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Published: September 4th 2011
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Today we got up early, as we had to be at Hollywood Boulevard by 9:30 for our Movie Stars and Hollywood tour. Breakfast was the usual cereal/toast, with the addition of two "awesome" blueberry muffins for Craig. We got there just in time at around 9:20, we didn't know quite where we were going so we asked a woman by one of the 'Starline' buses (the company that the tour was with) who pointed us over to the Kiosk where we got the tickets. When we got there, an Australian couple asked if we wanted the Movie Stars tour and pointed us in the direction that we just came from, to a man in a cap who was guiding a few other people over to the bus where the woman was. It turned out that was our bus, and the woman was our tour guide/bus driver! Obviously she knew about as much as we did about what was going on!
So anyway, we boarded the bus, which was an open topped minibus kind of thing, where we had to wear little dorky headphones to hear what she was saying as she drove us around. We had to wait for a
few other people to turn up and it was boiling hot so we were quite glad of the breeze when we finally set off. As you can imagine, the tour was pretty straightforward, taking us through the winding roads of Beverly Hills, passing houses of various celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Jennifer Anniston, the Beckhams, Eddie Murphy, Russell Crowe, Courtney Cox and David Arquette, and Elton John. We also passed houses that used to belong to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Osbournes and the house that Michael Jackson died in. As well as houses, we saw other notable buildings such as restaurants, clubs and shops that many celebrities visit on a regular basis, including the infamous 'Viper Room', a club owned by Johnny Depp where River Phoenix died, and the Beverly Hills hotel where the Rat Pack stayed. On the way around, we made a stop off further up the valley at a viewpoint to get some better pictures of the Hollywood sign. The tour lasted around two hours and dropped us back off on the Hollywood walk of fame at about 11:30.
We headed over to McDonalds to leech off their free wifi to catch up with Craig's family
on Skype and spoke to them for about half an hour about what we had been up to so far. After we had finished on Skype, we updated the blog for the day before, during which a crazy guy who was obviously not a fan of Scientology came in and declared that their church was the "church of homosexuology". Once we had finished the blog, we ordered some McDoubles and split a large fries for dinner. We were due to go on a walking tour after dinner, but after researching it on the internet while we were eating, we decided that it wasn't really for us. We instead decided that we wanted to preview Venice Beach a day early, and ensure that we knew where to catch the buses and which stops to get off at before we had our cases with us.
After a journey of around an hour and a half, we finally arrived at Venice Beach. We could pretty much see our hostel from the bus stop, so we decided to head straight on over to the Boardwalk to check out the street entertainers, stalls and all the other crazy stuff that goes down on Venice
Beach! It was quite busy as it was a Saturday, even more so as this weekend is a bank holiday weekend due to Labor Day on Monday. Craig spotted the skate park so we walked across the sand (which was lovely and warm on our feet!) to watch the locals on their skateboards, rollerblades and skooters. Some guys were really good, and in particular, a few kids (around 10 or 11 years old) were really putting people to shame!
After watching these for about half an hour, we took a stroll along the beach and watched some of the entertainers performing (although we didn't really see much as we seemed to keep getting there just as they were asking everyone to donate money!) before realising that we should probably be heading back as it is quite a journey back to Hollywood. We caught the first bus without issue, but our connecting bus was absolutely jam packed, so we got off early and took the metro the rest of the way. During our brief time on board the tram, we were treated to the best presented homeless begging speech from a guy called David that we had ever seen! It
went a little something like this:
*David gets on the tram* "The Lord's been good to me before, let's hope he's good to me again! HI! My name's David and I'm a homeless guy in Los Angeles. Yes, I'm really homeless. I know things are bad right now, but I'm asking you guys if you could kindly donate any change or spare cash you have so I can get myself a bite to eat or a place to stay for the night." His speech was presented in a well-spoken, golden, radio D.J style voice and did such a good job at selling himself that he actually got a fair bit of money from the people on-board! Job well done David!
We got back just as the bus that we had got off turned up, so we escaped the cramped bus and still got there on time! We came back to the room for about an hour, watched a bit of TV, we both got a little hungry and decided to head to the conveniently located Subway (which we had failed to notice the night before when we ended up taking the Metro an entire stop in the opposite
direction :/) for a couple of $2 subs. Emma decided she wanted the Meatball Marinara and Craig opted for the 'Cold Cut Combo' with lettuce, American cheese, red onion, spinach, cucumber and ranch dressing - YUM!
We're now back in the room chilling out, contemplating packing up our stuff ready for the big move tomorrow!
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