Day 10 - Hollywood

Well the hours of walking yesterday must have tuckered us out cause we both slept like logs last night!

We opted for the healthy option of McDonalds for breakfast (mmmmmm) and then head off to do the walk of fame. When you look at it on a map it doesnt look that long but trust me it is! Apparently it runs for over 3 miles (not forgetting they are on both sides of the street) but I think we got pics of all the main people's stars we wanted them of. The Walk of Fame is said to have over 2400 stars at the moment but they have cheated slightly considering quite a few people have more than 1 (Frank Sinatra has 3!). The Michael Jackson star was definately the most popular, its right in front of the Chinese Theatre one of the busiest parts of Hollywood Blvd and it makes it worse that there was a constant crowd surrounding this 1 star for pics etc.

After the walk of fame we head to Ripley's Believe it or Not and boy is there some strange stuff in there! A fun way to spend an hour or so and learn weird and facinating things and another thing that we would definately recommend. Be warned though when you first walk in there is a part for you to see if you can roll your tongue and there's a lovely round mirror on the wall for you to see how well you're doing ... when you get to the end of the tour you realise that it's a 2 way mirror and you get to see all the people just starting the tour trying to roll their tongue conpletely oblivious to the room full of people watching and laughing at them whilst at the same time feeling slightly embarrassed that they were doing it not so long ago! I even said to Si when we went in 'I'm sure I just saw something move through the mirror' but carried on rolling my tongue in it anyway HA!

For lunch we went to a restaurant called UWink which was quite cool you order everything on an electronic touch screen menu and there's games etc to play while you wait and after you've finished etc. You can play amongst yourselves or challenge other tables to play a group game. Me and Si got challenged twice by other tables and won both times YAY! It doesnt tell you which table has challenged you but you can sort of figure it out by finding the table that keeps watching you when the game is starting (either that or there was a lot of rude people in there that liked staring!). Anyway the games were fun the food was good and best of all you dont have to wait to get a waiters attention to pay the bill you do that all by the touch screen as well!

The real tourist in us came out after lunch and we booked ourselves to do a tour of the stars homes and to see the Hollywood sign with a bonus of a free ticket to Madame Tussauds. We hop on the open top bus and set off going down all of the famous streets, all through Beverley Hills and Bell Air seeing various stars homes. As part of the tour they also tell you the average house price for each area and it really is sickening! Of course all of the houses were impressive but we fell in love with Simon Cowells new house it was gorgeous we cant remember the exact price they said it cost but i'm sure it was around the $20million mark! We saw the Fresh Prince house and it looks exactly the same as it does on TV and they also took us past Michael Jacksons house. The house looked amazing but it was quite sad to think what happened there just over a year ago and fans are still putting flowers and balloons on the gates in memory of him which is really nice. After the houses we turn onto Rodeo Drive with all the fancy shops and everyone is looking to see if they can spot any celebrities (sadly we didnt see any), we get to the end of Rodeo Drive and are just about to head for the Hollywood sign when the heavens open and we are getting soaked! As I mentioned earlier we are on an open top bus and there's no cover for it so the driver kindly pulls over for 10 minutes while the rain passes and we decide to head back so sadly didnt get to go up close to the famous sign but its not the end of the world cause we can see it from our hostel anyway so the pics will just have to be from further away.

As soon as we jump off the bus back in Hollywood we head straight for Madame Tussauds to make the most of our free tickets. There are 3 floors of the wax works, some of them are really good but others you have to read the sign next to them to see who it's supposed to be. It was fun going around doing silly poses next to the stars but i'm glad we didnt pay for it.

We opted for crepes for tea I went for the old faithful Nutella and Si went for the healthy option of banana ... but then had it smothered in chocolate syrup!

After tea we headed back to the hostel to get showered, packed and ready for our travels down to San Diego tomorrow YAY!