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Published: December 15th 2007
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In true Doctor Who fashion, we managed break through the laws of space and time travel: we went back in time. Without the aid of a DeLorean or a Tardis, we arrived in LAX nine hours before we left Fiji. Amateurs. All we needed was a jumbo jet. After waiting in the longest queue in US immigrations history, we picked up our luggage and took the shuttle bus to our hostel. We were immensely excited to see we were staying just off Hollywood Boulevard, alternatively christened by Greenday as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. We took a stroll and could not decide if it was lunch or tea time, but being that we were hungry, we ate at the Pig and Whistle, which had waitresses that would look more at home on a movie set than serving us burgers in a glorified Old Man's Pub. We did a bit of star spotting and saw Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Tom Cruise. Unfortunately not the real thing, but the stars on the sidewalk. To have a star put on the Walk of Fame, the celebrity actually has to pay $20,000. Considering you can be nominated for stars in up to five categories,
it could become quite costly. However, the only Personality with a star for all five categories is Gene Autry. Nope. I had never heard of him either. After quite a long day, and being tired from bending all those rules of physics, we went to see a movie at the famous Graumann’s Chinese Theatre.
With only a couple of days in Los Angeles, we thought it best to do the tourist thang and jump on a tour bus. The first one took us on a tour of the Stars’ homes and some of the famous sights used in the movies. We drove up through the Hollywood Hills and saw the gates of such celebrities as Jason Priestley, Charlize Theron, the Osbornes and the late Bella Legossi. Next we drove up Mulholland Drive to get an amazing view of the Hollywood sign and over the whole of the city. Back into Hollywood, we passed the car park where Hugh Grant was caught having ‘relations’ with Divine Brown; the parking lot that had previously been the Rat Pack hangout Garden of Allah, later re-named Paradise, which allegedly inspired the Joni Mitchell song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’; the Rainbow Grill where Marilyn Monroe
and Joe DiMaggio met on a blind date; as well as many famous and infamous bars, such as Johnny Depp’s Viper Room, Whisky A-Gogo and Chateau Marmont. There was definitely a lot of history in this town. Next we drove to Belle Air to see the Cruise mansion and the new Beckham palace. From here the tour bus carried on to Rodeo Drive, where we saw many of the famous sights from the movie ‘Pretty Woman’, such as the Regent Beverly Wilshire and the boutique store Boulmiche (“You work on commission right? Big mistake, huge!”).
After a break for lunch at Mel’s Drive-In, we took the open top double decker on a tour of historic Hollywood. There was some overlap from the first tour, but most of the sights were new, such as Paramount Studios and Capital Records. The tours were really interesting, as our tour guides were full of information on the celebrities and the sights. It also helped to get our bearing of the town, which proved helpful when we came back from Mexico and had the rental car.
That night we discovered that they served Jim Beam and Coke for only $3 in the hostel,
The Hollywood Sign
Those letters are 5 stories high don't you know which may or may not have influenced our decision to go and do karaoke in the Pig and Whistle later on that evening. Franny belted out Black Velvet and we made friends with some of the locals. One of whom was a manager at the Roosevelt Hotel, where Shirley Temple was taught how to tap dance by Bo Jangles. We felt the need to visit this historic sight, where we took advantage of our new friend’s position by getting free drinks beside the pool and Franny tried out some of the hotel's Grand Pianos and almost weed herself with excitement. Next, we went up in to the Hills to one of the group’s Uncle’s house, who was apparently a famous director but quite conveniently was out of town. The house was huge and lush, with fantastic views over the whole of LA. We eventually managed to stagger into the hostel at 6am, which was co-incidentally the time they put out free pancake mix so you can make your own breakfast. I am not entirely sure we should have been allowed to play with a gas cooker, but we did manage to make great tasting pancakes without burning the hostel down.
I think that would have been a throw-outable offense.
We were feeling ever so slightly fragile the next day as we took the subway to Universal Studios. We had booked the tickets the previous day, before the plan was hatched to go out drinking, but there was no way we were going to waste our money. Thankfully Universal was not like Disney, and did not have scarily perky people bouncing about in character costumes. We took the studio lot tour, where we ferried around the back lots to see sets and props for various TV shows and movies. Later, we braved the rides, and experienced the Mummy rollercoaster and the Jurassic Park water ride as well as watching some shows on how they create various special effects.
By the time we returned to the hostel that evening, there was not much else we could do apart from packing everything we would need for the next country on our agenda. Our flight to Mexico was the next morning and I really needed to brush up on my Spanish. “Hola, tengo quatorce anos.” was about all I could remember, and somehow, I do not think "Hullo, I am 14" was
going to help us much.
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