Wednesday 31st July
Well im writing this on august 5th so not much will be said about today. Not much to say really anyway as it was mostly a travel day. We took a taxi to the airport and did all the airport stuff before getting on the plane for a 4 and a half our flight to Auckland. We then swapped planes and went for another 10 hours or so, I think we managed to get around 3 hours sleep each and watched various things on the tv. There was quite a lot of turbulence on the 2nd flight so Liam was a bit of a nervous wreck but all in all it went fine. To be fair to Liam it was the worst turbulence I'd ever experienced, at one point we were holding a cup of drink and the plane dropped so much so fast that our hands were left above out heads with the drinks.
We arrived in LA and got through customs quite slowly due to the amount of people in the line, trying to adjust to another set of accents and adjust to another culture shock. We took a taxi to our hotel which turned out to be old and kind of like the motels you see in the films, but cleanish and nice enough for us. The staff were Chinese and really friendly. We stayed awake despite being really tired, walked around the neighbourhood and went to the shops. We then sat on the balcony eating lucky charms and relaxing until it got dark, before showering and watching tv in bed- which involved a very odd programme about people in the wilderness with no clothes on. Wow America you are weird.
Thursday 1st August
We were extremely tired on waking up this morning and couldn't get ourselves up until after a whole 45 minutes after the alarm had gone off. After getting sorted for the day we managed to leave the hotel by 9am which was an hour later than planned but it was fine.
We walked to the metro station and caught the train. There were a couple of changes and the train was such a bizarre experience, it was like something from the films. It was one of the standard grey metal trains full of what I can only try and describe as "ghetto" individuals airing their dirty laundry very loudly all over the place in thick American accents. What a culture shock. We got off at 7th street which is downtown LA because Liam had found a well reviewed jewellers to try and get our engagement ring resized. Walking through downtown was a little bit stressful, mainly due to how uptight Liam was the whole time. The kinds of people wandering about really are very odd, the majority of people seemed to be taking to somebody who wasn't there and 99% of them were not hooked up to any kind of blue tooth device! There were what looked and smelled to be homeless people dotted around every other street, people who were obviously drunk or high on Godknows what and other groups of people standing in circles praying to god. The place was full of nut jobs. On a positive note there was an awful lot of community support presence appearing to be there to help with stuff.
Despite all the weirdos around we had to walk back and forth around the area for a good half hour or more trying to find this shop. We found it in the end and they were a lovely family owned business who were extremely helpful and nice. I wanted to listen in to the details of the ring and look at what Liam was being showed through the microscope thing. The jeweller was showing him what it looked like inside and teaching him how to look for a good diamond and all that. But Liam wouldn't let me anywhere near so I was left talking to the wonder who was a little old Turkish lady.
After half a hour in there we went over to the work shop with the owner, then told it would take another half hour or so from that point to do. We walked back down 6th street and found a coffee shop to relax whilst we waited and watched the nut jobs walking past. After getting the ring back Liam decided he wanted to ask a few questions again so he disappeared and I went to sit in the sun in an area that looked nice with a view of the skylines and a water fountain. He was gone for almost 45 minutes because he had been asking lots of questions about rings and stuff for in the future and by the time we were heading to Hollywood it was about 1.30pm.
Another interesting journey on the train took us to Hollywood where as soon as we stepped off the atmosphere changed to a slightly more upbeat and lighter feel. There were movie reels all over the ceiling and a few other props dotted about, then we walked out and we were right on Hollywood boulevard. We booked ourselves onto a tour of a few things for later before heading down the street looking at all the stars. Apparently there's about 2500 stars on the walk of fame, perhaps some names you would expect to be there aren't, that's because some decline to have a star. It costs you $30,000 to have it there once you're offered a spot. I wasn't aware names of fictional characters were on there too but there are, from Snow White to tinker bell to Winnie the Pooh there's a bit of everything. There's also an area where stars have been given some space in wet cement to write their own name, a message and hand prints and foot prints. We spent a while wandering around, there were all kinds of museums to go into which looked fairly good but we were only interested in browsing so skipped it all just to walk and watch. There are all kinds of people along Hollywood boulevard, some normal looking, some weird looking, a lot of eccentric characters strutting around or floating around I'm not sure which, lots of people dressed up as various characters from films and lots of performers. We went to an old movie set from the 1920s which is now almost like a tribute to Hollywood with the floor dotted with inspirational quotes telling poor aspiring actors why they should keep going from various people in the business, eateries and shops, all with the Hollywood sign just in the background up on the hill.
After looking around and enjoying the sights and sounds of Hollywood boulevard we went for a quick bite to eat before going on our tour. We ordered 3 slices of pizza and they were the biggest slices of pizza I've ever seen, we had to take the box onto the tour bus because we couldn't finish them.
The bus was one with open sides which was great because it was pretty warm. We started off by going up to higher ground to look over the Hollywood bowl and get a better look at the Hollywood sign. She told us a load of stuff, too much for me to remember especially as I'm tired. It was initially called Hollywood land but the land was knocked down during a land slide when it rained. Hollywood land wasn't really working how they wanted before and they were going to knock the Hollywood down too, but it was met by a bit of disappointment by the residents who had already begun to warm to the sign. So instead it was revamped, painted bright white and wrapped in Christmas lights at night.
You used to be able to go up to the letters but some aspiring actress who wasn't getting anywhere with auditions threw herself off the H and killed herself so they began restricting it. The girl got a part 3 weeks after her death which was a real shame, and the whole thing gave Hollywood more publicity.
We drove down sunset strip and the tour guide pointed out a tonne of places that are known to all kinds of stars old and new, the places could tell some stories that's for sure. She told all kinds of little stories and facts with all kinds of names from the 1960s onwards, I took pictures of lots of things that were so interesting at the time but I doubt if I will remember what they are when I look through again.
We went last dozens of stars homes including people like elvis which is still owned by family, Marilyn Monroe which is owned by family but is empty because they claim her spirit is in it, the house where Michael jackson died, people like simon Cowell, Jennifer Lopez, George clooney, operah.Tom cruise owns 5 mansions just one one street. The house that was used foe fresh prince of be-lair and still used as a set for various things today. Well there were tonnes we saw and these houses are massive, some with security outside, cameras all over the place. It was just crazy how big some of the places are, some of them you can just see massive gates.
We also went down rodeo drive which had soooo many designer stores I can't even remember. One store was the one from the Julia Roberts film pretty woman, and some of them you can't even just go in you have to make an appointment first, then let them do a credit card check on you. It was just stuff from another world, it really was how the other half live. However that said although there were lots of glamous people around there wernt many shopping bags in sight! I'd give more detail but this gives the general idea of what we were seeing and I hope when I go through photos I will remember why and what it is!!
When the tour finished we headed for a drink before going home on the metro again. Wow what an experience those metros have turned out to be. Some real characters passing through, including my favourite of the day, a teenager with braided hair, jeans round his knees, rap music blaring from his phone. Some very sexually explicit lyrics in there, talking about niggers and guns and all sorts of very odd things and he was just right in the zone, rapping along with it and doing all the weird hand movements the rappers do. Then on one of our changes we were delayed by about half an hour due to some weirdo running around in the tracks. Safe to say although we enjoyed the day it was sensory overload and we were glad to be back at the hotel when the time came. We didn't get back until almost 9pm and spent the next couple of hours kind of packing away our stuff and sorting things whilst eating more cereal.
