A couple of days to kill around LA took us first to Pasadena, a pleasant suburb with an 'old town' that doesn't look remotely old but has decent nightlife and plenty of chain stores to keep Lilly happy, though it might drive you mad if you spend much time on foot as crossing streets takes a geological age, and of course jaywalking is illegal. I must admit that watching the World Cup has taken up a bit of time, but a 7am kick-off doesn't eat into your day, and if England are playing at 1130am then a long lunch seems justified (particularly if, like me, you had predicted we would struggle against the US and need to check that you were right). There is a lot of World Cup hype over here, it's being shown in plenty of bars and restaurants. We tried to go to a British pub but it was full, so we settled for a bar/restaurant. We'd been to another in the same chain to watch the LA Lakers a couple of evenings earlier and it had been rammed and noisy. Here, at quarter past eleven, there were about a dozen people at the bar obviously here for the match and a few more at tables who probably weren't interested. But the place quickly filled up and was full of TV screens and the crowd gradually got more involved and noisy. Even people walking in in the 89th minute stopped to watch the end of the game, and over the next couple of days I heard quite a few people talking about Robert Green's moment of infamy.* The next day we watched Germany annihilate Australia over lunch, in a quiet bar in a quiet area (in Glendale), but there were still a few German supporters in there.
* Yes, they all had it in for him.
The one cultural thing we did in
Pasadena was visit the Pacific Asia Museum. Only small but a fun eclectic mix, including a display of cricket cages (used for transporting crickets to cricket fights, apparently) and a very modern exhibit of miniature paintings from Pakistan.
Finally, we followed the last bit of Route 66 down to Santa Monica (via a small diversion for a huge gay pride weekend). We've clocked up just over 2,500 miles on our road trip and handed in our Nissan for a well-earned service at the biggest car rental agency I've ever seen, Hertz at LAX - so big that it runs a dedicated shuttle bus to the airport every 3 minutes. Our flight has already been delayed because of bad weather in Chicago, which doesn't bode well...
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