Angels Flight and Knoll

I was organizing and editing photos during this weekend trying to figure out what to post.  I was thinking that it had to be somewhat related to summer as it is starting to feel like summer here in Southern California. Plus, IT IS already summer in the Philippines.

Angels Knoll

Anyway, I narrowed down my list to the usual summer destinations of beaches, mountains, hotels, tourist traps, or whatever place remotely linked to summer.  But as I was organizing my photos, I stumbled onto a file folder containing photos from an old cellphone.  Voila! this is going to be THE post for summer for this week.

So here are some images from way way back, like 5 years ago. And I will reveal later why I chose them as my summer related topic.

Angels Flight
S. Hill St. Los Angeles, California

Angels flight is a unique historical landmark in downtown Los Angeles, just one block north from the Pershing Square station of the LA Metro Red Line.  It was established during the early 1900s as a railway system to serve residents of what used to be an apartment complex located much higher than street level.

The tracks are very steep at around 30 degrees inclination, but the total length of the railway is only around 300 feet. I haven't seen the actual trams move, but this would have been an extremely short train ride even if they moved at a snail's pace.

Since the two trams for the railway were not operational when I visited, I just took the stairs right beside it to reach the top.  I read recently somewhere on the Internet that they are operational now with a fare of 50 cents or a discounted 25 cents if you have the Metro TAP card.  I will probably give this a try when I visit downtown Los Angeles again.

Since there is nothing really much to do here other than stare at a hundred year old inclined mini-railway, I moved on to the next tourist spot right beside Angels Flight.


Angels Knoll
S. Hill St and W. 4th St. Los Angeles, California

The less famous view of Angels Knoll

This park is actually closer to the Pershing Square station as you hit it first before the old railway. But I decided to proceed to the railway first as back then, the Knoll was just another nondescript small park in Southern California. But it has a really nice view of the LA skyline if you looked south from this park.


However, it is the park's eastern view which made this park really famous. In 2009, that view was featured prominently in a RomCom movie, which became a sleeper hit.  The park was the favorite spot of the movie's main character, Tom (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt).  And this is where he often brought Zoeey Deschanel's female lead character.   Her name in the movie: SUMMER.

Just move a little more to the right and
you get the same view that Tom and Summer had.

*Sorry I do not have photos of the exact park bench where they sat.  There is actually now a commemorative plaque on the back of that bench.  I saw a lot of images on the Internet and there were some photos of couples having their engagement (prenuptial) photos on that bench.  

Hmmm....I don't know these people really watched the movie and knew what happened to Tom and Summer.

After this weird blog post, I will go back to regular programming of having beaches, hotels, mountains and other more"normal" travel destinations.  I could not decide on whether to feature Baguio, Mt Baldy, a Japanese garden, and more Las Vegas features

 Disclaimer:  I'm not really into RomComs.