Cruise The World With Us 2026

Friday – February 6, 2026 – Los Angeles day 2

Today’s featured photo is of Angels Flight Railway in downtown Los Angeles. This site features prominently in the Michael Connelly novel of the same title. A prominent defense attorney is murdered in the rail car and Harry Bosch is given the task to solve the murder by Chief Irvin Irving.

Some background before we talk about today’s activities. Our family are fans of author Michael Connelly. We have read all of his series books featuring L.A. policeman Harry Bosch. We have also read the series about the “Lincoln Lawyer” – Mickey Haller. There have been 7 seasons of Bosch and 3 seasons of Bosch: Legacy produced for television. We have watched all of them more than once. The stories take place in the Los Angeles area.

We didn’t book tours ahead of time for Los Angeles because we didn’t like any of those being offered. When our world cruise began, someone introduced us to a service called Viator. We used that service to book a tour in Barcelona and were very happy with it. We looked to see what might be available in L.A. and found there was a half-day Harry Bosch tour! Since we were going to be in L.A. for 2 days we thought we could work that tour into the schedule. However, the tour was only available the second day, it lasted 5 hours beginning at 8:00 am and our departure on the second day was 2:00 pm. It didn’t give us a comfortable feeling that we would be back by the “all aboard” time. We found the email address of the person offering this tour, wrote to him and explained our situation and asked if there was any way to make the tour fit our schedule. He said the tour normally includes a lunch – which could be removed. He said there should be enough time to get us back to the ship by 1:00 pm. With that information, we booked the tour.

Vincent – our guide for the Harry Bosch tour – has a background in managerial hotel work. He has traveled the world in that capacity but wanted to find something that would not take him away from his wife and children often. A friend was operating a tour company in the area and was moving away. Vincent saw the opportunity to fill that position and became a guide for the Los Angeles area. He was not originally a Harry Bosch fan – didn’t know anything about him in the beginning. He accepted a booking from a “super” Bosch fan for a week of touring Bosch plot sites in the Los Angeles area. Vincent studied Harry and has become an expert on Harry’s history. Vincent told us he would pick us up at the dock immediately after dropping his girls at school (this was a Friday).

At about 8:50 am Vincent arrived at the cruise terminal in a dark green Mercedes SUV and we began our Harry Bosch tour. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, the downtown area of L.A. is about 25 miles from the port. Driving there gave us a chance to talk with Vincent and give him our story. We found out that the reason he wasn’t available on Thursday for the Harry Bosch tour was that he was giving a L.A. tour to other passengers on MSC Magnifica! As we arrived at the business district, Vincent pointed out recognizable buildings – Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles City Hall and Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters, for example. He parked the car and told us we would be walking to several of the iconic Harry Bosch sites associated with “Angels Flight”.

I don’t remember it being in the Bosch story – the first building he pointed out was the Million Dollar Theater built by Sid Grauman. This was directly across the street from the Bradbury Building which figures prominently in the “Angels Flight” story – it was the location of the law office for Howard Elias. After a brief stop inside the Bradbury Building we walked through the Grand Central Market on our way to the Angels Flight funicular railway. Howard Elias was killed on the railway.

We rode to the top and viewed areas featured in the television show – ticket office and field where a bullet was discovered. From this position we walked to the Biltmore Hotel where Harry met a friend at the bar and where Harry confronted a suspect in the shooting. In addition to featuring in “Angels Flight”, the Biltmore was home to the early Academy Awards ceremonies. Hallways we walked through contained photographs of those early ceremonies with very young stars in the making – Henry Fonda and Walt Disney are a couple I can remember distinctly.

From the business district we drove to Hollywood where we stopped at the Hollywood Police Station (a site in most of the Bosch series), parked and walked a section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, then saw the Dolby Theatre (where current Academy Awards ceremonies are held) and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Back in the SUV we drove to the hillside home used as Harry’s in the series. Along the way we passed another famous sight – Whisky a Go Go. There were many other memorable places on Sunset Strip but I didn’t make note of them – check them out for yourself on your next visit to the L.A. area. Scenes from Harry’s home feature in all the series – he has a spectacular view of the L.A. area. The view of the home from below makes me nervous – not sure I would want to live there in light of the earthquakes in California.

We continued our time with Vincent by driving through Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. Both areas have tall shrubs/trees along the streets so you really can’t see much of the exotic homes behind them owned by the rich and famous.

We arrived back at berth 93 in the Port of Los Angeles at around 1:05 pm with plenty of time to board and be ready for our 2:00 pm departure. We had a great time with Vincent and would recommend him for anyone who wishes to know the L.A. area better – or retrace the adventures of Harry Bosch! If you look at the gallery you will see that Vincent is wearing a t-shirt with Harry’s photo and “Everybody Counts” (a phrase Harry completes with “or no one counts”). We will be ordering shirts like that when we return home in May.

You can view today’s photos here.