A Warner Brothers studio tour was on the agenda today, we booked it the night before and lucky, because most of the tours were already full. The drive to Burbank was a long one due to the traffic in LA as we were traveling in peak hour. The tour started with a short movie of the history of WB and some of their best known movies and TV shows. We then got into a trolley cart and began the tour around the lot. First stop was in a set that recreates a whole town square. This has been used extensively in TV shows and movies over the years, including The Gilmour Girls (Stars Hollow town square), The Ghost Whisperer and currently Pretty Little Liars (which they were setting up for as we were there). There are also many house facades, which were recognizable from shows we have seen including The Mentalist and Fringe. This was really cool to see. Many of the buildings have two, even three or four, different facades. We continued on through the huge sound stages and saw where so many famous movies and TV shows have been made. It was a fantastic insight into how they are made, and quite astonishing what they can actually do with a movies set. We also got to see original cars and many of the props used, and saw the actual working set of the show Mike and Molly. We then went through the WB museum where they display actual costumes and memorabilia dating back to Casablanca days. The tour was fantastic, a definite highlight of our trip so far, even though we didn’t get to see anyone famous!
In the afternoon we headed down to Venice Beach and walked along the promenade to Muscle Beach. This place was a real eye opener, with many unusual people and sights to see, including legal Marijuana clinics. It’s a good place to take your kids and show them why they should stay at school and not take drugs or drink to excess.
We left Venice Beach and headed to the exclusive suburb of Malibu. It is an affluent, beachfront city, and consists of a 34 km strip of prime Pacific coastline, most of it you can’t see though because of the houses built on it. In the spots where there is no house, or restaurant, etc, there is a huge chain wire fence, to keep the public out. It is quite normal in the US, as we found in Florida, for people to build right on the sand and actually own the beach! There is obviously a lot of money here.
Our last night in LA LA land and we had dinner at the Pink Taco, then back to start the arduous task of packing while drinking some wine made by Francis F. Coppola.