Los Angeles

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We arrived in LA on Columbus day morning at 5.30am and took the 'Supershuttle' to our hostel in Hollywood. We saw the sunrise on the famous Hollywood sign on the way.

On our first evening we walked along Hollywood Boulevard to the premiere of a new film called "North Country" at the famous Chinese Theatre. We hoped to see some stars and were not disappointed as both oscar-winner Charlize Theron and Leeds-armoury-advertising Sean Bean turned up!

North Country Premiere

The next day we went to Venice Beach, saw the (very small) "Muscle Beach" but no-one was working out (all the bodybuilders probably got scared when they saw Tim) and then walked along the 'Ocean Front Walk' to Santa Monica beach. We watched pelicans fishing in the the Pacific ocean, visited the famous pier and then headed back into LA on the bus. We made it back in time to see another premiere, this time for the film "Domino" and not expecting to see as many stars as the previous night, we saw: Macy Gray (the singer), Mena Suvari (From American Beauty), Mickey Rourke, Keira Knightley (the leading lady), Tony Scott (the director), Edward Ramirez, Jacqueline Bisset, Ian Ziering and Luke Perry (from Beverly Hills, 90210), Xzibit (the rapper from xXx2 and 8 Mile) and Lucy Liu (Kill Bill). If you follow the link you'll see that there were others there too, but we didn't spot them!

Domino Premiere

On Wednesday, we took an evening walk to Runyan Canyon (where the stars go to walk their dogs!) and saw sunset over LA. Afterwards, we at at a Chinese restaurant and then went back to the hostel for a free comedy show.

On Thursday, we turned the corner from the hostel to find a film crew filming scenes for the new NBC programme E-Ring (kind of like West Wing but Pentagon-based). They explained that this backstreet was being used as Columbia. We then took a bus to Sunset Strip where we bought loads of CDs in Tower Records and saw a new band called "Mack" (lead by the ex-Henry Rollins Band-drummer, Jason Mackenroth) performing live in the store.

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