June 9th, 2010 / No Comments » / by hil
We are afraid so, but we have to accept it: we are finally back in Italy!
After an 8 hours Atlantic Ocean crossing, added to the flight hours (more or less 6!) from LAX to Philadelphia, this endless 15 hours trip remind us how much we linked with a lot of great people there and how amazing has been our American experience!
That’s the reason why we want to devote to all the greatest and marvelous people we met, to all the american friends who helped us feeding our dreams and of course to everyone, from our parents to our loves, that gave aid from home giving us the chance to reach this small but for us huge goal, the last thought of this travel book!
With this bunch of photos that will bring to mind our best moments of this awesome journey we say hello and we date to listen up again in a meanwhile, because now the only thing we’ve scheduled is to come back it this real City of Angels!
And many, many thanks to RaRe and to all its staff who generously gave us this space to tell and spread the world our story!
As always with Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
May 25th, 2010 / 193 Comments » / by hil
Finally here we are with our two last amazing experiences of this huge trip in northern California!
After the San Francisco tour where we have savored the flavor and the taste of that “American-European” city and after crossing the threshold of the most famous American jail, our last stages of the journey back to Los Angeles have been the two biggest natural areas of the whole Golden State: the Yosemite National Park and the Sequoia National Park!
These parks are not so close to each other (we staid in a couple of different “country style” towns to visit them both, and we felt like we went back in time of 200 years…so weird!), but we want to describe them together!
When we arrived at the Yosemite there was an unexpected cold! More or less -3 °C and of course none of us with the appropriate wear for that weather…lets say we passed just a chilly night!
The day after we started the journey in that earthly paradise: wonderful falls, giants and smooth rock mountains that vertically were going down to the beneath valley, huge trees trunks drowned in fresh brooks and an amazing wild fauna all around us! A wonder difficult to explain! And even if there were a lot of warning signs about rattle snakes and cougars (a sort of mountain lion), we did a long hiking across the woods…simply unbelievable!
The Sequoia National Park that we visited the day after revealed a more absurd experience due to the clime: there were a lot of snow!! Meters and meters of soft, whitey snow! Of course we were at a high altitude, but we didn’t expected so much!
So after a winding climb with our pick-up (after this experience we renamed it the “Gippippa”!) we reached a vast and huge sequoias forest! We had never seen such big and bearing trees like that! With a really thick bark, the biggest sequoia in the world called General Sherman was standing there, a bunch of foots from us, gathered by snow and people that like us were trying to immortalize in its entirety the giant tree in a single photo (and with an heigh of more than 80m, it was a really hard endeavor!).
After that, we visited a small museum about the sequoias history and we bought some seeds of those unique trees (and yes, at home we want to try to plant one!). Due to the huge amount of snow, we decided to go back to our car that in less than 6 hours drove us at home here in Los Angeles!
It was one of the most intense and magnificent journey of our life here in California, and will surely inspire and stay forever in our hearts and in our music!
But that’s not all!
Just a couple of days and than we’ll be back to Italy, so in the mean while prepare yourself for the last HiL’s experiences!
As always with Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: california, General Sherman, Giant Sequoias, hil, rare, Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park
May 11th, 2010 / 1 Comment » / by hil
And here we are with our third and last day in San Francisco!
This time due to great weather conditions we didn’t miss the chance to visit one of the most famous jails in the world, that seal off in the San Francisco Bay dabbling on a little isle, well known as “The Rock” or Alcatraz!
The boat journey was really quick, and when we went ashore we felt like we were back in time of 40 years. The jail stopped its activity at the end of the 60’s and everything remain as it was the day that closed. The island is pretty big and full of seagulls (it became a sort of “reserve” of the coast wild life), that went away during the jail period of activity but that returned now repopulating the area. Also, the name Alcatraz derive from the spanish “Alcatraces” which mean pelican and it was called “La Isla de los Alcatraces” (The Island of Pelicans) by the spaniard Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775 who first discovered the isle.
Inside, the prisons bring you a weird feeling of queasiness. Even if the jail wasn’t a place were prisoners die for the capitol penalty but a top security structure where they “just” serve their punishment (people like Al Capone stay there for years), the very small cells where they used to live raised in us a deep sense of anguish. Cells had basically a WC, a washstand, a tripod and an end table. Here it is, only some prisoners (usually when they arrived at the prison for the first time) used to have beds, but the many slept on the ground or on the plinth, too foolish.
But to understand the waste that you can feel in a place like that focus on the photos below, even if probably wont be enough to convey those feelings.
Shortly we’ll proceed with our journey in more natural and wild places, so prepare for that!
(To be continued…)
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Al Capone, Alcatraz, california, hil, Juan Manuel de Ayala, rare, San Francisco Bay, Seagulls, The Rock
May 4th, 2010 / 3 Comments » / by hil
Here we are to continue our north-californian experience!
