Day 175 Sunday 28th February 2010
Johno says
The ten hour flight from the Cook Islands went reasonably quickly with the in-flight meal feeling like it was a night out with no cooking to be done and red wine served regularly to the table. We landed in LA for around midday and we were shocked at the size of the arrival terminal - it was the same size as Rarotonga airport lounge with only a Starbucks to keep us entertained until Liam's arrival a few hours later. Yes, a familiar face was on his way to meet us so I thought I would sketch a welcome name card for Liam just in case he didn't recognise me, but he did so I guess the tan wasn't that good. It was great to see him and we spent at least the first hour telling stories from our trip - upon arrival we checked into our hostel, which I found it quite funny as Liam was new to the hostel life and it is pretty different to what you would expect as accommodation on a two week holiday. The hostel was situated between Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard so the location was perfect, we ended up having a Mexican on Hollywood Boulevard in the evening and finished with a comedy night in our hostel accompanied by a few beers afterwards in a local bar.
Day 176 Monday 1st March 2010
Johno says
Today we set about exploring Hollywood with a tour which also included a trip to Beverly Hills, visiting the stars homes including Michael Jackson, Maria Carey, Leonardo Di Caprio, David Beckham, Keanu Reeves (which was a very odd block shape) Seal and possibly one of the best looking houses of Steven Spielberg. The tour guide was a stand up comedian named Freddie Young and he kept up the humour throughout the tour not breathing for a second, he also picked on passing cars - one in particular didn't take kindly to 'are you Ron Howard?' I am not sure who Ron Howard actually is but from his reaction it can't be pleasant! It was a good laugh checking out all the different star cribs and having a comedian adding the odd joke here and there. I must confess to actually crying with laughter when he just couldn't manage to say a fellow passengers name, Rikke - you sort of had to be there but he would say the name exactly what she was saying it but even then she would correct him, amazing! After the trip around Beverly Hills we made our way back to the hostel and cracked on with a 6 dollar barbeque for the evening and an early night as all the traveling and tsunami warnings had finally taken its toll.
Day 177 Tuesday 2nd March 2010
Stacey says
This morning we were on the 10 o'clock shuttle to Venice Beach, it was about a 30 minute drive. The weather was clear and sunny today, so was perfect for a beach walk. It was a real hippyish beach place, with medical marijuana being sold everywhere, and all kinds of random hippy art stools and shops everywhere. There was no shortage of weirdo's here either. We soon found Muscle Beach, the outdoor gym along the beach, there was a huge recreation area along here also, with basketball /volleyball and squash courts, skate boarding, stretching/yoga grounds, monkey bars, anything you could think of, it was a huge beach. We just had to sit and watch all these people, everywhere you look there is just another complete nutter doing their own strange thing. Liam was hoping to see an abundance of ladies on their roller skates in bikinis, but unfortunately we only saw mostly men skating along, some with tops off! We walked all the way along to Santa Monica Beach, which took about 45 minutes in all and stopped half way for some breakfast burritos. This was a fair bit different to Venice Beach, it was less crazy, we walked around and popped into some shops. Next we were heading to the Hollywood sign, we took a bus which took a lot longer than our shuttle, and we also needed to jump onto the metro, only to come out of the station and take a 3rd Dash bus over to the sign, we arrived here for about 5.30pm. We walked up through the hill for about 30 minutes, and tried to take our best photo shots before it was sunset and was too dark to make our way back down, we had been warned about the rattle snakes and mountain lions?? We didn't figure out what they were yet. Each letter is 50ft tall, but even getting so close, it didn't look it. It had got fairly cold without the sun, so we were keen to head back towards our place, as we were shattered from walking around all day!