Welcome to Hollywood!!

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The Luxe Hotel is situated in the middle of Rodeo Drive, the shopping street of the rich and famous in Beverly Hills - not a bad place to rest our heads! Bruce and I decided to leave the girls in the room and have a drink at the bar after we checked in last night - there is no mini bar in the room so I didn't have to give them my usual speech about not touching the food and drinks. It was a lesson I learnt when I was 16 and visited Singapore with my parents and my older brother. Craig and I shared a room and we assumed everything in the mini bar was complimentary! We emptied the entire fridge of snacks, soft drinks and alcohol and when my mum and step-dad came to check out the next day they were confused by the cost of the bill. We owned up and were in so much trouble - my step-dad went ballistic!!

First thing this morning, we drove out to the original LA Farmers Market for breakfast. After Pain au chocolat and coffee, we had a wander around the stalls where Lily bought some bacon flavoured dental floss! Whatever it takes to get her to floss!

The Hollywood Walk of Fame was established in 1958 with the first eight stars being laid on the pavement on Hollywood Boulevard. Since then over 2,500 stars have been laid in honour of the stars of film, TV, music, radio and theatre. There are so many people we've never heard of but we found some of our favourites including the one and only Bryan Adams and the 46th President - Ellen Degeneres!

Lunch was two slices of pizza to share between the four of us - no, we weren't being tight - they were huge! Crossing the road to the Chinese theatre, home to the handprints, footprints and signatures of hundreds of celebrities, Lily and Izzy stood in the footsteps of the stars from Harry Potter and Twilight.

With a little spare time on our hands, we left the seedy suburbs of Hollywood and headed up into Griffith Park to the observatory. It is the most visited observatory in the world and although we didn't go at night to benefit from the free telescope viewing, we had a great view over the city and of the iconic Hollywood sign. (I was just missing my sadly departed Canon DSLR) I did however stand where James Dean filmed scenes in Rebel Without a Cause - he was my idol when I was 16.

Driving back to Beverly Hills we had a quick detour past the Beckham's house to see if our future in laws were home. Sadly for Lily there was no sign of Brooklyn so we dropped the car back at the hotel and went out for a little window shopping on Rodeo. When your daughter needs the loo when out shopping in Beverly Hills, where do you go? The Beverly Wilshire of course! We had to have our Pretty Woman moment. Bruce has been flash car spotting all day which proved to be a time consuming activity on Rodeo Drive. Practically every other car is a Ferrari or a Bentley. He was disappointed with the lack of Aston's though.

A quick pit stop back at the hotel was all we had time for before merging on to the car park that is the I-10 to join the 35,000 baseball fans at Dodger Stadium to watch our first baseball game. With hotdogs and burgers in hand we took our seats to watch the very low scoring game against Oakland. There were only a couple of home runs but it was a great atmosphere and I vote we bring Major League Baseball to Australia!

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Comments

[Janet Snowden]

Great Blog
Fantastic blog Lyndsey! Thoroughly enjoyed reading your adventures. Glad you enjoyed the ball game, great atmosphere arent they? Hope Izzy had a lovely birthday. See you soon. Love Aunty J and Uncle P xxxx