Welcome to LA

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La La Land

As soon as we got off the plane at LAX we struggled to get to grips with the change of pace and scenery, after only a minute of being in the taxi, whilst still in the airport, we were pulled over by traffic police, a stark reminder that our road trip around the US would be a lot different to Australia or New Zealand.

We hung around with our friends KP & Sam and all stayed in downtown LA which was a complete dump and had a deservedly bad reputation at night, however that didn't stop us from getting the buses and metro to all the major sights such as the Hollywood Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, Sunset Strip & Beverley Hills which were all really amazing.

Heatwave!

The weather was also intense, on top of a 100 degree heatwave there was also a huge fire north of Hollywood which cast a huge mushroom cloud over the horizon wherever you were (a pretty ominous view if ever you've seen one). We were also lucky enough to be in town as the LA Dodgers baseball team were playing and we managed to score some discount tickets off a tout to get into the game (wary of being ripped off we took such extravagant steps which were pretty comical which at one point almost included taking the tout in with us with a cover story...) which we all surprisingly enjoyed, a highlight was watching the entire crowd patriotically singing the American national anthem, bizarre.

On top of seeing a 3D film at the famous Chinese Theatre (The Final Destination - average) and also Universal Studios for the day where we took the behind-the-scenes tour and went on pretty much every ride, including the new Simpsons ride which made both of us feel really yellow...

On our final day in LA we went to Venice beach and Santa Monica beach which were both fairly grotty and cool at the same time, with stoned hippies mixing with the wealthy beach-goers & the people working out on muscle beach which was fascinating.

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