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Ok lets get straight into it and re-cap the last couple of days - this will also help me figure what has happened too as it's been a bit of a blur.
For some reason on our flight, we didn't get much sleep (40mins to be exact). Regardless we had a plan to hit the ground running and we did just that. We landed into LAX at 6:30 Monday morning. The airport was pretty quiet so we moved through customs pretty fast, then jumped into a taxi and headed to our hostel in Venice Beach.
I saw a shirt that sums up Venice Beach pretty well "where art meets crime". There is the really nice beach with the homeless scattered all over it but it is also muscle beach where the bodybuilders hang out next to pics of Schwarzenegger.
So we did a quick stroll along the beach then took the HostelHopper to Universal Studios. Highlight of there would have to be the Transformers Ride as well as the studio lot tour. I could go into detail about each ride we went on but that would get boring and ruin it for you should you ever go. It's very cool coming from so far away to see the whole American film world at Universal. Even LA just reminds you of movies.
So we got picked up from Universal at 6:30pm, went back to our rooms, changed for dinner then walked along Venice beach to the Santa Monica pier for dinner. The sunset walk was amazing, it takes about 30mins to walk there but as it got darker and darker, it just felt more and more dangerous. Less normal people and more dodgy folk. So as the sun set, the pace of the walk sped up. Santa Monica pier was incredible to walk to because it looked so amazing all lit up with it's wheel and mini theme park. We had dinner at Bubba Gumps and filled ourselves with shrimp and a cocktail. Finally we get back to our hostel room - keeping in mind the last time we slept was the night before our flight. We crashed hard and were up again the following morning for Disneyland!
It was over an hour drive to Disneyland in our hostel hopper van and arrived mid morning. The entry wasn't as busy as I thought it would be until I realsied it was downtown Disney. It was about the size of a city mall and was all just gift shops and restaurants. Disneyland is split up into 2 major parks. California Adventure Park and Disneyland. We went to the adventure park first which had stuff like radiator springs from Cars land. Obviously being older, not all the rides are targeted at you but there is still quite a lot of fun to be had. We had lunch then walked over to Disneyland for the second half of the day. It really is the happiest place on earth. So much attention to detail has been done and so much focus on doing that little bit extra. I played an interactive game and found out that the Disney character I'm most like is Mufasa - score! But lots of stuff like that - scenes from Disney movies where they take out the voices and record your voice in the scene. That was a good laugh. At about 7pm (still very daylight) we were eating at the Mary Poppins Restaurant when the parade kicked off. We went and got a decent spot and I suddenly felt like a 4yo when Mickey waved at me from his float - It was awesome! We left the parade half way through to get a good spot for the evening show called World of Colour. This was the highlight and grand finale of the day.
We used our fast pass to get us to a good spot for the show which is like a lake with a big Mickey Ferris wheel behind it. While waiting for the show we discovered the wheel lights up and there is a game you can play on your phone. The wheel would light up in a combo and the you would have to repeat it on your phone as fast as your could. The winner for the round with the highest score got to control the lights for the next round. That kept us entertained while we waited. World of Colour is basically a Disney montage with water jets as the backdrop and film projected onto the water patterns. Throw in some classic Disney songs and you were like putty in Walt's hand. It was amazing, like reliving your childhood.
Still buzzing off our day we got back to our hostel at 11pm, changed and went across the road to a small bar where we had a few drinks. They closed up at about 1am and kicked us out but that was where we met 2 locals. We went back to their apartment, chilled on their roof then back to their room and continued to drink until the wee hours of the morning. They had come to LA to live out their dreams of being an artist and film director. Was really interesting getting to actually speak to people that were living the LA life.
I can't believe how much we crammed into the first 2 days of our trip. Right now we are on the train headed south to San Diego for some down time before Vegas.
Stay tuned!
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