Exploring LA

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Our first full day! We’ve slept very well and were woken by the alarm clock at 7am. Ready to explore LA! Had breakfast in the hotel in the 4th Floor Dining Room. Very clean and an amazing variety of american breakfast foods. We stayed continental with toast, honey and jam, scrambled eggs washed down with coffee and o-juice.

We are picked up from our hotel at 9am to start our grand tour of Los Angeles. Our driver was David, who kept us entertained the whole day with lots of information and stories of the rich and famous. Our first stop was Venice Beach. We had a stop there for 20 minutes. Walked along the beach and took photos of the very different atmosphere. Next was Santa Monica, didn’t get to stop there but it looked very nice. We then went to downtown LA, past the Dodgers Stadium and explored the oldest part of LA for another 20 minute stop. Found some filming for a Land Rover commercial happening and watched that for a while. After that was a 1 hour stop at Hollywood Boulevard for lunch. What our tour guide called the “best burgers in Hollywood” we went to “In N Out Burger” which was a typical American Diner. For $1.95 we got a burger which actually tasted really good! We then bought some souvenirs and headed back to the tour bus.

Next we went past the Hollywood Bowl and up Mulholland Drive passed Orlando Bloom’s house which all you could see was a gate, lots of bushes and a bunch of security cameras. Also got a good view of the Hollywood sign. Each letter is 14 by 10 metres and an actress once jumped off the “H” and committed suicide because she didn’t get the part she wanted in a film.. Well that’s Hollywood for you.

We then saw Sunset Strip on Sunset Boulevard which didn’t look like anything fantastic. Next was Beverly Hills. Lots of celebrity’s homes and fancy cars. Oh and a doggy day-care. Bel-Air was next and more celebrity’s homes. Then had a 25 minutes stop at Rodeo Drive! Saw the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel and only “window shopped” for a while but it was fun anyway. That was the end of the tour and got dropped of at Hollywood Boulevard were we wanted to find Audrey Hepburn on the walk of fame. We got told it was outside Capital Records and searched for ages. After realising we totally missed Capital Records a few km later. We turned around and walked back and searched outside capital for a while and ended up never finding her. Great.

Walked to the local pizza place near our hotel, got dinner and picnicked in our room.

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