Advertisement
Published: September 15th 2010
Firstly, after previously stating she would never drink again, Hayley was offered champagne 10 minutes into the flight and accepted it! After an 11 hour flight we finally arrived at LAX around 3.25PM and due to America's very strict immigration laws it took a while to get through customs! When we did get through I managed to leave my new jumper on the first bus we get on! After wondering for a little while looking a little lost we managed to jump on the right bus and then transferred to a taxi for the rest of our journey to Venice Beach, arriving around 6PM. We had a quick walk down the boardwalk and our first impressions were that it was quite lively, lots of noise, music and people! The hostel itself was only a minute or so from the beach so it's ideal for surfers or beach lovers. Our room was pretty basic but was fine for what we needed. We were starving so we popped out to a chinese just around the corner where we were introduced to American portions sizes. Although the food was very nice, there was so much we bought 2 boxes back to the hotel room!
We called it a night around 9PM as we were shattered, think it's the first time I've been asleep that early for a while! That said, my body decided to wake me up around 2AM and thoughts of the next 6 months start flying around my head and I'm soon wide awake. Hayley woke up around 6AM and the first of our new experiences is to play Tetris and eat leftover chinese first thing in the morning!
After breakfast we set out to explore Venice Beach. The morning had started very foggy and we were fearing the worst but by around half 10 the sun came out. The beach really is a beautiful sight when the sun hits it and the sea was so clear. Hayley had a paddle and I went for a swim (the water wasn't as warm as I'd anticipated!) We also checked out Muscle Beach which was cool, although there was a woman there who could of crushed me with her bare hands! We did the typically british thing of leaving our sun cream in the room so we are suffering a little today! After coming off the beach we spent a couple of hours
in a very nice bar on the boardwalk before popping back to the room where we both fell asleep. We woke up around half 9 and popped out for a bite to eat before falling asleep again, slept much better until around 8AM. We had breakfast and checked out. I would recommend Venice Beach to anyone the beach itself is stunning although there isn't many shops I would recommend 2-3 days would be more than enough if you are visting.
We made our way to Hollywood today and got talking to a really nice guy at the bus stop who helped us find our way. We checked into the hostel around 12 and first impressions of it are very good, plenty going on and had an all you can eat spaghetti meal this evening which is always welcome! It's situated between Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard so prime location! We packed our stuff away and went exploring down Hollywood Boulevard, we went down the walk of fame, had a look around the Kodak Centre (impressive), Hard Rock Cafe and the Chinese Theatre. We also had our first glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign. We spent around 3 hours walking up
and down the boulevard there is a lot to see! Tomorrow's plans include looking down Sunset Boulevard and a trip to the Madame Tussards (apologies if spelling is wrong) on Hollywood Boulevard.
Unfortunately it doesn't look as if we can upload photos from the computers at this hostel but for those who have facebook we put our Venice Beach ones up yesterday and as soon as we can we'll get today's and any others up (there will be a lot!) We're off now to check out the live band they have playing in the hostel's lounge area this evening. Hope everyone's well and will speak soon.
Love Stewart and Hayley xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0296s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Ray
non-member comment
Wish We Were There
Glad you both arrived ok. LA sounds great. Hope you manage to keep the blog going...very interesting although it does make us jealous!!!!!!!!! Take care.