Sunday, 24 May 2009

LA Holiday - Hollywood Tour/Santa Monica


Today was our LA Hollywood Tour/Trip to Santa Monica. For these tours they have a new system from when I was last there, you get picked up from outside your hotel, get taken to a depot where you exchange your ticket for a bus pass and/or event ticket. Then you board your particular bus for the day. Turns out this system works really when your the first bus here which was good for us this day, but doesn't work so well, as we found out the next day when your bus is one of the last to arrive, not really sure why this stop was necessary to be honest. Any who, our bus driver this day was quite a character which was good as we had to listen to him for the whole day. First of all after picking up 2 people which were forgotten, we headed past the Hollywood sign to Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard (This was the host for the Oscars 1944-46). Here we stopped and walked along the Hollywood walk of fame looking for our favourite actors, unfortunately we only found their footprints, hand prints and stars with their names on them.

After this we headed down Hollywood Boulevard to take a photo of the famous Hollywood sign. The sign formerly known as Hollywood land, was initially an outdoor ad campaign for a suburban housing development called "hollywoodland". It was last lit up for the new millennium. See http://www.hollywoodsign.org/ for more information, this is quite informative. Along Hollywood boulevard there are lot of people dressed up as characters such as, Jack Sparrow, Spiderman, Darth Vader just to name a few. A helpful hint give to us by our driver, try and take random photos of them without them knowing otherwise you'll have to give them money. However you don't always get the best shots.









After this we headed to Beverley hills via sunset strip ending up at rodeo drive. Sunset strip is mostly known for its trademark array of colourful billboards however has become a hangout for rock stars, movie stars and entertainers. We did not however happen to see any, but with the cars we saw around I'm sure they were there somewhere. We then headed down a street which has the boarders of Beverley hills on one side and West Hollywood on the other side, you can clearly see the difference in this photo. The houses on the West Hollywood side are the most expensive in Hollywood only because they look directly over to Beverley Hills. Beverley Hills even has its own coloured fire hydrants and police station it is perfect.
Next stop was Rodeo drive, man this street looks flash, according to the bus driver the clothing doesn't have any pricing on it and if you have to ask how much it is then you can't afford it. Only the rich shop here of course. Last stop before Santa Monica was the farmers market just another cheap, busy place to shop. They did have this awesome hot sauces shop here and I just had to take this photo. I could have spent ages here looking at these funny labels.

Our final stop on this trip was Santa Monica. Now we think we have a beautiful beach at the mount, well it is, but not like this one. Same beautiful white sand but about twice the size. It has a nice, huge, pier with a small amusement park on it, unfortunately it was a long weekend in LA for Memorial day. The ques were huge for the rides and we didn't get to go on them. The beach also has a huge grassed area where people play games, exercise and just hang out. Unfortunately I didn't get many photos here, well only got one as my camera ran out of battery, but I suggest if you are in LA you visit Santa Monica, and preferably not on a public holiday.

1 comments:

Toni said...

hahahah - that bottle is funny. Am loving reading your blog!