Advertisement
Published: July 17th 2008
We made to LA - home of the rich and famous!! Our first GreyHound experience was quite good. The trip didn’t seem to take as long as expected and the coach was clean and even had a loo.
We checked into our hostel (USA Hostels located just off Hollywood Boulevard) and it soon became clear that the dorm was full of girls as it looked like Topshop mixed with Boots had exploded all over the room! There were knickers lying on the floor, tampax randomly scattered around, endless amount of toiletries and about 5 pairs of hair straightners! This just made Kim depressed because it reminded her of all the home comforts what she had left behind…..
Later that evening we took a walk up the Walk of Fame to see if we could spot any celebrities. Stupidly we had both left our cameras at the hostel and were gutted that we couldn’t take any pictures of all the cool sights including the Kodak theatre, the Chinese gallery where all the celebrities put their hands and feet into cement or the stars with the celebrity’s names on the floor. We promised to return over the next few nights.
We
continued our walk down Hollywood Boulevard and started browsing in the endless supply of tattoo shop windows. For those of you that have tattoos you will know that they are very addictive…. so James went in to enquire about a price. For the next 3 hours (11pm - 2am) James was sat in ‘The chair’ in a reasonable about of pain having his large tattoo touched up (the one that the guy in San Fran refused to do) and also getting branded with a new addition to his body. Again this is the first time that parents are being made aware of it, so apologies again! We promise that is the last one!! After feeling incredible fragile and a little faint we both staggered back to our room, and when everyone saw the amount of blood dripping from James they thought we had been attacked. Once we explained that it was only a tattoo they thought we were pretty hardcore and bought James a large whiskey which helped with the pain.
Our first impression of Los Angeles is that it is huge, spread out and quite intimidating compared to the other cities we have seen. Hollywood Boulevard is a
long strip of tattoo parlours, souvenirs shops, theatres and cinemas. The street is home to some of the most craziest people we have seen whilst on this trip and to be honest we don’t know why Hollywood is so famous with celebrities, although it is home to the star plaques and the hands/feet moulds of each celebrity the strip isn’t lavish.
We wasn’t really that impressed with the hostel probably because the one we stayed in previously was of such high standard but we thought we would list a few of the pro’s & cons’s about the place:
• Positives about the hostel included BBQ’s, ensuite bathrooms, cleanliness, its own bar and helpful staff.
• There were several negatives….. This hostel was a place tailored to people who are single, who want to get drunk every night and who are looking for sex, basically an 18-30's holiday style place. This hostel had its own bar with very cheap alcohol and the music didn’t stop blurring out from 9am in the morning till 4am. These factors didn’t bother us and on the second to last night us and our dormies enjoyed the festivities in the bar getting rather tiddley on
the cheap cocktails. However, Kim didn’t enjoy the thought that the guy who had arrived that day was fondling around with a girl that he had met that night in the bunk bed next to her. James being James was unconscious and didn’t realise any of this had happened until he saw stranger in the bed the next morning. Thank heavens the other girl in the other bunk bed confronted them about it as the girl was removing her top and this was at 5am in the morning. Kim had anxiety the next day as to whether this behaviour was to be repeated the next night and it has put her off the idea of staying in hostels again. Also housekeeping found the need to come and clean our rooms at 9:30am, obviously we didn’t take too kindly to this when the guy starts vacuuming the place and we are all hung over to hell!!!
The first day that we were in LA we went to Santa Monica. The bus journey there and back was a mission totalling three and a half hours travelling. We saw our first gang member with teardrops tattooed on his face (for those of
you who don’t know the number of tear drops tattooed on a persons face represents how many people he has killed). Santa Monica was quite eventful. We had lunch at Big Deans which used to be home to the eating place of the Muscle Men which have made Venice Beach a popular tourist destination. We planned to walk to Venice Beach but didn’t get very far. Picture this….Both of us walking down a promenade, Kim is hobbling due to her very painful athletes foot, they are surrounding by very toned, beautiful and active people in swimsuits…then James steps on a wasp as he decided to walk down the promenade barefooted. Kim suggested that he pee on his foot to stop the stinging but then he reminded her that only worked when you got stung by jellyfish! Instead we managed to find some vinegar, which seem to do the trick. Feeling fat, ugly and in pain we decided to turn around and go back to the bus station.
That night we got rather drunk on cheap booze and as described above Kim couldn’t sleep because of the sex show in the bed next to her.
The next day we felt
a bit rough and didn’t get out of bed until 12:30pm (We were so lazy that we missed Michael Caine putting his hands and feet into cement at the Chinese gallery to promote the new Batman Movie). After the random girl left our room and did the ‘walk of shame’ back to her own dorm across the hall, we discussed what we wanted to do that day. Kim said that she wanted to go to Universal Studios but James said that we shouldn’t really go because a) It was already half way through the day b) Kim doesn’t like the rides c) we both felt hung over and d) we have already spent our budget and basically couldn’t afford to go…..this obviously started a heated debate and by the time we had finished it was well into the afternoon. Instead we decided to visit the famous Hollywood sign that you see in all the movies. It was quite a mission to get up there and involved waiting for a bus for about an hour, walking up the steepest hills we had ever seen and also trespassing on private property that were guarded by large dogs, but once we made it
to as far as we could the view was amazing. As we were so high up we had a fantastic vantage point of Hollywood and downtown LA. We took lots of cool photos of the scenery and the Hollywood sign and started to make the epic journey back down. Lucky enough a Chinese family were driving down and saw that we were on the blink of death and offered us a lift…..we didn’t think twice and hoped into the back of the air conditioned van.
When we arrived back we caught the end of the ‘All you can eat BBQ’ (The boys from Sheffield would love it!!) got changed and had a stroll down the Walk of Fame. After a while Kim started to get a little annoyed because James found the need to take photos of every star that had a celebrity he knew on it. But the highlight of his night was when he stumbled across a star on the floor that had the name -
J. Peverell (No Joke, have a look at the picture!!!). This obviously got James very excited and he continued to walk around thinking he was famous.
Our plans after LA were
to head over the boarder to Mexico and visit a small town called Ensenada, but quite a few people up the West coast have said bad things about crossing the boarder for non-American citizens’, especially around the city of Tijuana that is on the US boarder. To avoid getting robbed, raped and pillaged (That’s by the police out there!) we changed our plans to Viva Las Vegas! So tomorrow we are getting another 7 hour greyhound bus journey over there!
James is planning to put the entire travel fund on red, so we might be home sooner than expected.
Wish us luck! XX
Advertisement
Tot: 0.156s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 15; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0738s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Donna and Neil
Donna and Neil
so many kodak moments!
Hi James and Kim! Looks like you are having a great time in the US of A...the last blog in San Fran with the cycle ride reminded us so much of how we are on cycle rides!! The pics you have are fab, so many kodak moments there and has made us want to go and experience the US (eventually we will!). Have lots of fun in Vegas...say hi to Elvis and don't spend too much in the casinos! Donna and Neil xx