So I'm not sure if this is actually day 207 or an extension of day yesterday as my Wednesday lasted 42 hours (I think).
The flight wasn't too bad actually for a 12 hour flight. I managed to sleep for about 6 hours in total which I thought was quite good and watched a couple of films so either I'm getting really good a long distance travelling or it was a pretty nice flight.
It took quite a while to get through customs and passport control and then it took forever to get into Hollywood! The traffic was terrible and I was one of the last hostels to be dropped off at so I got a bit of a tour around! I was pretty muh ready to drop when I got there but I'd had a nice chat with the lady sitting next to me so that helped pass the time into the city.
The hostel was doing an all you can eat BBQ that evening so I had that for dinner and chatted to people from the hostel before collapsing out in bed at at 930.
Totally could call the shots
Beverly Hills
I'm a lady that does lunch
Piano Bar
Day 208: Universal Studios
I woke up and made myself American pancakes with bananas, raisins and maple syrup!
2 other girls from my dorm and I then got the metro one stop to Universal station and then got the shuttle bus to the park. After taking a few photos by the spinning universal globe we entered into the park. The rides there were pretty cool although most of them were 4D motion simulated rides. My favourite was the minion adventure. We also did the set tour of the Studios and saw interviews for Sharknado being filmed and watched the Waterworld show which was really cool. There were all these amazing stunts into the water, explosions and it ended with a plane flying over a wall and landed in the water. For lunch we went to Gru's lab and shared El Macho's Nachos.
Universal studios
Met the girls from despicable me
Waterworld show
I ended up, once we'd finished in the park, sitting on the bus next to the same lady that is been chatting too on the shuttle bus which was really random!
When we got back we had dinner in the kitchen and I ended up bumping into Ollie who I'd met in the Bay of Islands in NZ! A completely unexpected meet up. The hostel had a free comedy night so I spent the night watching that. I enjoyed it and wasn't bored but it wasn't laugh out loud funny. These guys are professional comedians who use the hostel as a way of practicing but they didn't seem to get the differences between American humour and humour else where in the world. Using American based jokes when most of your audience don't know all these In depth American sterotypes and when for most of your audience English is their second language it's never going to work!
Day 209: Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Venice Beach
Had a very relaxed morning eating pancakes in the kitchen chatting to my new dorm friends. We all went on the hostel walking tour to Beverly Hills. We got a public bus from Hollywood and you cold tell when we were getting into Beverly Hills as the houses got nicer and nicer until they were hidden behind fences and you could no longer easily see them.
We saw lots of cool houses but no celebrities. We saw Elvis's old house, the Playboy mansion and America's most expensive house. It's was really nice walking around rather than doing a driving tour as we were able to peak in through the fences and hedges. Our guide made us all stick pretty close together and we soon found out why when we saw a posh black car skid around a corner!
We next got a bus to Rodeo Drive and I walked past all these shops that I wasn't wen sure if I could afford to look into the window of! I ate my lunch in one of the streets just off Rodeo drive in a really typical feeling LA cafe. One where the tables are on the sidewalk, covered by an umbrella and with plants. I didn't eat very La though! Everyone there was eating a salad and I went for a creamy tomato-y pasta dish!
Getting to Santa Monica and Venice Beach ended up being a real mission. It took me 3 buses as I kept getting on 'short routes' to eventually get to Santa Monica Pier. It was strange looking out to the Paciffic Ocean from the other side.
Having dipped my toes in the sea and having had a long along the pier I wandered along the beach promenade towards Venice Beach past the original Muscle Bech site. There weren't as many people on rollarskates as I'd expected but there were plenty of people on bikes instead. It was nice walking past all the stalls and I enjoyed watching the skaters in the skate park do tricks.
Having had my fill of people watching I got 3 buses back to Hollywood. I did a little bit of shopping on Hollywood Boulevard. Managed to restrict myself to one purchase but I think before I leave I may have to donate lots of stuff to charity shops and do a bit of shopping. Crazily I bumped into the woman from the airport bus who I also saw on the universal bus again just walking down the street!
In the evening rather than going on the pub crawl we decided to ask the receptionist where's nice to go on a Friday and she pointed us in the direction of this really cool Piano bar one block away from where we were staying. We would have never found it by ourselves but I'm so glad we went as it was a really nice place and there were two live bands playing. The second one was awesome. We were up on our feet by the makeshift stage area dancing. They were playing cool covers of songs with trumpets, sax, drums, piano and the lead guy had a double bass. We were both saying how he's so good and we hope he makes it but when we googled him back atthe hostel it turned out he, Miles Mosley, already had!
Day 210: Griffiths Observatory an joining the tour
After more pancakes for breakfast and checking out of the hostel we (as in my new group of friends from my dorm) got the metro and then the shuttle bus to Griffiths Observatory.
Griffiths observatory is perched up in the hills and so has an amazing view of the Hollywood sign and, in the other direction, of the LA skyline an sprawl.
We went into the observatory (it's free!) and had a look around the exhibition and then went to watch 'the centre of the universe' show in the planetarium ($5). The show was really good showing astronomy from Tolomy in Allexandria right up to the current ideas on dark matter and dark energy. The movie show was really cool and being surrounded overhead by screens definitely made you feel like you were actually falling trough space at times. And there was a professor in the room with us narrating the whole show.
Having finished our tour around we got the shuttle and then metro back to the hostel in time to eat some lunch before catching the metro, the airport shuttle and then the hotel shuttle to the joining hotel for my G Adventures tour. We'd just missed the airport shuttle so had to wait half and hour for the next and so in total it took us 3 hours to move from the hostel in Hollywood to the hotel by LAX.
I has just enough time to shower and change before going downstairs to meet my group for my LA to San Fran road trip. The whole group seems really nice and a few of us went out for dinner and then to the hotel bar to get to know each other bed. We ended up moving outside to people watch. There were some hilarious guys from the southern states... Their accent makes eves dropping so hard!
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