The second day, due to bad weather conditions (it was raining heavily with a really cold breeze!), we decided to travel across the most important informatics area of America, the Silicon Valley! This big area include a bunch of cities nearby San Francisco, from San Jose to Santa Clara, where take place the headquarters of the most important informatics companies! So we drove and passed trough the Google and Yahoo buildings, the Intel (a famous brand of microprocessors, the heart of every computer) and then the Apple Computers mothership, where we stopped to take a look at the near store (but unfortunately the prices are the same everywhere!).
To make our day a little bit more busy (you can’t visit the companies inside because there are people working in the offices and you need a pass to get in) we’ve visited two museums about the computer history and we saw the amazing ancestor of all the modern computers, the Babbage’s Mechanical Calculator conceived in the middle of the 19th century. Besides there were also a lot of more recent components, like the first mouse or the first server without which our experiences about this great trip would never reach you! At last we saw also the Intel museum, more focused on the history of the microprocessors and on their research, development and creation, a little bit geek but really interesting!
Now enjoy the photos and stay tuned for the next updates of our story!
(To be continued…)
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Apple, Babbage, Google, Intel, Microprocessors, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Silicon Valley, Yahoo
May 1st, 2010 / 2 Comments » / by hil
It was hard but finally we are back from our mega trip to San Francisco and outskirts, fellows!
Images will probably tell you more than the mere word, but it was for sure one of our most beautiful experiences here in the United States!
In just one week we travelled more or less 1300 miles (2100 kilometers), a really huge distance if you think that the only state of California is a lot bigger than the whole Italy!
All started on April 19th, when we jumped in our car and we travelled to San Francisco, our first destination! As suggested many times from the guys here in Los Angeles, instead of the Freeway that travel inland (absolutely more quickly but less interesting for what concerning the landscapes!), we drove all along the coast, passing through Malibu and then up to the Big Sur (an unique sight for both soul and heart, something really gorgeous and breathless, after all a lot of poets of the Beat Generation wrote more than a page on those beautiful places!).
And then, when you arrive to San Francisco, the first thing that you immediately notice is the completely different architecture and life style, this city seems more European than American, more people-oriented and friendly! With its weird streets that pass steeps trough the hills and a beautiful ocean as city layout, this place shine to our eyes in a simply amazing way!
The first day we don’t miss a beautiful and relaxing (damn, after 9 hour trip we were a little bit tired!) walk through the Golden Gate and up to its park! Then we continued all along China Town (with a really long pause in a tea tasting shop…it was really something otherworldly, we’ve never tasted intense and particular tea flavors like that!) to Union Square, also stopping at the famous “Caffè Trieste” where Francis Ford Coppola wrote “The Godfather” script and at the “City Lights Books” shop, an historic bookstore of San Francisco filled in the 60’s by poets and writers of the Beat Generation movement like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg!
But for now focus your attention on the pictures, more news and updates about this trip will come out!
(To be continued…)
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Beat Generation, Big Sur, Caffè Trieste, california, China Town, City Lights Books, Golden Gate, hil, rare, San Francisco
April 16th, 2010 / 5 Comments » / by hil
New updates from the american HiL’s house!
Many of you probably have already been there, more not, but there’s nothing to describe: we are now back in L.A. after three days in the real Sin City!
Las Vegas is absolutely an uncommon place, just the snazzy imitations (but, let us tell you, really well made imitations!) of european locations that America doesn’t have like the Eiffel tower in Paris, Piazza San Marco in Venice or the Colosseum in Rome are enough to make this city so absurd!
The casino frenzy is also a daily must, from the early morning to late night there’s always someone in front of a slot machine ready to burn up his own salary, and the free alcohol that you can drink wile you’re sit down there totally don’t help you to stop playing!
Thankfully we didn’t play a lot, say that we are not so lucky in gambling (so, probably we have to success in something else, right??)!
After two days in this crazy Nevada city, we travelled across the desert to reach Arizona and to go in a place completely the opposite of the one we left behind: the Grand Canyon.
Here, after a little journey in a bushy vegetation with a lot of wild animals around (elks and deers are really common and you can see a lot of them running free in the Grand Canyon park), finally we saw something that really amused us, this famous, huge rock gorge that helped the United States to become so famous! The Grand Canyon magnificence is so big that describing it would be really pointless. Meditate on those millions years old rocks let you feel so tiny and insecure, but at the same time so happy that unique places like this, even if the cities crazy life, have still the power to arise in your soul those really strong feelings.
From Nevada and Arizona is all for now, fellows!
However go on and stay with us, in a couple of days we’ll be in San Francisco and so prepare for this really long trip too!
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Arizona, Casino, Desert, Gambling, Grand Canyon, hil, Las Vegas, Nevada, rare
April 10th, 2010 / No Comments » / by hil
Hey fellows!
Here we are with a couple of things that happened in these days!
Les Deux is a local on the Las Palmas ave. plenty of rockers and skaters!
