USA Road Trip - Part 1

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Hello,

We had an uneventful flight into Los Angeles although I was kept amused by a woman in front of us who was travelling alone with 3 small kids including twin girls of about 2. One didn't stop crying and wouldn't let her mum put her down and the other realised she knew how to undo her seatbelt so kept undoing it and wandering off and the mum couldn't reach her so the flight crew and other random people ended up having to look after her!

Once we'd been grilled by customs we headed out of the airport and got a bus to Union Station and then the Metro to Hollywood Boulevard baby!! It was great and buzzing with people and the hostel I'd booked was in prime location. We dumped our stuff and went straight out and checked out the Walk of Fame - over 2000 names many of which I'd never even heard of and I couldn't believe how far down the road they stretched! Couldn't resist having my picture taken with The Hoff's star! We decided to go shopping so set off on a marathon spree. I was so excited and got a bit carried away - it's too cheap here and it would be rude not to take advantage of being allowed 2 bags on the flight home :o)

There were loads of people dressed up as characters on the street outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre a few of which jumped out from nowhere and scared the life out of me! Damn Spiderman! After lunch we had to go back to the hostel to dump our shopping which is when I saw a little bit too much of our roommate Isobel. We met her briefly when we arrived and I introduced myself and she replied telling me her name and felt compelled to tell me that she was French Canadian and a model. She was on the run from her boyfriend and the only thing she did every day was go to the gym. What fun! I was chilling out on my bed having a rest from the heat and Deaks was doing the same and Isobel got off her bed, went into the bathroom and reappeared completely naked and pranced around by my bed fiddling in her bag. She had these huge fake boobs. This was far more than I needed to see and I didn't know where to look. I decided that maybe we'd need to have a little chat if she did it again!

We headed back out to the Hollywood and Highland Centre to do more shopping - it's a really nice centre with a big open area in the middle with cool viewing platforms of the Hollywood sign. After walking around for a bit I could see they were setting up a stage in the open air bit and all of a sudden I spotted a huge "Mariah" sign. I got ridiculously excited and asked a member of staff who informed us she would be performing a mini concert there at 8pm! Excellent - I love Mariah! Once we'd had enough of shopping we walked around the centre trying to find a good place to watch the concert from. The centre is on about 5 levels and people were crowded all around the rails on each level looking down on the stage. There was a gated off area on the ground floor around the stage and I was wondering who I'd have to beg to let me in there but by a stroke of luck Deaks and I were walking around the ground floor and we happened to walk past one of the security guys who opened the gate and said that there was some room in there if anyone else wanted to go in. I didn't need telling twice so I jumped straight in - result! All of a sudden we were surrounded by some serious Mariah fans including grown men shouting out to her and trying to get her to notice them - weirdos! A lot of these people had been at the centre since 10am that morning so they could get a good spot so we were very lucky!

She came on at 8.30pm and the first thing I noticed was that she was much slimmer in the flesh than she looks on tv. She sang 5 songs and was brilliant. I struggled to see most of the time but that didn't matter. I'm short enough as it is and wearing flip flops did nothing to help this! The atmosphere was brilliant and the concert was filmed and screened on National TV at 11pm that night. She finished off with "We Belong Together" and it was so good I wanted to cry!

We stumbled home with very aching feet after grabbing something to eat which is when I met Afa who was from Amsterdam but sounded American to me (she'd lived in New York for a year). I decided I was going to like this girl within 5 minutes. I asked her if she'd met Isobel yet to which she replied "yes and she's weird"! I cracked up laughing as we compared stories. Afa had the same experience as me but this time Isobel wasn't completely naked - she'd put some nice high heels on to prance around in!!! We decided that she must be a porn star - this wasn't normal behaviour!! She clearly wasn't right in the head - over the next day she kept leaving tampons everywhere (thankfully unused ones!). We found one under Deaks's bed and one in the middle of the floor - have no idea what she was trying to achieve! Not satisfied with that she then left one in the shower (which I mistakenly thought was the end of a banana when I was in there without my glasses on!!!!!) - eeeuuuuwww!!! What is that! At this point Isobel had not come home the previous night - lucky for her as we were going to have words! She always did these things when no-one else was in the room. I was thinking of maybe suggesting counselling when I saw her again!

The next morning Deaks and I headed, very excitedly, to Disney!!!!! This was to be the most hardcore Disney day ever - a full 12 hours in the park!! We arrived and I was a little disappointed that they weren't playing all the Disney songs as you went in like they did in Tokyo. This didn't dampen my mood though and we grabbed a map and started planning our route and went round grabbing fastpasses to all the main rides. Even the rides we did queue up for we never queued longer than about 30 mins - I was expecting it to be much worse. We went on Splash Mountain twice which was really good. I managed to pick the seat both times that got me absolutely drenched - no-one else ever got as wet! One guy laughed at me when I walked past him and said "been on Splash Mountain by any chance?!". Space Mountain was really cool too. I couldn't believe how much temptation there was in there. Every corner you turned there were ice-creams, candy floss, pretzels, McDonald fries stands - it was impossible to find anything remotely healthy to eat and it certainly showed - I have never seen such huge people in all my life - some so huge they couldn't walk and were going around the park on motorised scooters.

