13/05/10

Right, I'm actually writing this on the right day for the first time in a while :)

This morning I had another look for the diner from Mulholland drive and came up with a different address. In the film the diner is on Sunset Blvd and is called “Winkies” but in real life it is called Ceaser's and is near Compton. Compton is really grim. It is where rappers like Dr. Dre come from and they all talk about shooting each other and now I know why. The place has the appearance of a penal colony, horrible blocks of flats all with barred windows, they actually make the 70's tower blocks look nice. Fortunately the diner was a bit away from the shooting and stabbing part of town. Having breakfast in THE diner from Mulholland drive was absolutely fantastic, I sat in the seat where the camera is when looking at the guy who had had “a dream about this place”, afterwards we walked down the steps to the parking lot and looked around the corner half expecting to see the homeless guy. The place was great it even had an original Ms. Pakman machine and a NeoGeo multi machine with Metal Slug. The diner didn't advertise the fact that it was in the film and obviously didn't often get tourists, but that made it even better.

After breakfast we headed up the coast on the fabulous highway 1; “Big Sur”. The road huggs the coast and meanders past places like Malibu and some amazing scenery. We stopped when we got to Santa Barbarato have a wander and found it to be a great place. The town is right on the beach and is all in a Mediterranean style with lots of palm trees and brightly coloured flowers. They must spend a lot of time and effort on cleaning as it is spotless. The weather was perfect; blue sky, sunshine, a slight breeze and not too hot. On top of all of that it has a world class University.

I couldn't not explore the University of California Santa Barbara campus as it is one of the world's top places for Theoretical Physics. The campus itself is not really like Caltech at all. It is much bigger and had a feel a bit like Warwick but in the sunshine by the beach. Another university where everything is fantastically clean and well though out on a nice big campus. I have to say though, that I prefer Caltech, it is a much more intimite campus where everything matches and every building is a masterpiece and everything is special, whereas UCSB is much more like a normal universtiy, a beautiful one but not quite the spectacle that Caltech is.

Anyway, we are currently going up the coast and have recently passed a nice national park area that was just like the Peak District, but sunny.

Cube out