In this really huge local, and in an unbelievable way, we’ve met one of our musical idols and source of inspiration: the Rage Against the Machine guitar player, Tom Morello! The place was full of people, we had just the time to say hello to him, took a little chat (he’s really a nice person, a very kind and simple guy!) and a photo on the go! But that was enough to make our night out even more electrifying!
The day after we went in another place, famous for the american film history: the Mel’s Drive In, a company that become notorious with the well known George Lucas’ film “American Graffiti”! Unfortunately it wasn’t the same where they made the movie (the “original” one is in San Francisco, of course it worth a jump when we’ll go there!), but the 50’s interiors, the dishes display, the sits and also the waiters are great, It seems really to be in the film!
However tomorrow we’ll go to Las Vegas and to the Grand Canyon for a bunch of days people! We are so excited for that!
So prepare yourselves for some fear and loathing in THE sin city!
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: American Graffiti, Drive In, George Lucas, hil, Hollywood, Las Palmas Ave., Les Deux, los angeles, Mel's, Rage Against The Machine, rare, Tom Morello
April 5th, 2010 / No Comments » / by hil
Hot news here!
Finally we’ve rented a car! Yeah!
Here in L.A. it’s really hard to move around without your own mean of transport, metros passes every 10 minutes and there aren’t so many bus! So now we can go everywhere and everytime we want, great!
And what kind of car we chose? A super-size american pick-up of course! God, it’s really really huge!! And parking it is not so easy..but..who care?? We are in America, let’s do it!
The first little travel with our new car brought us to the Griffith Park and then up to the Observatory, that with it’s imposing bearing gave us an amazing view of the city below!
Inside the Observatory, however, there are a bunch of rooms with interactive sections on our Earth and others dedicated to planets and all concerning the universe and it’s secrets! It’s not so big to visit, but it worth a jump!
Then during the week, the Observatory organize shows with the planetarium and star parties when the sky is clear enough to watch the stars!
But we are planning to go back there, so probably we’ll talk about it again later on!
For now,
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: GMC, Griffith Park, hil, Hollywood, los angeles, Observatory, Pickup, rare
April 3rd, 2010 / No Comments » / by hil
HiL’s are back!
Today we just want to show you two of the most unique and distinctive places of Los Angeles: Beverly Hills and Santa Monica!
Beverly Hills is exactly how you can remember from the homonym tv series with Brandon Walsh and Dylan McKay, big houses and huge mansions with public parks instead of gardens and a lot, really a lot of green!
Parking in front of the famous “Pretty Woman” hotel and taking a walk trough the famous Rodeo Drive it’s a little bit shiver: we’ve never seen so many trendy and fashion shops all in a single street, and really, things aren’t cheap at all (in an art gallery with a Peter Max exhibit we’ve also seen Silvester Stallone…’jeeze!)
Santa Monica, instead, is amazing if you want to spend a quiet day at the beach, with a perfect mix of shopping and relax!
Unlike Venice Beach (and we saw that there are really canals like in the real Venice in Italy..so weird!) that is more chaotic and artistic in such a way,
the beach in Santa Monica is more suitable for long walks beside the ocean and to do joggin’ at the shadows of the palms that coast the street, sometimes taking a stop to take a look at the shops! An awesome place for all the purpose!
Finally we really want to say a big big THANK YOU to Craig Diamond that is simply an amazing and helpful person! Without him this beautiful
day wouldn’t be possible at all!
Soon more californian hot-news!
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Beverly Hills, california, hil, los angeles, rare, Santa Monica
March 29th, 2010 / No Comments » / by hil
Hey people!
Here we are again after a little stop!
In all the “tourist things” we’ve planned to do, we can’t miss the huge aquarium of all the west coast: the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach!
How we reached it without having a car? With the metro, of course! A beautiful hour and a half trip trough the suburbs of the city, that explain in a better way the social uneasiness of America and in this specific case, Los Angeles.
But apart from the trip, the aquarium is absolutely amazing! There are so many marine species of the pacific coast, from the californian and the mexican ones to the little islands in the middle of the ocean! Among all this beautiful wildlife, the most impressive section of the aquarium is the jellyfish one, this animals are simply amazing! With their snazzy colors and their slow and gentle movements, jellyfishes ravish the stare of anybody stops for a minute in front of them! This year, also, the aquarium is focusing on sharks and rays, and seeing this curious and aggressive animals right in front of your face, always stir up a strange felling!
Besides the aquarium, also the outskirts of the harbor in Long Beach are nice, with typical locals near it and a beautiful vessel smaller than Titanic but more luxurious called the Queen Mary moored in the bay!
At last on a little green zone, we found a wonderful lighthouse where, at the bottom of it, we put to sleep ourselves for half an hour, cradled by a magnificent and chilly oceanic wind!
Soon more updates on our trip, continue to follow us!
Love
Yours
HiL
Posted in: HiL in L.A.
Tags: Aquarium of the Pacific, california, hil, Long Beach, los angeles, rare
