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Welcome to Ollywood baby! This blog is going to come in two parts; part one has a weird vibe, and doesn't show LA in an amazing light. We just didn't get LA. The second part however is the start of our real Hollywood fun, and we ended up not wanting to leave. I love LA, the day can start out s*** and end amazingly, or vice versa; it's a pretty cool city!
So we arrive in Los Angeles around 3 o clock in the afternoon feeling relatively s***. The incompetent staff at JFK New York have loaded my suitcase on to the wrong flight, so I arrive in California with no luggage and a bad attitude. We grab an overpriced bus to our hotel and settle in, luggage/fancy-free. By 8 o clock my luggage had arrived at the hotel, so finally we could settle down, and we just spent the evening relaxing really. My laptop worked in our hotel (praise Christ! The first place on the trip where it would actually connect to the internet, hoorah!) so I downloaded some shows and we had a chill night.
LA is a really crazy place. Everything is so widely dispersed. You need to catch a subway or a bus with the crazies if you want to get to land marks or see the LA sights, which is weird after spending five days in New York and having everything on our door step. We did manage to find the Walk of Fame very easily though, albeit accidentally, and got some photographs of us on the stars. I found Betty White's star which completely made my life (Golden Girls OWN) and also got a shot of Angela Lansbury's star. Haha. I love the oldies. Anyways, that's basically our first four days. Seriously. Yes, it sounds like it would take about ten minutes, but as it was the only thing we could ever find. I felt like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. We did a bit of shopping (but as I'm already $300 over budget by this point and HSBC is hating on me, not too much shopping) and had lunch and coffee etc. It was nice, but we were like, is this it dude? Is this LA?
A couple of days later Chloe and I met up with Andi and Amy, my friends from the UK who are on vacation here at the moment. We haven't spoken in ages, so the four of us didn't know what to expect, but we had the most awesome time! Amy and Andi introduced us to their LA friends Travis and Amanda, and the six of us went out for dinner at this beautiful restaurant called Bella on Hollywood Blvd. It was so crazy, some film crew were filming an episode of The Real World in there whilst we ate! We all felt like those people you see eating in the background on The Hills. Hah. It was weird. LA is weird.
After the dinner we went back to Andi and Amy's apartment as it was Andi's birthday. We all got a little drunk, and met a couple of Amanda and Travis' friends like Ben, and Hank who's in a band that Amy and Andi promote whilst the band tour. After getting slightly rowdy and getting noise complaints from the hotel, we headed on over to Amanda's place which is where I really got trashed. I ended up getting completely and utterly stoned on pure pot and thinking my tongue was a jaffa cake and panicking because I couldn't get out of the house because every single room was a bed room and there were no exits. Haha, you've all been there, you all know what I'm talking about. It's so out of character for me to smoke weed (I've never done it before, and I don't plan on making a habit out of it) but it was nice to try something totally different and just throw myself into the Hollywood culture. Hah! So yeah, that night went on forever, most of it is a blur, but all I know is we had an amazing time.
The next day Chloe and I did a bit of shopping, and then went over to Andi and Amy's to hang out. We were literally there for about seven hours or something?! We grabbed lunch at this cool diner called Mel's where they have juke boxes on the dinner tables, so we all picked songs to sing to whilst we ate. It was a cool atmosphere, and it was nice to eat at a vintage old school place. Back at the apartment we just smoked, drank coffee, hung out, and watched VH1! It was really chilled. We watched this really awesome documentary on Lisa 'left-eye' Lopez which completely blew my mind. It was filmed with Lopez's own camera, and the camera is even on during the car crash that killed her. It sounds totally morbid but you need to watch it. Seriously.
The next day we hung out with those guys again, and went round to Travis' and Amanda's for a couple of drinks before going to see this play that her friend Chris was starring in. In all fairness, the play was dire. I contemplated suicide, or possibly starting a small fire to cause a decoy whilst I climbed out of the window. But whatever, it was a night out, and it killed some time. By killed I mean murdered, but killed nonetheless.
