Hollywood and Universal Studios

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Today we head off and to the touristy thang - Hollywood, Stars Homes and Universal Studios. We loved it. I must admit that for all that we see on the TV about Tinseltown, I still really can't belive it exists, much less than people actually living here.

We head off this morning with our own personal driver in a big black, tinted windowed Lincoln. No roofless tour bus for us thank-you-very-much. Truth be told, it actually worked out cheaper this way. We start out on Rodeo Drive. Very posh, totally love it. Then we head off into the residential area where we see the homes of Paul Newman, Barbara Streisand, Posh and Becks, Ice T, TomKat, Dr.Phil, Mariah Carey, Christina, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Martin, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.

We then head up into the Hollywood Hills, where we see Scarlett Johannsenn and Charlize Theron. Hollywood Hills is really beautiful. We make our way to the lookout and see full view of this famous town. We see the Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood Boulevard and downtown.

We hit Sunset at see The Viper Room where River Pheonix overdosed and the restaurant where Paris was arrested for drink driving. And then we see Manns Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre at the Hollywood Walk of Fame where we see the stars. I did not realise just how many there are. Stacks and stacks.

We race up some stairs and see the Hollywood sign. It's really truly there! It used to say HOLLYWOOD LAND. A real estate agent had it put there back in the 70's as an adsvertising gimmick for people so buy land and the word LAND fell down. It now stands at the most recognised part of the city.

Bonar, our driver (I know, terrible name!) now takes us to Universal Studio's. We were not going to do it, but decided at the last minute to see it. And I am glad we did. It is AWESOME. We were there for 5 hours and we could have easily been there for another 5. Well worth it. We saw the sets from Desperate Housewives and the Ghost Whisperer, the house from Psycho, that friendly shark Jaws, the caves of The Mummy. We also went into a sound studio for Bones and it was freaky. Water falling all over us, stunt buses and trucks being thrown at us and smoke. Very cool. We also went into a scene from Fast and the Furios and had a car or two thrown at us. Awesome stuff.

We came off the Studio tour and went looking around. Had lunch in Wolfgang Puck's (best meal so far). We meet and hug Marge and Homer Simpson, and get disappointed when we realise that the wait time for Jurassic Park ride was an hour. It looked so fantastic, but only had 30 minutes until our driver came back.

Fantastic day. So so very tired. but worth every minute.

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