by Leanne Guenther

This really is an adult vacation, I swear…

We woke up to a spectacular view of Hollywood Tower and the Hollywood sign out our hotel window, put on our hiking boots and headed off on the twenty minute walk to The Chinese Theater (“TCL”).

All along the way were the stars on Hollywood Boulevard. We enjoyed chatting about which ones we each recognized, occasionally stopping to take a photo.

We marvelled at how obvious the “clean up” of the area was the closer you approached the central tourist block. About three blocks from our hotel we started to notice a visible police presence working to minimize the amount of contact the tourists and the homeless had with one another. We also noticed loads more souvenir shops carrying tiny little oscar statues for tourists to buy.

We chatted about where we wanted to eat and settled on “Loteria”, a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from TCL. The inside wasn’t that welcoming but it had a nice outdoor patio that was great for people watching, friendly staff and tasty, inexpensive food. It happened to be taco Tuesday and we ate our fill of a wide variety of $3 tacos. The pork pibil was my favourite. Darren loved the carnitas.

TCL has a big, outdoor foodcourt area too with lots of family friendly options. We explored the area, taking photos of the sights but we were glad we stopped at the quieter, cheaper restaurant on the way.

It was fun looking at all the handprints of stars and busloads of tourists but the REAL highlight of our visit was a private screening of Spiderman into the Spiderverse at TCL.

Wow, doesn’t that sound fancy. Lol.

The Chinese Theater actually has a regular movie theater attached to it. It’s big and beautiful and no one seems to use it.

They show normal movies, at normal times for normal prices to normal people who eat normal popcorn.

I thought it was such a brilliant thing to do while touring Hollywood Boulevard and Darren is a huge Spiderman fan (he shed some tears at the end of Infinity War!). He was a little skeptical about the multiverse’s reimagining of his favourite superhero but the movie was AMAZING. I don’t care how old you are, go see it! We laughed out loud more than once and we squeezed each others hands during those moments we related to as parents. Yes, it contains great messages about diversity which I applaud but the moments that resonated most for me were the ones we all share — expectations, family, love, loss and the rubik’s cube.

Anyways, our private screening was completely accidental. It wasn’t a fancy thing at all — apparently I’m the only person who thinks going to see a movie is just about the coolest thing a person could possibly do in Hollywood. The theater was beautiful but it’s a complete ghost town in there — it was almost spooky!

Super glad we went, Would definitely recommend it to families especially if you don’t like crowds, heh. Most of the movies playing at the TCL theaters were family oriented.

After the movie we walked the rest of Hollywood Boulevard stopping to enjoy a latte and cappuccino plus a bit more people watching at the end (which we realized after a few moments is actually supposed to be the beginning… we’d done the walk “backwards” but it doesn’t really matter).

From there we grabbed a taxi up to Griffith Observatory which ended up being my favourite stop in LA.

Disclaimer: As always, my opinions are my own. I don’t get free stays at hotels or private movie screenings (*wink*) for writing my reviews. No one involved is ever even aware I’m doing it.

You might also enjoy visiting these sections on DLTK's Sites:

• Kidzone Spiders Section
• Superhero crafts and coloring pages
• More Family Travel Journals