Ah yes, downtown LA. I’ve seen it so often on television and cinema, but no, I don’t recognise a single thing. We are staying for three days at the Biltmore hotel, right in the heart of downtown. It is enormous. It takes up a whole city block. You can enter it from three sides as a peasant, and from the fourth side if you are a VIP. It has 145 rooms and 130 suites. We have a “Superior” room. I don’t think there are any “Inferior” rooms. It’s all quite luxurious with beautiful furnishings and magnificent ceilings.

So out for a walk to see the city. The lady at reception gave us a city map and marked a big X on a large block. “You don’t want to go near that neighbourhood”, says she. Fair enough. We walk along Broadway. It’s about two blocks away from the big X, so I reckon we’re fine. Lots of very colourful characters. There’s a lady dancing by herself on the footpath and holding a continuous conversation with no one in particular. She’s having a rare old time. There are shoppers and eaters and hawkers and beggars and bankers. Someone mutters, “Those people shouldn’t be walking around here”. He doesn’t mutter why. We wander on. A lady sees us checking our map and stops to ask what we are looking for. She gives us the full tourist board of LA spiel. She is very proud of her city.

We get to the museum of Contemporary Art. There is a large sculpture (?), made from bits of broken aeroplanes. Is it just me?  Should art not have some aesthetically pleasing element?  I certainly wouldn’t want it in my sitting room. Actually, it wouldn’t fit in my sitting room if I extended across the street and up through the roof. There was one picture I liked. It was about “Real Men” and showed a cowboy on his horse, knitting!  The cowboy, not the horse.

On to do a tour of the Music Centre. What a fabulous venue. Four theatres, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which was the venue for the Oscars for years after the Biltmore, (yes our hotel!), and before they were moved to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

At night, we walk to the Staples Centre, where there is a basketball match in progress. Busy area, great buzz, full of restaurants, bars and wandering basketball fans. And it’s far away from the big X. When we get back, there’s a three piece jazz band in the hotel bar, so, ok, maybe just a nightcap.

Of course the reason we are in downtown LA is the wedding of Ed and Shaina. This takes place at 5pm in a gorgeous venue, outdoor, on top of a building not five minutes from our hotel. It was once the apartment for the very wealthy developer of the building and, although some of the action takes place indoors, namely reception drinks and nibbles and a fabulous jazz/flamenco guitarist, mostly it is outdoors on the roof. Yes the ceremony, meal and music and dancing, all outdoor, with the Goodyear Blimp floating overhead and the lights of the city’s skyscrapers dressing the background in veils of colour. What a wonderful night.

We’ll soon be leaving to drive north along the Pacific Highway as we make our way, slowly, to get to San Francisco by next weekend.