The following day we had another house party at Manda's, complete with more pot, more booze, pizza, and singing. Haha. Such a crazy time. I learned how to say no this time though, so didn't let myself get even a fraction of the state I was the other night, but still got high enough to find Scooby Doo impressions hysterical.
The following day Chloe and I met up with my friend Jenny Mollen for coffee. She's an actress out here in LA and it's been a fricking age since we last spoke, so it was so great to get to see each other. She's an awesome artist and has a lot of gallery shows here in the states, and because she's insanely generous she gave me three paintings that she did for me. They're all fricking beautiful and I can't wait to get them up on my wall when I get to university in September. After coffee Jen had a photoshoot that she agreed to do for her gallery people; she's doing promotion work in some arts magazines, and she invited us over to the shoot with her! It was insane. The setting was in the yard of this gorgeous bistro in downtown LA, and she had to pose on a leather chair in a bikini and a full on gorilla mask. It sounds utterly bizarre, but if you're an arty type like Clo and I, or if you've seen those kinds of artsy fashion magazines, then you would have been in heaven. It was a beautiful shoot. I was checking out the Polaroid sample shots, and completely buzzed off them, so Jen gave me one! I got to pick my favourite, it's insane! Chloe got one too. I'm gonna get that shiz framed or something, hah. It's gorgeous.
Jen was then telling us about how it was Tom Lenk's birthday (he's also an actor out here who used to be in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and that she was going to the party. She sent me the invite and we said we'd go check it out. Anyways, we get there and there's no sign of Jen. It was a really beautiful place, totally neo gothic and really stylish. After a while we bumped in to Tom and said happy birthday and all that jazz, and then decided we wanted to eat. I had the best fricking nachos I've ever had in my entire life. Seriously, it was like a pizza made of nachos. Just picking each slice (yes, slice) up was like a work out it was loaded with chicken! Anyways, enough of my food rant. We chatted with Tom, chilled out, and went home at about midnight. Jenny didn't even turn up! Basically we went to Tom's birthday party as her plus two, and she wasn't even there to escort us haha. We totally looked like gate crashers but whatever. It turns out that Jen and Jason got locked out of their apartment and couldn't make it. Never mind.
The next day (Tuesday, our last day!) we caught the sub over to Andi & Amy's on Hollywood and met up with Travis and Amanda to go to Venice. We had such a gorgeous day at the beach! We strolled up and down the pier watching the surfers, and then walked all the way along the side walk that runs along the whole beach. We grabbed lunch at The Sidewalk Cafe after queuing for a while, and all got to sit down and chat which was a nice way to all spend some time together before we left. Oh, and then we walked all the way out to the ocean and took a load of photographs. They are SO cute, we got some really nice ones which I want framed. All in all, despite third degree burns to the forehead and neck (damn you sun) it was an awesome day.
We all said our goodbyes etc, and Travis took us to the airport for about 9pm. It was s*** saying bye; we all fell in love with each other and were having such a fun time. Plus, leaving the states in general was a bizarre notion. We're so used to the accents, the currency, the food, the prices of things; we were so used to living there that it actually felt a bit like home. Anyway. Our experience at LAX was absolutely diabolical. Excluding the retarded staff at JFK, I've never known such poor organisation. The airport was RAMMED with people; you literally couldn't move. We had to queue to check in (they didn't even take our bags, they just weighed them and then gave them back!) and then we had to queue to do some other crap (by this point the queue is literally filing from one end of the terminal, all the way outside the front ENTRANCE) and our flight leaves in twenty minutes. After queuing forabout three years amongst this chaos, we ended up speaking to some QANTAS dude and giving him our suitcases so we could be extradited through security and get on our fricking plane. Which of course by this point is delayed by an hour because life is just that kind. So yeah, it was a crap experience, and then a thirteen hour flight. But whatever.
Until next time guys. See you in Brisbane!
XO Olly.
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