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We were still feeling pretty sorry for ourselves when we woke up in the morning, the sunburn had developed beautifully and so moving about too much hurt. We'd discussed doing a Starline tour bus to see a general view of LA the night before and so today decided it'd be a good way to get about with minimal pain. By the time we were up and ready and heading to the buses it was about 1pm.
On our way we decided Noms and I should probably get ourselves hats if we were going to sit on the top of a bus all day so we pottered into tacky tourist shops until we found cheap, but fairly nice, hats for us! When we got to the ticket stall for the bus we got our tickets and were told there wasn't a bus for 20 mins or so, so we had a wander in the mall looking for a Body Shop, or something similar to buy Aloe Vera gel. This mall was another example of crazy architecture, giant stone elephants on columns, a water fountain to play in (although no running was allowed and foot wear must be worn - seriously there was a sign) and a viewing platform to see the Hollywood sign. We had been in the mall briefly on Monday while wandering to look for Hot Topic but the insanity of it was still startling on second viewing. I'm sure there's a reason behind it I missed. Anyways after realising the mall with a Body Shop was in San Diego we wandered towards the bus stop to find a bus waiting so we jumped on it.
The route we were doing first was the red route which was the main route the company runs. It takes you all over Hollywood and Beverly Hills to see the main 'attractions'. As LA is so spread out and we were so wiped this was possibly the best way for us to see things. The route was quite nice and we learnt loads of interesting things but nothing really wowed me and made me want to jump off the bus to explore. Rodeo Drive looked nice in an insanely clean way but we didn't really need to explore as we saw a lot of it from the bus. We continued on the route until we got to The Grove and Farmers Market.
We got off at The Grove for the simple reason that there was a Nordstrom there and I was still after my Ugg boots. I didn'0074 know anything about the area before we got there so to be greeted with a movie set esque shopping area with old style trams was quite a pleasant surprise. It was a really chilled out area with fountains, a cinema and a whole host of food and retail stores. If you had a day to spend wandering the shops here would be a good place with all food needs and your evenings entertainment completely covered. We wandered in search of Nordstrom which ended up being one of the furthest shops in and made a beeline for shoes. The store didn't have the heeled Uggs Noms and Alice liked but they did have the ones I wanted in my size so I was a happy bunny. While I was trying on my boots Noms was seeing if she could find anything other than the boots I was getting and, after trying on a few pairs, decided she too wanted the pair I was getting. After paying for our boots we realised we were hungry so meandered with the intention of finding somewhere to eat.
My suggestion of the Cheesecake Factory was quashed when we saw prices so we decided to wander towards the Farmers Market and see what we could find there. On the way I spotter a Bath and Bodyworks and once again continued the search for aloe, being told I'd probably find it in the CVS Pharmacy nearby, So we decided to head there later and wandered into the market. The market wasn't what we were expecting, I thought it would be a load of stalls selling farm produce but there was all kinds of food outlets and small stores instead. It was a really nice little place. Eventually we decided on a nice looking shop and ordered food. I an omelette, hash brown and bagel and it was amazing. The hash brown was hand made - no out of the packet rubbish - and much like a potato lutkah. Seriously yummy. We were even served on real plates.
Once we'd eaten we headed over to CVS to continue the aloe search. Here we discovered not only aloe gel but one specifically created to treat sunburn that contained anaesthetic and antiseptic in it - so it numbed and stopped infection. Only in America would something so useful be found! Suffice to say after that discovery Noms and I were much happier :) We had also discovered as we walked tot he pharmacy that it was 32 degrees Celsius that afternoon - no wonder we'd burnt the day before. Since New York we'd had no idea of the actual temperature as there were no signs telling us as we walked about so this was really the first time it dawned on us just how hot it actually was. Anyways back to our day, we headed back towards the place the bus dropped us off earlier to continue the rest of the way round the route. Just before the bus arrived we saw one of the old style trams that transported people around The Grove (until then we'd only seen the tracks and tram sheds). It was beautiful, obviously really well looked after and cared about. I'd have quite liked to ride one but we didn't really have time. Soon after the bus arrived and we hoped on and waited while the drive took a break.
The route back was much the same as before, nothing really jumping out at me, however I'd quite like to explore Melrose Avenue and do a tour of Paramount Studios next visit. The most exciting moment (well for me anyways) was when we were almost back at Hollywood Blvd and I spotted a 'Castle' location sign. There I most defiantly wanted to hop off the bus, but annoyingly the next stop was back where we starts, a fair walk back to there. We got off the bus and walked back to the hostel discussing if we should walk to the sign and see if we could spot Nathan Fillion filming. We stopped on our way to get Alice a bigger carry on bag and when we reached the hostel we were all quite tired. We were also almost foiled with our three people in a two person room when the guy on reception got really pissy with us when we only had one room key to show to enter the building. I did say that we only carried one key so we didn't loose the others but still he was rather rude and pissy which kinda put us off leaving again that night. We traipsed up to our room to drop off our stuff before debating walking to the Castle location and deciding against it, despite Alice insistence that she was happy staying in the hostel. We instead decided we would spend the evening packing and dragging as much stuff into the luggage storage as possible that evening so we had less to do in the morning.
Packing was once again an entertaining event with stuff ending up all over the place until eventually, like a giant puzzle, it all came together and fitted perfectly - much to our surprise. However there was the extra duffle bag full to bursting so there was definitely more than we started with ;) When everything we didn't need that evening and Thursday was away we dragged (literally) everything downstairs and stored it ready for checking out in the morning. At some point during the evening we also ate dinner and did some washing (who knows why as we were going home the next day) and pretty much spent the evening drinking tea, cleaning up and planning our last day in LA!
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