Woke up to the cold this morning. Cold, damp air. It was cold during the night as well. We shared a single bunk just to keep warm as well!
Fortunately, the sun was shining outside! Still freezing out there though.

Free breakfast at our hostel - toast with jam and peanut butter, plus cheerios cereal. It's alright actually, saves a few quid.
Went back to get a shower though to find that the bath wasn't draining fast enough, so you have to stand in mucky water - nice! And the bathroom was freezing, with a wet floor from the other prats in our room.

Anyway, we decided to get ourselves out to one of the shopping malls to have a look around. And we got there on LA public transport too. That was an experience. It was just like you'd see in a film with a few odd characters sat around, some gangster looking guys and then a group of 3 lads at the front of the bus cracking jokes etc. It was weird and interesting though. Only $1.50 (£1) each for the 40 minute journey too. It was a good journey actually because we got to briefly see some of the nicer parts of LA like Santa Monica Blvd (only bits of that are nice though!), Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive.

Then we got to the Westfield Century City Shopping Centre. We could see some nice looking restaurants at the start of it and then there's a few huge skyscrapers behind it all. The skies were blue, the sun was shining and the whole area we were in looked really nice and modern, a lot different to the rough looking Hollywood.
We walked up the stairs to find that it was an outdoor shopping centre. Loads of decent shops and it's a really nice place.

The first shop we spotted was Hollister - same brand as Abercrombie & Fitch. We love that shop so went straight in just for a nosey. Nearly 2 hours later we came out! We had a frenzy in there. There was a clearance sale on and there was tonnes of decent stuff. We were walking around with piles of clothes and eventually had our own section behind the tills where we were collecting clothes to try on. And they were so cheap! Hoodies for $14-18 (£9-12)!! That is ridiculously cheap. I ended up with 5 and Therese 4. They cost about £50 each at home. We got some other cheap stuff too. Had a field day in there. Don't worry, we have a car in a couple of days to trail all this stuff around.

We were absolutely starving afterwards. We'd been running around on adrenaline trying to find the right sizes in the clothes we wanted...haha! It was about 4.30pm by this time. They have a really good food court there with loads of choice. It's not just the same old crap like McDonalds, Subway, KFC etc either, they have Greek, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, all kinds. I decided to get a Chinese at Panda Express. They have a load of pre-made dishes behind a glass counter to choose from. I asked for the sweetfire chicken, and the woman there asked if I wanted to try it first which was pretty good. It was nice so I went for that with half egg fried rice and half chow mein noodles. There was loads on the plate. Then she asked me what my other dish choice was!! Couldn't believe it. So I tried blackbean chicken, and went for that too. And it only came to $7.69! Therese was going to get a meal from somewhere else, but there was loads so we just shared the meal and there was easy enough. We even got tap water and they gave us a fortune cookie each. Cheap meal, and it was really really nice.

On a side note, I don't understand why toilet cubicles in America are built with gaps everywhere e.g. the door frame has gaps so people can see you on the toilet! Weird. Also, I cannot believe how many times I've gone to open a toilet cubicle door or a single, unisex toilet door to find that some dipstick hasn't locked the door and there they are, sat on the toilet! It didn't happen today, but I just had a disturbing flashback.

We thought we'd check out what was on at the cinemas. Nice new cinema too. We decided to get tickets to see Unknown starring Liam Neeson. They had these fancy self-serve ticket kiosks and we could choose our own seats. I like stuff like that, gadgets. You could say I'm a geek.

The film wasn't for another 2 hours so we went for a look around a few more shops. Went to H&M for a wander and to buy some more black socks seeing as though I can't walk around in flip-flops anymore. Well, I got the socks. Problem is, I forgot to pay for them! It was a genuine mistake. I put them under my arm because I had 2 big bags in each hand, but then I walked out of the shop and realised a few minutes later!! Saved $5 (£3.60).
Took a look around the Apple Store too. I can't walk past an Apple Store without going in. It draws me in.

Whilst we were walking around, we saw our first movie star....Cheech Murin...
OK, he's the guy who's in From Dusk 'Til Dawn with George Clooney about vampires. He plays the guy outside the 'Titty Twister' biker bar as well as a few other characters in that film. He's also the guy in those old Cheech and Chong comedy films. More recently he seems to mainly do voice acting for quite a few Disney animations. Not the biggest star, but still pretty cool. He was walking around with a young woman, and obviously he's an old guy. Every couple is like that over here. Guys in their 50s, girls in their 20s.

We bought a few goodies for the movie outside of the cinema. We got a Cinnamon Pretzel from Wetzel's Pretzels, and small bags of peanut and pretzel M&M's. The cinnamon pretzel was gorgeous!!
As for the film, that was brilliant. Really good film with a couple of Good twists in there.

We decided it would be much better and safer to get a taxi back to the hostel. It was a nice ride home with this old guy, playing some classic tunes from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin whilst we were driving down Sunset Blvd along the Sunset Strip. It was pretty cool. It's nice down that road, lots of bright lights, restaurants, bars and clubs.
We nearly died though watching the taxi meter. $28 (£19) it cost!!! Couldn't believe it. We couldn't have got the bus though. Didn't fancy walking the mile back to our hostel from the bus stop along a dodgy looking neighbourhood with big bags full of branded clothes!

Well, we really had a fantastic day today. Yesterday we were really down because of the crap weather, crap hostel and crappy looking Hollywood/LA, but we're much happier today. We've seen a nicer side to LA and we're sure there's loads more nice stuff to to see.