LA

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Typical, so much for English speaking, landed in LA only to get on a shuttle bus driven by a Mexican and with only Mexican passengers! Infact it is predicted that in 10yrs California will have a population of 50% Mexicans, crazy. We checked into our hostel (USA hostels Hollywood) at 1am and went straight to bed. In the morning we woke early to find ourselves in an intense heat and it wasn't the forrest fires. LA was experincing some high temperatures and perfectly clear skies, this was a good start for our stay.

Taking advantage we decided to take a walking tour around Beverley Hills to try and spot some stars. All we really spotted were some preety impressive gates and big green bushes. We did however manage to catch a glance of Elvis's and Sinatra's old houses. Dustin Hofmans and Jack Nicholas' houses and the house that was used for the legendary 'Fresh Prince of Belair'. After all this walking we intelligently decideded to head for the worlds most expensive shopping street to grab a bite to eat. We found a nice (guess what) mexican restaurant and sat outside to watch the rich, famous and beautiful! When we made it back to the hostel we got chatting to our room mates John and Nick and caught wind of a pub crawl. This sounded like it could be a laugh so paid the $15 and prepared ourselves for a big night. It wasn't, it was terrible. Now in England a pub crawl generally means approx 7 bars then a club, apparently not. After just one pathetic pub we found ourselves in the final club and confused as to what our $15 dollars had gone towards. The drinks in this club were then $10 (about 7.50 pounds on current exchange rate) so were to expensive for our backers budget. The only goog thing that came from the night was we had a quality laugh with 2 of our room mates and decided that the next day we would all go to Universal Studios together. Universal Studios was $68 and worth every cent. We walked round the whole day with a massive kids grin and nothing was a dissappointment. We started the day off with a couple of live shows, which were even performed by famous actors. Next we hit the rides. The Simpsons ride was up there with the best, this was a virtual simulator and had some incredible rollercoaster drops. The Jurassic Park water ride also had one big drop and shamefully on the ride photo, Nick, Paul and John look like they are about to die of fear, while the 15, ten year old girls are all cheering in excitement! That night was comedy night in the hostel, and the only funny thing about that night was how un-funny these American comics were and the awkward long pauses in-between jokes.

The next morning we woke up and jumped on a bus to Santa Monica. This was a pretty chilled out day where we just walked along the pier and sat on the beach. On arriving back to the hostel we took a walk along Hollywood bullivard where all the stars on the floor are, this is sadly not quite as impressive as you would expect. That night we made it 5 out of 6 meals at a fast food outlet. Well when in Rome n all! you've got to live the American dream! We our now leaving America to head for paradise (Fiji), our stay in LA was incredibly expensive but we met John and Nick 2 great lads and had a wicked time.

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