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Tuesday July 14th
Spent the 14th lounging around the Skylodge in Nadi, waiting for our 10pm flight to LA. This flight would cross the International Date Line, sending us back in time a day so that we arrived in LA at 1pm, still on the 14th. This day lasted 43 hours from mine and Jo's perspective. Crazy! We both managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane so we were very hopeful of managing to stay awake until the evening in LA to avoid jetlag!
LAX airport seemed to be in the midst of a total renovation, meaning that there wasn't even an ATM for us to use. So much for being back in the civilized world! Found the Super Shuttle stand to get us to our hostel - Hostel California - in Venice Beach. The hostel staff were incredibly grumpy but at least did give us a private room even though we had booked a dorm room. Good stuff. They also helped us book a city tour for the next day.
Decided we ought to do something to stay awake, so we walked to the actual Venice Beach, complete with every sort of freak you could imagine - a woman selling chihuahuas, Michael Jackson t-shirts for sale everywhere, people telling us "the doctor is in" so we could get our marijuana prescriptions, loads of tattoo/piercing parlours, and all of the posers in the Muscle Beach gym! The beach itself was beautiful, but sadly the air was still full of the traditional LA smog! After finding an ATM, we walked back to the hostel where we sat outside, enjoying the late, summer evenings after having spent 11 weeks in the winter of the southern hemisphere. Couldn't be bothered to find a shop to buy food supplies so we ordered a large Pizza Hut pizza to share. Nice! Had a pretty early night, but pretty much managed to negate any possible jetlag - good news! Only annoying thing was that our room was above the patio area where people were drinking and playing guitar (one song over and over and over and over and over ad infinitum) til about 2am. Dickheads.
Weds 15th July
Got picked up from the hostel just before noon for our city tour. It was quite expensive, but worth it for the convenience of the transport around the city, commentary and being shown the famous sights all in one go. The tour started in Santa Monica, which was MUCH nicer than Venice (and any other area in LA as it would soon transpire). The tour was about 4-5 hrs long so have just bulletpointed it in the order we saw it:
- Venice Beach (the one place we had already been), just used it to grab some good and greasy lunch; calimari, chili-dog and fries. Nice.
- Celebrity homes, including; Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie, Adam Sandler, Goldie Hawn, Sheryl Crow, Playboy Mansion, Orlando Bloom, Fresh Prince of Bel Air house, Muhammad Ali, Shaquille O'Neal, and others we can't remember!
- UCLA campus and hospital where Michael Jackson was taken to
- drove around Bel Air and posh suburbs before being dropped at Rodeo Drive. Couldn't afford anything from any shop there. Lots of amazing cars, and incredibly expensive jewellers (plus the hotel from Pretty Woman)
- Beverly Hills City Hall (from Beverly Hills Cop)
- Hollywood; walk of fame stars, Mann's Chinese Theatre (of film premiere fame) & Kodak Theatre (of Oscar ceremony fame). Found Michael Jackson's star very easily as it was the only one with a crowd and shrine surrounding it. Conveniently was right outside the Chinese theatre. The hand/footprints are actually pretty cool, lots of old stars (Rat Pack etc) up to very modern actors (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint & Emma Watson). Followed the stars up Hollywood Boulevard where we came across a crowd outside a shopping centre and security blocking everything off... Christina Aguilera was right there filming a TV ad! Couldn't get very close, but could see and hear her from a little further away. Walked right past us on her way out and Jo was unfortunate as our camera has a slow shutter hence instead of getting a good picture of CA, it was a good picture of one of her huge bouncers' arms!
- drove up Mulholland Drive for views over LA with more celebrity homes there in the hills which can only be accessed by private roads. Took some pics of the view and saw the Hollywood sign, but was too far away to get any decent pics.
Arrived back at the hostel just before 7, and checked the internet before being lazy and just walking 5 minutes to McDonalds for dinner. Good and healthy!
Thurs 16th July
Slept pretty late before getting up and getting the 'Big Blue Bus' to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is so much nicer and cleaner than any other part of LA that we saw. There is the famous pier, a really nice pedestrianised shopping street and another beautiful beach. We walked down the pier and had a great view of the beach. The pier itself wasn't that disimilar to Brighton pier, just nicer weather, and more greasy restaurants! Had some lunch at the Bellagio Cafe - lovely paninis - where we just sat outside in the sunshine and people-watched for a bit. Got dragged around the shops a bit by Jo, who bought herself a gorgeous new dress from Urban Outfitters with the remainder of her birthday money. Went and saw the new Harry Potter film at about 4 (pretty good, though quite comedic!), then went to Hooters for dinner! Extended happy hour meant $3 Tanqueray & tonic, $2.50 pints and 1/2 price starters. Result! The food didn't disappoint and neither did our Hooters girl Brandi ;) Got back to the hostel around 10 and chilled before bed and repacked our bags before an early start to get to the Greyhound station for our bus to San Francisco!
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