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Published: July 22nd 2009
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Everybody goes to.. Hollywood!!!
After an overnight bus journey that took about 2 hours less than scheduled we arrived in downtown LA at the greyhound station. (we think the driver put his foot down anticipating a lot of traffic from the MJ memorial service-yes we were in LA for that monumental day!!)
We hopped on a couple of buses which was relativly straight forward and arrived in Santa Monica about 3 hours earlier than anticipated.We took a little walk along the beachfront and arrived at the Ryder's apartment..our home for the next couple of days. Turning up tired, messy in hoodies and jeans etc with big rucksacks was slightly..out of the 'image' of the place to say the very least. Think marble floors, classical music, doormen, valets, big floral arrangements.
We buzzed up and met Carole and her son Ben before having an A-mazing shower and breakfast before having a tour of the building..WOW!! the rooftop pool was simply stunning and the BBQ area, Lounge areas on the roof and ground floor luxury to a tee... plus a gym, tv room and general amazing looking buliding all over! i spent the afternoon lounging by the pool keeping an eye
out for any of the celeb residents who also live in the building. Megan Fox is one of those residents but i didn't see her. (also some celeb trivia..we actually stayed in Britney Spears' old apartment..)
We had a BBQ on the roof and generally chatted and chilled and took a little walk along 3rd street promenade looking at the shops and some pretty talented street performers.
Day 2 Santa Monica we decided to do the Californian thing and hire some roller-blades and skate along the beach from Santa Monica pier so after we'd had a little walk around the farmers market and the pier we headed off. A bit wobbly on my part and my feet hurt a lot but Matt was a whizz-kid on blades and we skated all the way up to Venice beach and had a funnel cake and took a look at muscle beach which was pretty full of testosterone!
We made pretty good time so decided to 'pop' into Downtown LA and do the Hollywood walk of fame..big mistake! It took us much longer than expected to get there and back again but still it was an adventure!
We walked down the walk
of the stars and spotted our fave's, we later found out that stars have to be applied for and paid for by the person who wants one!! (so some people have 2..some even have 4!!) which kind of took the edge off the glamour and stuff behind the stars. We also went to have a look at the hand and foot prints at Mann's chinese theatre which was cool. Naturally i sought out Mr Depp and Matt found a couple members of the ratpack to compare hand sizes with. We continued on a while dodging the crowd of people and the mound of flowers and gifts laid on MJ's star and eventually decided to take up a guys offer of a cheap movie star homes tour because it was the last of the day. Celebrities sighted..zero!
BUT we saw Mj's Beverly hills home-again surrounded by flowers and fans, rod stewart, mick jaggar, JLO, Morgan Freeman, Christina Aguilera (was the Osbournes house when they were on TV), The playboy mansion, beverly hills hotel, the spelling mansion (complete with gift wrapping room!!), the house from richie rich the movie.. plus we drove down past Rodeo Drive, melrose avenue and places like that.
We also drove past the Viper Room- Johnny Depp's bar!!!!
Hollywood itself is pretty run-down and dirty. Apart from the actual Beverly Hills homes which are of course over-compensating for the rest of the area everything seems old and in need of a re-vamp.
Day 3 We spent the day once again just relaxing by the pool, matt braved the gym and we relaxed and packed in preparation for another early start the following morning. After dinner we took a wander towards the pier and caught a pretty sunset and had another walk along 3rd street promenade to see some more buskers and street performers.
San Diego
Early risers and off to San Diego... we arrived and found our hotel with suprising ease, it was a really nice hotel about 20mins from town, and on the way we got to see the big aircraft carrier and war-ships in the harbour which were cool. The hotel room had a kitchenette and was pretty big considering how cheap we managed to get it. We spent the day catching up on sleep and shopping for food and generally familiraising ourselves with the area.
Day 1 San
Diego we headed to the famous zoo and spent a thoroughly enjoyable day looking at the animals. Lots of cute bears and gorillas which were HILARIOUS. We watched a sea-lion show and saw some Pandas which was very cool. The Polar Bear was pretty cool he ambled out and started playing with his football bouncing it at the viewing windows and splashing around with it which was very amusing.
Day 2 we headed for Sea World and watched the Shamu show (outside the splash zone to begin with) and then walked around some of the enclousures stroked some stingray and sat in the splash zone for the dolphin show and got thoroughly soaked through (but got some totally awesome photos in the process) we went to look at the seals and sea-lions and saw some pretty impressive sized sharks. The polar bears here were somewhat less entertaining as they were zonked out sleeping in their caves. The manatees were pretty cool-very placcid! We also watched the sea-lion show which was mocking lots of tv shows and was actually pretty funny! The big fat Walrus at the end was very entertaining too so we stopped by his enclosure afterwards to
see him.
We went back to shamu stadium and watched the night show 'Shamu rocks America' which was different and equally great! A quick jog over to the dolphin stadium for the night show there which again was awesome and then a quick ride back to the hotel on the bus to finish packing and get ready for our flight to Indianapolis the next day.
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