The flight from Chicago was only 4 hours, which seemed like a walk in the park, compared to our previous trips on the train. Our short trip to Los Angeles is nearly up and we've made sure we've done plenty in the 2 days we've been here. L.A is just a stop off for us before we go to San Francisco and Las Vegas and we will be back here for new year to get a flight to our next country, so we didn't have to cram everything into two days. L.A is so big and more difficult to travel around than other places we've been to, due to the fact that there is no metro and the buses are so slow. We chose a hostel on Venice Beach, The Venice Beach Cotel, and it is literally on the beach. Venice Beach is where Baywatch was set and you can walk for about 20 miles to Malibu. We weren't that adventurous, so we just walked to Santa Monica, the next town, the sun was out but it wasn't boiling. Venice Beach is the place to be on a weekend, the boardwalk was lined with markets, shops and performers and as we were near Muscle Beach, quite alot of posers! We spent the day exploring Santa Monica and Venice. We had a walk down both piers, Santa Monica was like a big fair ground and Venice was so quiet, apart from one drunk guy shouting at the seagulls. As our hostel is backpacker friendly it has a large lounge where everyone hangs out, we spent a few hours there in the evening, playing cards and a TV board game, unfortunately it was all about US television, so we didn't know much but we had a good laugh.

As there is so many areas on Los Angeles it would be so hard to get around them all or even know where is best to go, so we decided the best thing to do was invest in a scheduled trip. Our hostel organised them all so all we had to do was choose which one we fancied and they did the rest. We decided on a Hollywood and Movie Star Homes tour. We were picked up at our hostel in the morning and were out for the whole day. We managed to see so much although we know its just a small part of what L.A is. Having a really knowledgable tour guide helped give a good insight into the history of the area. He knew so much about everywhere, obviously if we had done our own tour we wouldn't have found out so much, we wished we wrote it all down, but we remember most of it. It was really amazing to see the things we had only seen on TV, such as the walk of fame on Hollywood Boulevard. We spent ages looking for Lee's favourite actor, Tom Hanks but never found it. Lynz was impressed by seeing all the places from Pretty Woman, the tour guide was keen to point them all out. We were both excited at seeing the school from Grease, Rydell High. We were really lucky that the day we had chosen to come was really bright and clear, one of the clearest in days the tour guide had said, which us allowed us amazing views of the city and beaches for 80 miles. This was from the point on Mullholland Drive, where we could get the best view of the Hollywood sign and the bus took us past all the movie star homes, such as; J-Lo, John Travolta, Matt Le Blanc, Elton John, Justin Timberlake and Elvis Presley's old home. The whole bus was excited when we saw the house from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. From there we headed into Beverly Hills and onto the famous Rodeo Drive. Unfortunately we didn't spot any celebrities, but still enjoyed looking at how the other half live. We took a look at Sunset Strip, where all the stars hang out, it is a very exclusive area but we still didn't see anyone famous. We saw such sights as the Viper Room, Johnny Depps club and the Hyde Lounge, where Paris and Britney hang out. We made it back in time to watch the beautiful sunset on Venice Beach it was like a scene from a movie. We are off to San Francisco tomorrow, but are looking forward to being back here for New Year.