Advertisement
Published: February 21st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hollywood
with the stars LOS ANGELES We made our way from Santa Rosa with Lorena, Evito and Lexy (the sexy talking Lexus) down the Freeway 5, so it was pretty much a straight road and not a lot to see appart from a few twisters. We got to LA at Clelia's house in El Segundo, near LAX airport. Clelia is Evito's sister and she had a lovely house where once again we were made to feel right at home.
That afternoon I went with Lorena and Lexy (Evito was feeling tired) to Venice beach for a little walk around the pier and all the nice houses facing the ocean, but we went home quite early. The following day we left rather late and went off to Hollywood to check out all the glitzy streets with all the stars on the floor, but Lorena started to get a heavy migrane and ended up throwing up in a Hollywood street, so we started heading back home. On the way she managed to have another throwing up stop in Beverly Hills right in front of some expensive house.
Late at night after some sleep Lorena felt much better, and we went to meet up with Nyani (a friend
Beverly Hills
palm lined streets from school in Swaziland) and his parents in a hotel near the airport. We had a great time chating until pretty late in the evening when we got thrown out from the bar.
The follwing days in LA we went driving around with Evito to see Rodeo Drive, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, the Observatory, Pacific Palisades, and basically drove around all the busy highways, roads, and narrow hills looking for cool, strange and wacky buildings including some by Frank Ghery and Frank Lloyd Wright, the Eames house and the Getty Centre by Richard Meier. One evening we went for a night of Kitsch at the Universal Studios City Walk with Clelia and Evito, and ended up singing away to all the Rancheras with the Mariachis.
We also managed to visit Sonal (another school friend from Swaziland) at her home in Altadena and we met her husband and two kids, and had a great time chatting and eating some really nice Indian food.
LAS VEGAS The next three days were a bit of a marathon drive to go to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon and back to LA. We hired a car and took off early on Sunday
Beverly Hills
not shopping at Rodeo Drive going through 5 hours of monotonous straight line driving through the Mohave desert. Temperatures were extreme, up to about 45C outside, and we had switch off the air conditioning every now and again to keep the engine from overheating.
We drove into Vegas through the Strip, looking at all the crazy casinos, hotels and buildings of New York, Paris, Venice, and other world locations that have been crammed together in a single mile of straight road. We should have just come here, instead of spending all this time and money travelling around the world for a whole year!
We checked into our hotel at the Riviera Casino, and then went for a walk to see all the famous casinos and hotels like the Ceasars Palace and the Bellagio. We also ended up going to a magic show by Steve Wyrick which I though was a bit crap... we should have gone to the Crazy Girls for some bare legs, wigs and glitz.
We ended up pretty tired from all the driving, walking and extreme heat of the day and night.
GRAND CANYON The next morning we got up early to head to the Grand Canyon which was a pretty long
Rodeo Drive
caught by the paparazzi drive stopping by at the Hoover Dam. After driving through more desert landscape we finally got to the edge of the Grand Canyon on the south side at about 4pm. The place was as amazing as we imagined, a huge hole full of coulours, shadows rocks and shapes.
We stayed there for about two hours just admiring the views and taking pictures, and after about 5 hours of driving we got back to our hotel in Las Vegas completely exhausted. There was one scary moment on the road, when I was overtaking a van, the back wheel of the van came off and spun straight towards our car. It was dark, but I managed to see it flying towards us and just held on to the steering wheel. It hit our front left wheel with a bang and a spark and the van went off the road and gradually stopped. I hit the brakes but only managed to stop further down after a junction. Fortunately nothing major happened, our hub cap was broken with a slight dent on the rim.
The next day we left back for LA and completed about 2000km in three days.
ROUTE 1 from LA to Hollywood
with Evito and Lexy at the mansion Sacramento
After getting a hub cap replacement and cleaning the mark on the bumper we had lunch with Clelia and then changed our car at the car rental and took off along the coastal road to the north of California at about 4pm. We went past Malibu and Santa Barbara and finally stopped at Pismo Beach at a cheap motel to stay for the night. The next morning we continued out trip along Route 1, and stopped at Hearst Castle, the extravagant residence of a media tycoon of the 20's and 30's. The rest of the route was quite beautiful, with the ocean to the left and the mountains to the right, we also stopped to see an Elephant Seal colony by the road. We finally got to Sacramento at about 10:30pm back to Gina and Soraya's house.
Back in North California The last days in California were quite relaxing, but we managed to do a day trip to Lake Tahoe with Soraya, Gina and Luis (a friend of Soraya from Colombia). We got to the lake by about 11am and Luis had organised a complete picnic with smoked salmon, champagne and all the rest. We even barbequed a lovely
piece of Tri-tip on the beach and downed it with some great Californian wine, cheeses, grapes, etc...
The place was incredible, with a bright blue sky, cristal clear fresh water that looked like the sea and a lovely pebbled beach. We stayed there most of the day just eating, drinking, swimming in the beautiful water and relaxing. On the way back to Sacramento we stopped by in some casinos on the Nevada side of the lake and made a bit of money before being kicked out for not having their approved i.d.
Sunday was our last day in California and we went to the Sonoma Valley for some wine tasting at the Rubicon Estate, owned by Francis Ford Coppola. The place was beautiful, with a great old house decorated with loads of cinema parafernalia, but we were not too impressed with the actual wine tasting.
That night we stayed up late with Gina and Soraya at home drinking some more wine, eating and talking. We only got about three hours sleep before getting up to make it to the airport on time for our flight to Texas.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.179s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 63; dbt: 0.1087s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb