Tier Point Run to Los Angeles in May 2024: Day 5 – Los Angeles – Morning

I woke at around 2am, which meant I had had a half-decent night’s sleep. There’s never any point in trying to adapt to the local timezone since I would be heading back home within a few days of arriving.

I’m happy that my body can deal with the jet lag and adapt as best it can.

The earliest any Starbucks was open in Hollywood was 5am. I decided to try the alternative Starbucks store that I sat in at yesterday to see whether I could sit in today.

Unfortunately, the standard around here seems to be to open a window at 5am, then open the store at 6am or later.

I ordered my coffee and wandered back to the hotel with it in hand.

I noticed quite a few homeless people hanging around as I wandered through the streets. No cause for concern though.

Breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn (HGI) started at 6am, so I headed down and grabbed one of the two booths.

It was the typical arrangement: buffet breakfast and I received a $10 food & beverage credit (per person) for being a Diamond member.

The staff in the restaurant were really good. It was clear that they wanted everyone to enjoy their breakfasts. One of the best Hilton restaurants I’ve been to (in the context of staff).

I watched the F1 qualifying from Imola from 7am until 8am. Whilst that was going on I upgraded my AA LAX to JFK transcon flight into First Class.

But as a result, my seat reservation for my Finnair flight from Helsinki to Malaga switched from 01F to 04A for some reason. I therefore had to get on to Finnair web chat support to get that sorted. Web chat took ages to get me in contact with a real person.

Three hours later and I finally got someone to change my seat and email through a new boarding pass. I had to get fairly assertive to ensure I got what I needed. Not impressed.

The plan for the rest of this morning was to head up to the Griffiths Observatory for 11am to take in the attractions up there.

I checked out and left my bag at the HGI, and caught an Uber directly to the Griffiths Observatory.

The Uber driver was really nice. She thought I looked like Clint Eastwood (when he was younger) – I thanked her for the compliment.

She lived an hour away and had picked up a local fare that brought her into LA. She had been on the go since 4am, was very tired and very hungry.

I arrived at around 10:30 and got a ticket for the 10:45 planetarium show called Water is Life.

It wasn’t too busy but was very well presented by a softly spoken woman walking around the auditorium. It was interesting and I learnt some new things about the universe! Well recommended.

After my planetarium visit, I wandered around the main building and found people and kids everywhere. It felt very disorganised, and there were no maps or additional info available.

For my next feature, I headed down to the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theatre, which showed a short film every hour about the history of Griffith J Griffith and what inspired the creation of the observatory.

It was interesting, but not particularly exciting.

Near to the theatre, there was a gift shop and a cafe. I needed a food top-up, so I picked up a bag of Haribo. No price tag. At the till, the cost was $5.49 – I almost fell over.

That’s at least three times the price I would expect to pay at a supermarket. However, they were exactly what I needed at that point in the day.

There wasn’t a great deal else in the observatory that I was interested in, so I took the opportunity to say goodbye to the screaming kids and I inhaled the amazing views and started walking…

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to Los Angeles in May 2024