Walking Uphill in LA...

This post was meant to be published before the last one which was all about our first day in Canada. But silly me touched the wrong one...this one is from way back in LA in the first days of this holiday. So without further ado, here is the post about the day when I reckon we walked miles! Lol

One day in our first week in the US, DH and I went for a long walk which took us eventually to the Bunker Hill area.

Firstly we walked right up to 2nd Ave...this is just part of the huge library which runs through to the next street, Grand Ave.

We explored these stairs...

Looking down from near the top of the stairs...

Our destination was a funicular railway that DH had read about in a Michael Connelly book, called Angels Flight. Guide books say it is the shortest railway in the world?? We had to ask a local where it actually was as there were lots of very tall buildings around. Apparently from the late 1960s the area has undergone complete redevelopment which saw many homes demolished and the area became gentrified and commercial buildings like insurance and banking took over. We had read that the little railway was closed and was awaiting re certification. 

We were directed to walk through a large glitzy shopping plaza and then climb some stairs but we found it!

It was lunch time in the shopping plaza and a South American style band was playing...

They were very good...we enjoyed the music while we had some lunch...

DH had read about a museum in the Wells Fargo Building in this area, so we set out to find it...didn't take long as the WF building really stands out! The museum is on the ground floor and again there was lots to look at. 

In the little theatre, a film traced the company from stagecoach, carrying passengers, to carrying gold to being a large banking institution. Of course railways 'killed' the passenger business.

A model showing the team of horses used to pull the stagecoach...

A selection of the firearms used by Wells Fargo to protect the boxes of gold.

Examples of luggage carried by passengers. 9 people inside and sometimes 9 on the roof where the luggage went.

There was also a display in the museum of how much environmental damage was caused by using high pressure hoses to loosen the soil and make it easier to extract gold. 

The top photo shows the large nozzle that went on these hoses...

A reward poster and a 'cradle' for extracting the alluvial gold from soil.

After an hour or so we then headed off to find the Disney Theatre...

On the way we saw the Dorothy Chandler Building...

The very impressive Disney Theatre

The Superior Courthouse Building...

A lovely vista of Town Hall...

The lovely fountain...

On the next level down, children on school holidays were having a ball, playing in the water.

Another view of the fountains...

DH wanted to find the street where the funicular travelled down to...which we did!

Our walk then continued on to Broadway but it's nothing like New York's Broadway...

This part was quite nice...

Then the Jewellry Quarter which looked a bit 'seedy' in parts...

The buildings were lovely old ones though...on the outside at least.

A police officer on a bike keeping an eye on things...

Lots of the shops in this Quarter sell these elaborate frocks...

After this we walked the cross streets to get back to our hotel...I whinged all the way by now as not only did my feet hurt but so did my back....but we had seen so much!