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Published: August 6th 2007
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18/03/07 - 22/03/07 Los Angeles
From out hotel on Wilshire, we walked the 2 blocks down to Rodeo Drive area and had brunch in a café on Beverly Drive. From our vantage point we were in people and car watching heaven. A 17- year old looking kid driving a convertible Ferrari, Mutton dressed as lamb stamped all over with Louis Vitton’s monogram, a plastic faced, tracksuit wearing woman steps out a Lamborghini and a bleach blonde complete with spray tan, fake boobs and barely clothed, wobbled past us on her unfeasibly high heel ankle boots. Porn star? We mused….
With serious Thai food withdrawal symptoms, we skipped past famous landmarks on Sunset strip; The restaurant owned by Prince, the Diner where Marilyn Monroe worked as a waitress before she was discovered, the carwash on which ‘The Carwash’ was based and ate in a Thai restaurant with no known Hollywood connections.
We stopped off at a late night opening looking bookstore, which turned out to be the Hustle store - only one type of book and magazine available there! Passing the Roxy we lamented on the Amy Whinehouse gig currently in progress that we had been unable to obtain
Big Mistake... Huge
The boutique that turned Julia Roberts away in Pretty Woman tickets for, passed teenage looking rockers lugging their amps and drum kits out the back of American equivalent Ford Transits for the battle of the bands at the Johnny-A-Go-Go and finally decided upon a couple of beers in the infamous Johnny Depp owned Viper Rooms, made famous by the Speedballing death of River Phoenix. We caught the end of the set of Andrew Ripp (who was great) and then the rather punk female lead singer band, Bad Things, who I thought rather lived up to their name in a musical capacity.
The next evening our musical entertainment was slightly better known - The king of tartan, Rod Steward, live at the Staples Centre in Downtown LA. He crooned all the old faves - Dirty ol’ Town and Maggie May and dazzled us in his sparkling gold shoes.
We decided that our time in LA wouldn’t be complete without one of the cheesy Hollywood ‘Star’ tours. Our tour did prove adequately cheesy, taking in such landmarks as the Hollywood sign, the shop where Julia Roberts was turned away in Pretty Woman, Tom Cruise’s House - no wait, you couldn’t see his house but that didn’t stop our fellow tourists
videoing his gate post! We saw the avenue of stars and of course the Chinese Theatre with the hands and foot prints. There were too many stars houses to list and many names that we didn’t recognize but it was fun to see what all the fuss is about anyhow.
Keeping in tourist mode we headed over to Universal Studios for the afternoon. It was a lot more impressive than I had expected, especially seeing some famous sets such as Amity Island, the sleepy harbour that Jaws terrorized and then the Bates Motel standing on the hill. The plane crash scene from the recent War of the Worlds was spectacular as were some of the special effects shows and we advised that they were filming Desperate Housewives in one area that we passed by alas we didn’t get a glimpse of Eva or Terri. Embarrassingly enough to admit, the Shrek 4D show was probably the highlight of the day.
After 3 days in Beverly Hills, we moved base to Santa Monica for a night and took a cab south to Venice pier where we walked the beach back to Santa Monica Pier. The wide strip of beach was
Arnie's big prints
The hand and foot prints of Arnie, amidst others at the Chinese Theater full of all sorts of entertainment. We watched scenes straight out of ‘White men can’t jump’ as 3 on 3 teams shot hoops and traded insults on the blacktop. We were offered CD’s from wannabe Hip Hop stars who played us samples of their rap on Discmen and we listened to buskers and dodged the bikes, rollerblades and skateboards whizzing past.
We watched guys in love with their bodies pumping iron in the open air gyms and acrobatic guys swinging on rings, working from one to the other in great displays of upper body strength. Eventually arriving at Santa Monica pier, we headed inland to 3rd Street Promenade and wandered through the precinct where more street entertainment awaited in the form of body-popping break-dancers and child prodigy singers.
We repacked our luggage, trusting our valuables to the hotel staff of LA rather than the unknown potential banditos of Mexico and traveling slightly lighter than normal, jumped a 4 hour flight to Cancun for 2 weeks of Sun, Sand and…. Mayan ruins.
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anonymous
non-member comment
very nice again but when do you end this holiday love john