2. Los Angeles & the home of Pretty Woman!

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Los Angeles, La-La-Land, Hollywood hmmm..... We weren´t too impressed with US$70 taxi fare to our hotel but we quickly sussed out the metro system which was reasonably good, although the 12-20 minute waits for a train made us appreciate the tube in London a whole lot more and made us dread Melbourne´s trains.

We only had a couple of days here and it´s a pretty unusual city to be tourist in. Public transport is really average and everything is spread out. We decided to do the tourist bus tour which took 5 hours but it ticks off all the main sites - Hollywood Bowl, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive etc.. Half the bus were 60yrs plus.

The other main thing we did was visit Santa Monica. It took us almost 2 hours !!! to catch a bus from LA downtown to Santa Monica pier but it´s well worth the visit. We will return here in December for a better look around and to pick up some Christmas bargains.

A blog entry for girls (well girls who are big fans of Pretty Woman anyway!)

Yes, I admit it, I got a little excited about being in the home of one my favourite classic movies. I´m not normally one to get into the celeb culture thing (apart from David Beckham in NY, I´ve never recognised anyone famous and I´m still not sure who Charlotte Church is and why she seems to be all over the tube all the time), but I couldn´t help but let out a little squeal here and there when we did the Grand LA bus tour which just so happened to visit some of the scenes of the movie. Some of the highlights:

• - Seeing Sunset Boulevard and the spot where Kit and Vivian wait for customers
  
• - Rodeo Drive, baby!
  
• - The "It´s very expensive", "I don´t think we have anything for you" and "Big mistake, huge" shop!!! The tour guide misquoted these lines - Dave told me I shouldn´t go up and correct him afterwards, although I think I made a big mistake not doing so (no pun intended), as future ladies will now also feel the indignation when he says "Big mistake, huge mistake"
  
• The park where Edward and Vivian have a picnic lunch
  
• The Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel, although disappointingly, they shot the front scenes somewhere else so the front looks
  
  Rodeo Drive
  quite different but apparently some of the internal scenes were shot there.

Unfortunately, I didn´t find Julia Roberts´ star on the Walk of Fame but we didn´t have much time there on the tour so we might try and go back when we´re in LA in December

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