We saw some parades during the day which were cool and at the end of the day, after dark, they turned all the lights off in the park and put on the firework display which was really good. We left at 10pm absolutely exhausted and after buying a suitable amount of Disney tack! Has to be done! Still no sign of Isobel when we got home - she must have known I was after her!

The next morning we headed out to do the Hollywood Homes tour. I was very excited about this seeing as all the leaflets said you would see the Beckhams house. I had it all worked out, they would just happen to be coming out when we passed and I would offer my services as their new nanny and they would accept and we would all live happily ever after. This was not quite how it turned out!

Twelve of us set off in this really cool hummer limousine. I love how you can see out and no-one can see in. We drove down Hollywood Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica Boulevard (aka Route 66) and Beverley Hills. I was drooling over the delicious, huge houses and would have given anything to just have a look inside one of them. Some of the houses we saw belonged to Nancy Sinatra, Britney Spears, J Lo, Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher (with Bruce Willis just across the street!), Nicholas Cage, Rod Stewart (who bought the house next door previously owned by Walt Disney so he could put a soccer pitch on the site!). We also saw the Hiltons' home and the house from Fresh Prince of Bel Air which I recognised straight away and once we were on Rodeo Drive we saw the shop where Julia Roberts got snubbed by the staff in Pretty Woman. We saw some gorgeous cars as well - it was like another world in this place. Sadly no celebs were out and about and I was distraught to discover that we weren't in fact visting the Beckhams' house like I thought. The leaflets are all cleverly worded to tell you whose homes you "might" see! If only I could have got my hands on their address!

When we got back we headed to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to have a proper look at the hand and foot prints. Got some cool pictures of George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner etc.

After that we headed to Universal City on the metro which was only one stop. Yet again another country who get the subway right - air-conditioning and fares at about a quarter of the price at home and no delays! We headed up there to go to City Walk which is really cool. Loads of shops, restaurants, bars, cinema etc. It physically hurt being that near to Universal Studios and not going in. The temptation was too much and we couldn't resist so we went in! The new Simpsons ride had just opened so we went on that which was cool and the Jurassic Park ride which again I got totally drenched on. All the Simpsons characters were wandering around the park which were really cool but I couldn't be bothered to queue to get a picture. If only ET had been there - I'd have queued for an hour to meet him!!! I was distraught to learn there was no ET ride at this park like there is in Florida. After another great day we headed back to Hollywood Boulevard and collapsed after packing to leave the next day.

We set off on the Greyhound to San Diego the next morning. We decided not to hire the car until we leave San Diego as parking around there would be really expensive and a bit of a nightmare. We arrived in the afternoon and walked 7 blocks to our hostel. It was a nice place and was to be our last ever hostel - woo hoo!!!! We had already spotted Macy's so we dumped our stuff and headed straight there. A lady in the store said that if I opened a Macy's account I would get 15% off any purchases as well as the 11% you already get for International travellers - I got so excited I almost wet myself!!!! We did a bit more shopping after that and walked around the city - it seemed really cool.

The next day we headed on the bus to Pacific Beach and spent a few hours there. It was a really nice beach but I didn't go in the sea as the waves looked really rough and lifeguards had to keep rescuing people. That afternoon we unexpectedly ended up shopping again(!) and by the end of the day we decided we were spending too much money so we shouldn't really be going out in the evening!!! We ended up going to TGI Fridays for some delicious and very cheap cocktails and then calling it a night :o(

After 2 days in San Diego we headed to the airport to pick up our hire car. We were both really nervous about driving on the other side of the road and Deaks refused to go first so I had no choice but to get on with it!! I've never driven an automatic before or a car as big as the one we got. The man was cheeky and talked us into upgrading saying that our stuff wouldn't fit in the smaller car although I'm sure it would have. Thankfully we hired a sat nav - it would have been a nightmare otherwise.

I very nervously set off and quickly got used to no gear stick! It took a while for the sat nav to register where we were so I was driving along this road with about 6 lanes not having a clue where I was going and then thankfully I set off in the right direction and after about 15 minutes I was relaxed and could finally breathe again and my hands had stopped sweating!!!

Two and a half hours later we arrived in Palm Springs and I was almost knocked over by the heat when I got out of the car!! It was tooooooo hot! Luckily we were just stopping overnight and there was nothing to do there - I couldn't have managed much in that heat. We hid out in our hotel room watching trashy tv while the sun was at its hottest and then at about 4pm I decided to brave it and went out to sunbathe. Deaks couldn't bear it so stayed in the room.

After a very relaxing day we headed off the next morning feeling fully refreshed. It was Deaks's turn to drive and we set off on our 7 hour journey to Williams. We finally got the cruise control working so we sped along the highway listening to the cheesiest 80s album ever. The road trip had well and truly begun which meant only one thing.....we were homeward bound!

xxx

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