Hello everyone!
Our drive to Melbourne was quick, absolutely no traffic. Chloe got tested for explosives at Melbourne airport. On our flight to Sydney we sat behind mark skaife. After going through customs in Sydney airport, Chloe was tested for explosives again! She must look pretty dodgy. Our flight to Honolulu was 9.5 hours which we slept probably half of. When we finally arrived in Honolulu it was a humid and sunny 26 degrees, much warmer than what it would be like back in the mount. Couldn't really see too much from the airport so we can't wait to see what was really there on the way home. Not long after was our flight to LA. This sucked. Crying babies are fine, but whining toddlers (for 5 hours straight mind you, and we are serious!) this maybe 2 year old carried on. And worst of all, she was right behind us. Her parents deserve a medal for not getting cranky. We arrived in LA late and crashed for the night but managed a bit of jet lag! Our first day in LA we slept in and chilled for the day cruising around on a double decker bus tour. The leg we took this day showed us Hollywood, the sunset strip, Beverly hills, melrose, and the vine. We stopped at Kodak theatre where they hold the academy awards. It's also a huge outdoor plaza of all sorts of shops and eateries, and this is where we had our first American pizza. One slice is enough and it was awesome! You can see the hollywood sign on a big pedestrian bridge inside the plaza. We went and had a look at the Chinese theatre-which is where celebrities write there name an put there handprint and footprint in concrete. We went and saw the basketball, LA lakers v. Denver nuggets. Because it was "May Day" in america there were a lot of workers demonstrations in downtown LA, which was a b***** because it closed the bus route we were planning on using to get to the place to pick up our tickets. After chatting to the hotel staff our best option was to hire a town car. When it arrived, not only was it a town car-but it was a black stretch limo. Kane's eyes nearly fell out of his head. When we went to pickup our tickets and didn't have photo ID. We were just lucky the guy who served us was Australian!! Lesson learnt!
The basketball was an Awesome game. No one would serve Chloe alcohol because she didnt have ID and apparently look younger than 21! We saw Posh and Becks and Poppy Montgomery all front row. We were ten rows from the court alongside the players race. Missed out the kiss on the jumbo tron-kane just had to Pee, but becks copped a smooch from posh (she looked pretty embarrassed) and it was his birthday too. Staples stadium is huge and they are absolutely nuts for basketball over here. You can get up and dance and they give you free stuff to support the home team. Everyone is so into it. There were a lot of time outs in the last few minutes and after a lot of jumping around and looking like tossers we managed to get on the jumbotron!! We were stoked!!! We reckon we had more airtime then everyone else they put the camera on, probably because we looked like absolute tools. Kane got a picture with Steve Kerr (chicago bulls basketballer back in Jordan's day) and got to see another childhood hero, Magic Johnson. He was in his element the whole time. We would go to the basketball all the time if it was like that at home. It was so fun and the atmosphere was crazy. The icehouse has nothing on the staples centre.
Day 2 LA
Jumped on another hop on hop off tour bus, this time to Santa Monica. It is so beautiful here. A fair few bums asleep on the park benches, but really if u were going to be a bum anywhere, here would be great. The sun finally came out today which made walking down the pier awesome. There's heaps of stalls, buskers and even a sideshow alley and ferris wheel. We hired a cruiser bike each and rode to Venice beach. It was 3 mile ride along the beach, think of that scene in White Man Cant Jump where people are roller blading, skateboarding, playing basketball and volleyball all along the beach-that's exactly what we rode along. Pretty cruisy ride except for the way back, headwinds suck. Venice beach isn't everything the name makes it out to be. On one side you have this beautiful beach, and then on the other side of the palm trees it's quite dirty. There are homeless people literally everywhere. If your not on the beach the beachfront is a pedestrian street of lots of stalls, music, and food, it's pretty repetitive, of you missed one shop your bound to find it just up the road. The sun didn't last long, so much for its always sunny in LA. Night traffic in LA is just awful. Wouldn't recommend traveling anywhere from 5-9pm. Our bus tour even stopped early and made us walk because the traffic was so bad. Having tea at the hard rock cafe tonight, a first for Chloe. Then hopefully an early night because we are off to universal studios tomorrow for our last day in LA!!!
Keep an eye out for photos, we have heaps on our cameras, we just keep forgetting to take them on our phones too.
Xoxo