had a very nice meal.
The place is a real rabbit warren, with corridors twisting here and there, and lots of little close up magic shows and other, larger displays. It was prettycool and I'd like to go back and spens a little more time there,checking out a few more of the shows.
Unfortunately, I have no pics, as cameras weren't allowed in the place. It has a website though:
http://www.magiccastle.com