La Brea Tar Pits

The next day we slept in a little, had a cuddle with three adorable cats living at our airbnb host house, then headed out to the Warner Brothers studio for a tour around their famous studio sets. On arrival we saw a short film that really highlighted to us how many films they've done or been involved with, including most huge franchises you can think of as well as huge classics like Gone With The Wind. Excited to see where some of these legendary films have been made we jumped into a large golf caddy type vehicle and went around their studios. They have the largest indoor sound stage in America (including a giant plunge pool under the floor, used from films like The Perfect Storm). As well as the largest outdoor film set which includes a lagoon. This outdoor set is nearly always used or hired out to the other production studios such as Universal. They also have a huge 'town' and different old fashioned New York style streets used for everything from musicals to Batman!
The current town I instantly recognised as it's just been used for one of my current favourite shows, Pretty Little Liars, and had all the current name signs up, which was cool to see. The tour included going through other current sets too like the cafe from La La Land, as well as the live set for the Big Bang Theory who are still filming.
We stopped at their onside museum which mainly housed Harry Potter original props (especially Fantastic Beasts) and Marvel props (including Supermans suit). Another stop included their prop warehouse which houses over a million props which was awesome, but god knows how they find anything. The warehouse also had it's own area for all the Batmobiles - yes all the Batman vehicles are real and driveable! Safe to say all the men on the tour were in their element here.
Finally the tour ended with a combination building of original sets and special effects/tech examples to show you the magic behind the movies. This was all really engaging and with great excitement I can say we actually sat in the original Friends Central Perk set and on their sofa! We also got to play with 'forced perspective' - have a look at the photo for what happened!
In conclusion it was an excellent tour and we enjoyed hearing and seeing so much behind the scenes info.

From here we went to an unusual sight, the Tar Pits. See it is exactly as the name suggests... a load of Tar Pits. In the middle of urban LA there is an area of land where tar bubbles up from the centre of the earth in large pits. Back in the 1900s randomly some people excavated one site, and was amazed to discover that the tar perfectly preserved anything that had fallen into it once upon a time. This included sabre tooth tigers and fully grown woolly mammoths from before the ice age!! Absolutely unbelievable. We went inside the associated museum on arrival and saw full skeletons that had been discovered, with such a level of preservation they found a piece of plant food in one animals teeth from it's last meal. Incredibly in one pit they were finding hundreds of tigers, mammoths, birds and wolves. It was remarkable and some of the best examples of full skeletons in the world. Even now they are still excavating pits, one of which is open and you can see bones prutruding from the black mass of tar. We were truly fascinated by this unique place.

Now first thing that morning Phil had made an amazing discovery, one of his favourite bands who he'd wanted to see for a long time were doing their final farewell tour before ending (Yellowcard). We were missing it due to this trip, however he discovered (and nearly fell out of bed with excitement) that they were playing in LA, that very night. Of course we had to go and thankfully there were tickets. The gig venue was by the Staples centre and not far from the tar pits so we had a little car nap, then went for a very nice meal by the intimate venue. We had a fantastic view and it was quite the rock concert and Phil was buzzing. The one song I knew was great at the end! But it was a great concert and they played all Phils favourite songs so that was brilliant and very special.

The following day it was my turn for something special. We'd booked tickets for the El Capitan theatre to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie. Not only was it showing the new film it had all the props and costumes from the movie, as well as a special musical opening and swarovski crystal curtain. The only word I can use is magical... absolutely magical! The film I adored and the atmosphere was great. Before this we had a proper steak dinner at Hard Rock Cafe over the road, so Phil and I were in a bit of a food coma for the film, but we both thankfully got so absorbed by the film we didn't have a sugar crash.
To conclude the day we had to return the car and head towards the airport ready for our night flight. But we popped via Santa Monica beach on our way and caught a fairly nice sunset and saw the famous pier. What a way to end our LA adventure, full of food, landmarks and movie magic.

BethRead more