Big Bus day to Beverly Hills, 90210. We jumped on at Santa Monica pier and started our tour, heading south to Venice Beach. The sun was shining and there was a small shore break rolling in as we arrived at the home of LA's surf culture. Quiksilver, Hurley and other brands all have their head office in Venice so the tour guide said. From here we headed east away from the coast along palm tree lined roads as we headed for the hills and Hollywood. It was interesting to see the changes in housing as we moved through the suburbs. The closer we got to Beverly Hills the bigger the houses got and the fancier the cars got. As we passed the Fox studios site one of the office building looked familiar. The guide said it was used in the Die Hard films and then it clicked, it was the Nakatomi Tower. They did blow up some windows in the making of the film, but it was all in one piece for us to see. We changed buses for the Hollywood section of the tour. This was behind the Beverly Hills Police station (insert tune). We drove along Wilshire Blvd., Sunset Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd. There are hotels, shopping malls and everything fancy that Beverly Hills and Hollywood deliver. We stopped at the La Brea tar pits. I had never heard of them until mum and dad said something. They are bubbling pools of tar and methane gas in the suburbs of LA. Our guide informed us that there are a large number of oil wells pumping under the buildings. LA is the 4th largest oil field in the USA. In the tar pits they have found skeletons of mammoths and sabre tooth tigers as well as other prehistoric animals. It was a good stop and the kids enjoyed the learning part, so did I.

We jumped back on the bus and headed for Hollywood. After touring past CBS and Paramount, we saw the sign on the hill and the kids got excited. As we got off on Hollywood Blvd. we saw stars straight away. Stars on the ground that is. It was hard to walk looking up as we found ourselves reading every star as we passed them, getting a bit excited when we found one we knew. There were lots of gift shops and people wanting to take you on star tours, but we had to get to TCL Chinese Theatre to see the stars hand prints. Emily was keen to find the stars of Harry Potter and Matilda found the Star Wars ones. We looked at all the others too, I have the same sized feet as Hugh Jackman, 2 peas in a pod I guess! It was a bit manic on the street as they were setting up for the premiere of the new "Bad Boys" film. The road was blocked, they had layed purple carpet and were setting up stages for tomorrow night. Hollywood is buzzing with the Golden Globes on last week, Screen Actors Guild Awards next week, Grammys the week after that and the Oscar's in early February. We haven't seen any stars as yet but hopefully soon.

As we walked to the bus stop to get back to the hotel we walked past Hollywood High School. I have included a photo of the sports grounds they had. Pretty impressive even for a school where every student must do performing arts. The rest of the tour took us through West Hollywood, they pointed out the most expensive house in the area, only $135 million USD. We saw the "Viper Room", the nightclub were River Phoenix passed away and the Hotel used in the Ocean's 11 and 12 films. As we got back onto the Santa Monica bus we toured through the UCLA area and past the LA Country Club. This has a $70,000 USD joining fee and then $6,000 USD a year after that. I thought that was quite reasonable considering the surrounds. They also have a no mobile phone policy on their grounds - for privacy purposes. Perhaps the Department for Education in SA should pay for me to go there for a week or 2 to look at how they implement it so I can take it back to SA schools.

Back at Santa Monica we strolled along the pier which is also the end of Route 66. The kids played some games in the arcade and wanted to go on the rollercoaster, but this had closed for the night. We had dinner and planned how to get to Griffith Park tomorrow.