Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

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This photo is taken at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California

The final part of our tour, we'd originally added LA to our itinerary as we couldn't stand a diret flight to London from Hawaii with only a brief stop over at LAX so we added a few extra days in Hollywood.

My views on LA possibly for this reason are a little bias in that we only really had time to do the touristy things rather than explore a little further off the beaten track but in any case, outwith Santa Monica, Venice Beach and maybe the Getty Center, I'm not sure what else there is and areas seem to change very quickly.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a really cool place and the hand and foot prints outside of some of the best loved actors and actresses (and western film horses?) are really good to see. Just along the road is the Kodak Theatre where they host the oscars and you can get a tour round there by a very knowledgable guide (ours was also an actress who seemed a bit bitter that she hadn't made her break yet....) and a chance to see an oscar statue and sit in the same seats that your favourites sat this year. You can't take photos though, even if you have a kodak camera. The walk of fame is of course, all the way along this road on both sides and it stretches for 2 and a half miles either way and it's here that I mean the areas change quickly, you've got your head down looking at the stars, it still goes way off into the distance but suddently the area you're in doesn't seem quite so toursity and friendly.

We also took a tour of the stars houses for a bit of celeb spotting, a day to go to Universal Studios which is brilliant and the studio lot tour is great chance to see the Bate's Motel from Pyscho and the fishing harbour from Jaws as well as other bits and bobs from your favourite films. We also took in a LA Dodgers baseball game where the Dodgers were hammered 6-1 by the Chicago White Sox, so least said the better.

992 still to see

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