I love skylines.  The most familiar to me throughout my childhood was the Atlanta skyline.  As a kid riding in the backseat on long road trips to our family in Mississippi or vacation home in Florida, I would look forward to the 20 minutes we spent driving through Atlanta.  I didn't even mind sitting in the traffic.  Whenever we would detour for some reason and go around the city, rather than through it, my heart would sink a little in disappointment.  To this day, whenever I drive through Atlanta, my eyes divert from all electronics (if I'm driving, it's a little hard for me to keep them on the road) and stare happily out the window for the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes to cross the city.

While the skyline during the day is beautiful, there is something about seeing a city illuminated at night that just makes my heart sing.  So in Los Angeles, my heart sings quite often.  And on the overpass, I have to constantly remind myself to keep my eyes on the road.

The overpass is incredibly tempting to me.  I want to just pull over on the side and stare out at the city... and take out my camera and tripod for long exposures of the beautiful Los Angeles skyline illuminated at night.  But I fight the temptation because that's incredibly dangerous and also, I believe, illegal.  So I went to the internet for suggestions of parking garages that I could access for nighttime views of the skyline.



Someone on a photography forum suggested the parking garage at The Grove, an upscale outdoor mall in West Hollywood.  Shopping and photography?  Sounded like the perfect combination to me!

I've heard that you can't leave Los Angeles until you've seen someone famous.  So I guess that means I am now allowed to go home.

In my second week alone in Los Angeles, I was perusing the internet, looking for things to do in the city.  That's when I came across television tapings.  Now, I remember my mom telling me, "Ooh!  You have to see if you can watch Ellen!" but I think I shrugged it off as something that was expensive and incredibly difficult to get.  Not the case.  Television tapings are absolutely free and available to the general public.  How to obtain tickets varies depending on the show and studio.  There are websites, such as tvtickets.com, tvtix.com, and 1iota.com, that distribute television taping tickets.  However, some shows (like Ellen) are only available via request directly through the show or studio.

Getting TV Taping Tickets

As I was browsing the available television tapings, I looked for a show that was interesting to me and would be enjoyable to watch.  This is more challenging than one might think because I actually don't watch much television, and the TV series that I do keep up with (really just The Walking Dead, and as of recently, Orange is the New Black) either don't film in front of live audiences or weren't filming at this time.  As I read the filming schedule, there actually weren't any shows that I recognized.... except Dr. Phil.

Dr. Phil is a pretty neat guy.  My mother watches his show (or leaves the TV on and Dr. Phil eventually plays), so over the summer, I listened to it from the loft over our living room.... and sometimes it caught my attention enough that I'd lean over the railing so that I could watch.  But what was especially appealing about attending a Dr. Phil taping is that they show the studio audience on television.... I could be on TV!

I debated on whether or not to go with a cheesy title and determined that now is a perfectly appropriate time to bust out one of the many California song lyrics.

On Thursday, I made the big move from South Carolina to Southern California.


My dad came with me to help me get moved in and settled.  He is the one who made our schedule for the weekend.  Thursday - Fly to Los Angeles.  Friday - Move into apartment.  Saturday - Buy a car.  Sunday - Finish moving and maybe have time for sightseeing.  Monday - Dad flies back home.

So this weekend with Dad was really fun.  It was almost like we were on a vacation, except a weird vacation which involves shopping for apartment furnishings and a car.  It didn't hit me until Sunday that when he went home, I might get lonely.

I recently read an article on the "Top Ten Most Overrated Travel Destinations," and Hollywood Boulevard was near the top of the list (Walt Disney World also made an appearance on the list.....).  Perhaps it is a very cliche destination.  I recall one of the points made in the article (and I'm not crediting it because I don't think it's worthy) was that only tourists go to Hollywood.  And that might be true.  But I'm a tourist, so it's okay.  I needed to re-do my Hollywood Boulevard experience.



Grauman's Chinese Theatre was what I was most interested in seeing. It's an iconic landmark - a piece of history! Not to mention, it is the only Hollywood icon to be replicated at full scale in Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World.