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Published: September 19th 2006
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Hey Folks, just thought i'd quote the opening lyrics from Sheryl Crow's most famous song to point out the fact that i've just been to the City of Angels, LA.
I arrived late on the 14th of September, the hostel (USA Hostels Hollywood) was on a side street off Hollywood Boulevard aka where the Walk of Fame, Kodak Theatre and Chinese Theatre are. The next day I went on a tour of Beverley Hills which the hostel organised, met 3 English peeps who I hung out with for the next three days: John, Rich and Erika.
After getting a bus ride from Sunset Boulevard (Of Hugh Grant/Divine Brown fame) we arrived at Bel Air (of Fresh Prince fame) and proceeded to walk around Beverley Hills as our guide pointed out all of the celebrity homes. To be honest the houses themselves, at least the ones that weren't completely shielded from our view by the gates, didn't look that impressive. In fact our guide kept explaining that many of the houses are just another example of how fake Hollywood is: many of them were simply made of wood that was then plastered over.
We saw the house where Freddy
Mercury used to live and in which Queen filmed the video for "I Want to Break Free". We also seen the house's of: Brad Pitt and Jeniffer Aniston, Gene Hackman, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe. The grandest looking house we saw was that of the late TV producer Aaron Spelling, he produced the likes of Beverley hills 90210 and Melrose Place (I think). Last but not least we saw (Well we saw the entrance anyway!) the Playboy Mansion!
After checking out the Beverley Hill's properties we window shopped down Rodeo Drive (Boss, Gucci, Versace...): window being the operative word because all of the shops were a bit out of our price range, at least we think they were. The thing is, they don't actually price up items in the shops, having the mentality that if you have to ask you can't afford it?!
We caught a bus back to Hollywood, our bus stop was right by the toilet of George Michael Fame (Let's go Outside and all that Jizz?! OOh, Freud.) It's weird, but when you hear about all of these Celebrity scandals and you think they must have happened in some secluded place but the George Michael
and Hugh Grant "things" happened in such busy places, dunno how they thought they wouldn't be caught (with their pants down).
Anyways, back in the Hollywood district we walked down the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard: down the Walk of Fame there are hundreds/thousands of stars engraved into the pavement with the name of a famous person on them. We also checked out the famous Chinese Theatre where the Oscars used to be held and in front of which are actor's handprints imprinted into the cement. The Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars are held nowadays, is only a few doors further down the Strip: it is a Shopping Mall all year round, and doen't look glitzy at all without the Red Carpets.
Got as good a view of the Hollywood Hills sign as I was gonna get from upstairs in another Shopping Mall. After getting the inevitable photo of the Hollywood Sign we headed to Ripley's Believe it or Not museum. It contained all kinds of weird and whacky things from around the world: freaks, strange but true stories etc- was really cool.
At night I headed out on a Pub Crawl, had a top night.
I Want To Break Free
Freddy Mercury's house in Beverly Hills Some of the bars/clubs were so random: one of them was decked out like a Hair Salon, complete with chairs you could sit in and pull the dryer thing down over your head?!
Got up by 10am the next day nursing the slightest of hangovers: not to worry though, we had the ultimate hangover cure planned, we were off to Universal Studios! Universal Studios here is similar to the one in Florida: it had a Jurrassic Park Water Ride as well as The Mummy Ride, both were class. We saw a couple of shows, Terminator and Waterworld. Waterworld, based on the Kevin Costner film, was amazing: the open air set was huge, looking just like scenes did in the film. The stunts in the show were incredible, with people jumping from 10s of feet up in the air off the side of metal structures into the water below. At one point a plane came flying over the side walls, before crashing into the water and soaking everyone in the crowd, was incredible.
As well as being a theme styled park Universal studios also has, suprise suprise, film studios. The studio bus tour we did was great. We saw
I'm a Penguin Likes
Nosing it infront of Danny de Vito's house the film sets to countless film classics: Amity Island (Jaws), the Bates Motel (Psycho) the newest addition to the tour is a scene from War of the Worlds with destroyed buildings and debree everywhere. Whole streets have been made up for the studios, one was called New York Street (cos it looks like New York) and has been used time and again for different films, they also had a Little Mexico and Little Europe. As we went through Little Europe the tour guide explained that in LA there isn't much rain so when they need some they create some- fake rain proceeded to fall culminating in the whole town being flooded within about 10 seconds, special effects these days eh?! (Ooh when i were a lad) Other Special Effects scenes we passed through included a disaster on a Subway, where a Subway train looked to be heading straight for us before knocking a brick pillar flying (lucklily we all survived) Universal also does TV shows like CSI and Desperate Housewives, we got to go through Wisteria Lane (Desperate Housewives) as they weren't filming that day. We spent about 7 hours at Universal Studios in all, loved it!
On my
Rodeo Rodeo
Me at Rodeo Drive final day in LA I didn't get upto a great deal beyond looking around Hollywood in the countless souvenir shops. At night the hostel had a Comedy night in which eight "professionals" performed, about 3 of them were good, 2 were ok whereas the others were awful.
So, thats LA done. After the bad rap it has had off people i've met whilst travelling i wasn't expecting much of the place but i absolutely loved it. Sure, most of the stuff there is fake but that in itself made the place really cool. So many famous films and songs are about LA and it's great to walk down some of the streets you've heard all about. I had a great time, wouldn't like to live here but it's good to visit all the crazy places and people and know you can leave!
Next stop, Vegas.
Mike
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Will's Mum
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Viva Las Vegas!
Hi Mike! Loving the blog! Will phoned us when he was in LA but hasn't caught up with his blogging yet. Just wondering whether you and he will be meeting up as, last thing we heard, he was due to go to Vegas this week? On second thoughts, maybe you've seen enough of each other for a while! Have a great time Ann