 10/12/2024 - Los Angeles, California - Our last days in Los Angeles were packed with stuff including museums, beaches and Eric Clapton performing at the Hollywood Bowl. Today, we started the day with breakfast at our hotel the Hilton Garden Inn LA/Hollywood. We headed to Guitar Center down on Sunset Blvd and spent some time playing guitars and checking out their Rock Walk with hand prints of many legendary musicians. The Rock Walk has existed since 1985 a cool display you can only find in Hollywood. We took a drive around LA and hit Rodeo Drive checking out the amazing homes, highend shops and luxury cars. We then headed back to the hotel and walked to the Hollywood Bowl that was literally only a five minute walk from the hotel. The Bowl is an impressive outdoor venue holding about 11,000. We had decent tickets in the Terrace section left stage and shared our stall with some locals. The venue has a cool vibe that allows people to bring food in and buy wine by the bottle at the venue and the stalls have removable tables that we used to share our meal with our new California friends. The show started promptly at 7:30PM with Jimmie Vaughan opening again. He did a similar Texas blues almost hour set from the prior show that included Just A Little Bit and Texas Flood. Jimmie and band were good on this very cool LA evening. After the brief intermission, Clapton and band hit the stage just after 9PM and did a good hour and 45 minute set. They opened with Sunshine of Your Love and a nice jam on Key To The Highway being helped by Doyle Bramhall II on guitar. The 79 year old Clapton was bundled up wearing a hat, cape and later adding half gloves on this very cool evening almost reminding me of Clint Eastwood. He did a good acoustic set that included the standards Running On Faith, Change The World and Tears In Heaven. The second electric set had the classics Got To Get Better In A Little While, Cross Road Blues and closing the set with Cocaine. The single encore was Before You Accuse Me. This was a good show and an excellent venue may need to come back and see a show. The next day we had to catch a red-eye flight late in the day so after the final breakfast at the hotel we checked out and did a little more exploring of LA. We headed back to the coast and this time we stoppedd at the very nice beach area at Manhattan Beach. It had a large beach with a nice pier that contains a small aquarium. We grabbed some sugary snacks at some of the many beach front shops. We still had time before our flight and headed to The Getty Museum which was an impressive place beautifully architected and meticulously landscaped. The museum had works from legendary artists like van Gogh, Monet and Renoir. The Getty also provides fantastic panoramic views of the LA area. We then headed to LAX to catch our Jet Blue direct flight to Buffalo. We had a suprisingly good meal at Rock & Brews Bar & Grill and got upgraded to roomier seats for the long trip. The flight was on time without issue, another sucessful trip in the books. Slideshow |
