Blogs from West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, North America

San Diego and Venice Beach - both by the pacific ocean but with completely different vibes. Before I divulge any details of our stay I will mention that preceeding our trip to San Diego Jon, Stephanie and I had one night in California's capitol city Sacremento. I think its fair to say that neither Stephanie nor I expected much from the city but upon Jon's recommendation we stayed there for one night, and I can say that I'm really glad we did. Old Sacremento is a fantastic area, like something out of a western; wooden pathways, old trains and kitch little shops. A fantastic costume shop aswell selling halloween stuff - so jealous I can't be in the States for this holiday! We also took a tour of Capitol Building aka the Governator's old hang-out! Okay, ... read more

Had a little sleep in today......yeah!, after breakfast we make our way to La Brae tar pits, mmmm, there is a story to this trip. As you know in the USA you drive on the opposite side of the road(well,to us it's opposite), and in some carparks in LA they have spikes along the driveways for those drivers who try drive in the wrong way, you drive over the spikes, "oh oh, 2 flat tyres", you know what I'm going to tell you, right, yep you guessed it, when you turn left you have to go to the far right lane, Steve for some reason went into the left lane, the parking attendent, a little man, came running out of his little hut yelling STOP STOP, oh no, to late, the two front wheels went straight ... read more

The trip begins,it's Monday morning 3am, the bags are packed and were waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport,we've been up since 2am after deliberately only having a couple of hours sleep. We have sleeping pills and hope to catch some sleep on the flight. I'm feeling a little light in the stomach,that feeling most people get would get on this sort of trip.......leaving the family,your house,the cat( sorry saffy) and long flight. Our cab driver is slightly amused that we booked a cab so early as its only a 15 min trip to the airport for a flight that is scheduled for departure at 6am,we're leaving nothing to chance, as you can imagine, we wait a while before check in, a quick bite to eat and then off to the boarding gate ... read more

Lucky I gave Los Angeles a second chance, because I am already starting to plan my next visit to this amazing city, except this time I’ll defiantly hire a car… Other than the extraordinary amount of money we spent on taxis to get from one place to another, I generally found Los Angeles more expensive than Chicago; but that didn’t stop me from shopping. We found the best shops in West Hollywood on Sunset Blv and Santa Monica Blv… and Rodeo Drive of course… I think with LA, you just have to know where you are going and how to get there in order to appreciate the city. Everything is very spread out, just like everyone always says, but they have some really sexy and funny billboards everywhere to distract us while we were in the ... read more

Wow the trip is almost over! Just another like 12 hours to kill. I can say it's been a huge eye-opener on several levels. Oh and look that show with all the hot babes has been renewed "Nikita" wooot, download time! ahem.... So today we wrap things up with a trip to the Grumann theatre, the Griffith Observatory and then The Grove. We visited The Getty Centre yesterday which was utterly amazing. Saw some Rubens painting and was totally blown away but my body is really dying for a day off so I had to cut the trip short. The Getty Centre is just incredible and well worth the $3 to get there :) Went for a walk last night past all the Hollywood hot spots like the Cheateu Marmont and ended up at a Ice ... read more

We finished up at the Sheraton. We paid $100 to get here to West Hollywood. Past East L.A. which is Gang land territory which was hardcore to see in the flesh. Anyway seeing the Hollywood sign was cool but once we got to our hotel we started to see that Best Western takes a dump on Sheraton. First of all we get Wi-fi in our room...anyway I won't go on as I'll just be pissed off. Anyway where we are is great, it's a long walk but a welcome walk to get rid of some of this fatty high cal food. We went into "In and Out" which is a burger chain that has like 3 things on the menu but dam it's pretty good. Very cheap and it's just like that: In and Out. $10 ... read more

David here... We arrived mid afternoon in L.A after a long 11 hour flight, without the benefit of watching many films as they started them all before they turned the screens on and Air Pacific only show the same films on a loop, though I did manage to see the bulk of Tangled. To make up for not being able to really watch films we drank a copious amount of white wine, making sure that we asked the gentleman serving as his measures were bigger. We jumped into a Super Shuttle (Blue Vans at LAX) who took us directly to our hostel in West Hollywood for only $16 each. We had decided to stay at the Banana Bungalow on Fairfax as: a) it was cheap, and b) it was only a 40 minute walk from the ... read more