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We both agreed it would be better to get up early today to make the most of the limited time we have here, so we got our freshly baked muffin and coffee breakfast at about 7.30 (it was actually quite easy given we are in a 20 bed dorm and the guy in the bed next to me has a snoring problem).
I kept having to ask reception questions as it seems quite hard to travel around- they only provide $5 road maps and not free pedestrian maps like everywhere else, so one of the questions was how to get to the metro station but they said the shuttle bus was just leaving and he'd take us, although we held him up a bit as Alice was getting her fax sent. We got the day pass cards for $5 + $1 for the cost of the card and then took a long journey (3 different metro lines) to get to Hollywood. We probably could have taken a quicker way, but the metro is easier than buses! We got off at the very far end of Hollywood Boulevard and Alice went into a pharmacy which sold alcohol!
It took a while to reach any Walk of Fame stars, but when we got to the first few, we didn't recognize anyone for a while! Then we got to Reese Witherspoon and we started getting a bit more excited! A tour selling guy started telling us about a tour which took you to the Hollywood sign, Beverly Hills (including lots of stars houses), sunset strip, rodeo drive and Hotel California, and since he said he'd sell it to us for the child's price of $25 each, we thought we'd go for it. (And I hadn't realised Mann's Chinese Theatre show was 3 miles away from where we were, so we got a lift there).
Anthony, our guide, dropped us off for 40 minutes at where the Chinese Theatre was, and so we had a look at more of the stars nearby. I had wanted to place my hands in Marilyn Munroe's imprints, so I could sing "Laura's got the same size hands as Marilyn Munroe, she put them in the imprints at Mann's Chinese Theatre show, couldn't have been a movie star, never got the skill to go that far, life wasn't sto-ole... it was incredible!" to the tune of Stole by Kelly Rowland, but unfortunately they were setting up for a movie premier, so they weren't allowing anyone in. It also made one of the roadie type people very grumpy when I walked on the road saying that if he lost his job, it'd be hard to look after his family, but because someone was blocking the way, to get passed I had to go back on the road which felt very naughty! We went over the road to the Disney shop which was also a chocolate shop, and got a free sample, which spurned Alice to get some money out so she could buy some more (probably also a good thing as there were lots of men handing out 'free' CD's which then got taken off me because I had no cash on me, even though he'd signed it with my name). I didn't hang around to get money out though, as I wanted to use the loo n Starbucks before Anthony picked us up, despite the fact I had plenty of time as he turned up later than he said he would come, so we thought it was a scam.
First stop was a platform to see the Hollywood sign, but we were still quite far away. Then he pointed out lots of homes, and was very entertaining about it (I wouldn't have wanted to be a celebrity who he snoops on though). The one I was most excited about was The Fresh Prince of Bel Air mansion, but we also saw Michael Jackson's, Marilyn Munroe's, Courtney Cox Arquette's, The Osborne's, Will Smith's (real house), to name a few. He stopped at a woman (/man) selling celebrity maps and made us take photos of her as he later claimed she was the one who found something in Michael Jackson's bin which caused him to theorize he had faked his own death and had become this map selling lady.
When he dropped us off, we got our first American Starbucks and then asked information (having had to cross the road twice just to get passed the premier which was blocking the path) where we could go shopping, as Universal Studio tours are $84 not $30 like we were told. We got a USB adapter from the pharmacy but couldn't find an all-to-US one, as annoyingly, my everything-to-everything adapter is actually an everything-to-everything-except-US adapter. Alice wanted to go to the outlet place, but I was reluctant as I wanted to get an adapter, and it would entail a lot of travelling time to the outlet centre. When we got to Union Station, we had half an hour to kill before the bus to the outlet centre, so we asked at the information desk where I could buy one. Two men passing by came straight to help us- one offered his phone to use and the other found the address for radio shack in Macy's Plaza and called them to find out if they sold them. Alice was swayed into going there instead, so we got on the 'Dash' bus. On the way we looked at the list of freebies you get from the hostel, and decided we should head back after that to take advantage of the free champagne and hot buffet dinner (we had missed out on afternoon cookies already). On the walk back from the metro, Alice used the toilet at the mechanics and thought it was funny that the soap had described itself as being one to get rid of extreme dirt (i.e. it was making it sound manly) and then underneath it had Jasmine and pumice.
We arrived back in time with just enough to spare to get a pre-prandial champagne, meet a boy and girl from Reading (the boy went to the Down's school), and listen to the people in front of us for the buffet queue talk about the crash which had just happened on the road at front (we later discovered that t had been a police chase, and the driver, who had 7 suitcases which were being sniffed by police dogs, unfortunately died). The buffet was very carby- rice, potato bites and chips with a lot of selection of sauces-Worcestershire, steak, ketchup, Tabasco, etc. I then spent a very stressful hour or so trying to figure out a route tomorrow which incorporated leaving our luggage somewhere, picking up Greyhound tickets, Venice beach, the TV show we'd got free tickets for and back to Greyhound to get our bus. I also tried calling Mike, Grandpa's friend, but he didn't answer and the Wi-Fi kept cutting out.
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