Ok, so today we had to check out by 8am (so early!!) because they had to get ready for other early arriving camp counselors..but that worked out well because the girls who I shared a room with and I decided to do a bus tour around LA! We also went with 6 other Aussies who are doing the camp thing as well!
We met in the foyer at 8.30 as required to meet a bus driver who would take us to the tour bus people's office where we would pay and get on another bus with other people!..this was all well and good once we got going (except for the blasting air con!), but mid-trip the bus driver gets on his phone and he's asking for directions, so the trip to the offices which really should've taken 20-25 mins took about 40 mins!!
We finally got on our bus and had a super funny croatian guy (think his name was Danko?!?!) as our tour guide/bus driver, his main speciality was knowledge of where all the famous people had been arrested..lol..about half way through the tour we had to swap buses coz ours was overheating (it has been a very warm day today)
Firstly we went to Santa Monica Beach, we stopped for about 10 mins to take photos (sooo touristy), it was really pretty but not a whole lot of people, which was nice! Then we went along highway 1 for a bit to get to the famous people's houses, unfortunately we didn't see anyone famous despite hearing from people that they saw Usher the day before (shattered haha), we went past sylvester stalones house, the fresh prince of bel air house (not in bel air...definitely shattered about that one, although if it was in bel air we wouldn't have been allowed in because bel air is a gated community with security on the gate), we also saw Adam Sandler's house and a few others.
After checking out the rich people's houses we drove to sunset boulevard and saw where all the night clubs are and expensive hotels! not that exciting and by this stage it's starting to get quite hot!!
After sunset we went to Hollywood boulevard and saw Mann's Chinese Theatre, the walk of fame and kodak theatre. There are swarms of tourist and lots of street vendors who bug you every metre!! Mann's Theatre was pretty cool coz they've got foot and handprints of heaps of different famous people including harry potter people, shirley temple (signed in 1935 - her hands and feet were so tiny!!) julie andrews, Gregory peck and heaps of others. We went to come souvenir shop with awesome postcards and trashy crap that people actually buy, omg and there was this gigantic pen, but i could justify spending 5 bucks on a pen..lol
After hollywood bl we went up the hills to a lookout where you can see downtown LA and also the hollywood sign, which was cool, skyline was super hazy but we could still see a fair bit.
Next we went to where LA was founded and if i can remember correctly it was originally called El Pueblo something something del Los Angeles...not quite correct..lol, I didn't go through the market because we only had 15mins and a few of us went to the Union Station, apparently it was the last train station to be built before public airtransport was introduced so the architecture was amazing, with huge arches and ceilings etc.
After El Pueblo we went to check out some of the skyscrapers and that wasn't that exciting and then we had a long hike home (on the bus)
So today was long and tiring but really worth it!!
It's 6pm now and my flight out to NY is not until 11.30 so I have a few hours to kill so I'm going to try to find something not massive and hugely oily (just how the americans like it...omg at maccas their small coke i reckon is bigger than the aussie maccas medium size...no wonder they're so fat here!!!)
anyway hope everyone is well..talk to you soon
love loz :)
