Los Angeles

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25/07/09 Saturday Day 345
After checking out we drove the 160 kilometres to Los Angeles. We are staying in Long Beach which is about 20 miles south of downtown LA. We eventually found our hotel, the Maya Hotel, which turned out to be about 2 miles from Long Beach itself. This didn’t look good at all. Luckily the reception lady told us that there’s a free bus that runs around the area. We were too early to check into our hotel so we dropped our bags in their storage room until we came back from dropping the car back to the rental crowd. We were dropping our car to Avis near the Santa Monica area, some 40 kilometres from Long Beach. Once we dropped the car we got a bus to one of the stops on the red line, then it was the train to 7th street in downtown LA where we got the blue line to Long Beach. This blue line trip along takes nearly 50 minutes! We decided to head back to the hotel to check in. The free bus takes ages. There’s a stop nearly every block or so which is way too many! Our hotel is really nice. We’re a huge room with a great view of the bay. Once we had our bags sorted we headed back into Long Beach again. We got off at the Aquarium and started walking. Next was the Pine Avenue Pier area. After that was the Shoreline Village which is based on Cape Cod. There’s also the Queen Mary cruise ship, which is permanently docked across the bay from Long Beach and close to our hotel. It’s there for both accommodation and general viewing. Instead of getting the bus back we got the Aquabus which goes across the bay by bus.

26/07/09 Sunday Day 346 Hollywood
Today we went to Hollywood. It should have been a straight forward two train journey there. However there was some kind of accident at one of the stops so we had to get a bus to the one after it. This held us up over an hour. We decided to get on a hop on hop off bus tour to see Hollywood at it’s easiest. It’s mental busy out there. There’s hundreds of people walking around and there’s also loads of people dressed up as their favourite movie hero so that when people take pictures with them, they earn money by tips. Some of the costumes are really good. One of them then was rubbish! There was one guy dressed up as a transformer. His suit was amazing. The tour was good enough. It took us all through Hollywood and past Beverly Hills which is well posh. We went down Rodeo Drive where all the really top notch fancy shops are too. We past by the Paramount Studios which is massive. I think it covers about 60 acres of space. Towards the end of the tour we got a good view of the Hollywood sign, which was still miles away up on the hills overlooking Hollywood. Once we got back we had a look at some of the Hollywood stars, which there were about 2000 of them. Outside the Chinese Theatre are loads of footprints and hand prints of the stars in cement. Once we had enough seen there we headed back because it would take nearly two hours to get back to the hotel. We’re to take two trains and a bus!

27/07/09 Monday Day 347 Universal Studios and downtown LA
No such problems getting out to Universal City this morning. It’s a good bit outside downtown LA. There’s a shuttle bus just across the road from the subway station. There’s a huge crowd already there. Luckily we bought our tickets yesterday at Hollywood so we breezed through. We headed for the studios tour first as this is one of the main tours. The studio tour was really good. It’s about 50 minutes long and shows some of the outdoor sets like Desperate Housewives, Psycho, and a full western town. There’s also a new Simpson’s ride there which is also a huge attraction. Homer and Marge were around too. I managed to get a picture with Marge, but not Homer. I would have to had pushed and knocked kids to the ground in order to stand beside him! I then headed for the Jurassic Park ride as this was one with the lowest waiting time. The ride is a boat ride where you end up coming out soaked. We then went to a special effects show which was very funny and interesting but it’s mainly for kids! We then had a look at Universal Citywalk. This is like a small 1 street town with loads of huge shops. It’d look cool at night with all it’s lights. Once we had enough seen there we headed for downtown LA. There’s nothing special about downtown. There’s a very cool market there with extremely cheap fruit and veg stalls. We went to the Grammy Museum which had a load of information and stars clothes they were at various events. We also walked around the Staples Centre which is home to the LA Lakers. It’s only a 20 thousand seater stadium so it’s quite small.

28/07/09 Tuesday Day 348
Today we stayed around Long Beach and spent a few hours beside the pool soaking up some last minute rays before we head some in two days time.

29/07/09 Wednesday Day 349
Today was another day of chilling out. Did some more sun bathing beside our pool, this time with factor 8 tanning oil. We’re getting desperate for the bit of colour! Tomorrow we leave for home. It’s a sad time indeed.

29/07/09 Wednesday Day 349
Today was another day of chilling out. Did some more sun bathing beside our pool, this time with factor 8 tanning oil. We’re getting desperate for the bit of colour! Tomorrow we leave for home. It’s a sad time indeed.

30/07/09 Thursday Day 350
Today is out last day of our world trip. It’ll be good to get back to the real world. I think we’ve had enough of this living out of a bag for a while. Plus travelling in America is very expensive. Tours and eating and drinking all hit the bank account pretty hard. 100 dollars doesn’t seem to last 2 days. Our shuttle bus will collect us today around 1.30pm. Out flight is at 5.30pm with British Airways so hopefully everything will go smoothly!
The flight went grand anyway. It was right depressing flying into Cork as it was pouring out of the heavens. So that’s it for our trip and the blog. The year absolutely flew and it was an amazing experience and it’s good to be finally home.

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