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Published: January 26th 2011
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Hi Friends and Family,
Its our second day and after a well deserved rest, we decided to check out the rest of the city whilst looking for breakfast.
Honestly, the buildings are so tall and shiny that they're quite overwhelming and its not even anything close to the skyscraper entity of New York!
As I told you the day before, we're in the Financial District which means on Saturday everything is shut and boy did we find that out the hard way.
We spotted a nice restaurant that we thought would fit the bill of being local and child-friendly, however when we got there, we discovered its closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
In fact, everything was!
So, we decided to go to The Grand Central Market surely, there would be warm home-cooked food at a market. After walking around and passing a few people hard on their luck, we found it but it wasn't opened 'till 09:00 and it was a little after 8 now.
What to do?
Oh yeah, there was a McDonalds nearby so we went there and had a breakfast bun while we waited for The Grand Central Market to
open.
At 09:00a.m. sharp, we rushed to The Grand Central Market and what an interesting surprise.
It seemed to be a market for locals rather than tourists and all the better for it as we got to see Mexican stuff and lots of Asian meals too. We finally settled on a mixture of Mexican and American fare for our breakfast.
My plan was that we would do a hop-on-hop-off bus tour around LA to get a comprehensive glimpse of the city in a few hours.
We wanted to go with "Star Line Tours" a bus company which is the LA branch of the English "Original City Sightseeing" company. We weren't quite sure of how much it would be, where they would start and which routes we wanted to take so of course, we proceeded to the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau and would you believe that it wasn't opened at the weekends!
I mean. Come on!
Loads of other international tourists were outside the doors too wondering what to do next.
What did we do?
'Walked back to the hotel of course where we had a perfectly capable conseiage who was
able to show us the way to the starting point and also where the nearest metro stop was. 1 minute away!
During our walk back we went pass various other aspects of LA namely: the Jewellery District, Fashion District, Financial District of course, Down Town Centre, etc.
We booked a one-way ticket for $1.50 each and went to Hollywood which was our stop!
Oh my God.
How wonderful is it to actually be in Hollywood. I mean the place where real stars of old made their names not Z-listers like reality show participants but the real ones of the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and even 80's.
Wow!
Outside the Chinese Theatre we found the stand in which to buy our tickets and because we had a discount voucher we were able to pay $80.00 for the 3 of us instead of $90.00 and it was sooooo worth it.
On the Walk of Fame, we took photos with some of the dressed-up-out-of-work-actors who wanted $1.00 tip per photo. They were very polite about it so we obliged them and you can see the pictures for yourself. I also made a couple of videos too
which I have enclosed.
And then we were soon off. We chose the Red Route first which took us to the Chinese Theatre, Rodeo Drive, Paramount Studios, Beverly Hills, Melrose Place, Sunset Strip, Sunset Boulevard, the various boutiques and shopping haunts of the stars, and of course all around Hoooooollywoooooood!
We wanted to switch buses to take the Yellow Route so we got off for a break at the Teuscher Chocolatier called "The Cafe" in Beverly Hills where we had hot drinks and people watched!
We took the next bus to Santa Monica. More about that in the blog named "Frollicking in Santa Monica"!
In the eve, we landed back at the Chinese Theatre and decided to walk around some more and then have dinner at The Rock Cafe. More about that in the blog called "LA at Night"!
PS. I'll tidy the photos up when I get a little time. 'Got to go to bed now.
PPS. See ya!
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