Today we headed for the Hollywood hills and Griffith Observatory. This began with the Big Bus at Santa Monica and then a long journey to Hollywood. On the way we saw a few new things. The LA county decided to help some homeless people tidy up so they brought a dump truck and 4 police cars to help. I don't think they really wanted to but it was going to happen. We changed bus routes to get to Hollywood, passing Melrose Avenue and Paramount pictures again. We got off at Hollywood Blvd and then aimed to get the public transport to Griffith Park to see the observatory. It appears that LA transport is a bit like Adelaide transport and don't run on time or frequently. At this point coffee called and Penny and the girls went to Starbucks for their fix. After visiting Trader Joes to use the toilet we came across our first celebrity, Jason Dundas from Getaway. It was a win for us. We then saw Jack Black doing a tour in a van. It was raining celebrities. After giving up on public transport we got an Uber to Griffith Park. Only $1 USD more than we would have paid on the bus.

The smog was settled over LA today which made it hard to see much, but you could see the buildings through the haze. We got a better view of the Hollywood sign as we were closer. Inside there was a good display of sciencey things from a peroidic table with real samples of each element, to lunar information. The kids got to experiment with a telescope, hold a meteorite and learn more about the solar system. Once we had seen everything we could we had to get back to Santa Monica and we had missed the last big bus. We decided to Uber it which was very reasonably priced considering the distance we needed to cover. Our driver also gave us lots of information about the areas as we went, better than the big bus.

Back at Santa Monica the kids were desperate to ride the rollercoaster on the pier. We walked the length of the pier, they went on the rollercoaster and then we went down onto the beach and watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. It was nice and made us feel at home as it reminded us of watching the sun set over the water in Adelaide. It was then dinner and bed as tomorrow we go to Universal Studios for more theme park fun on the west coast of California as the Muggleton's go global. To round off our night just before dinner the fire alarm went off in the hotel and we had a visit from Santa Monica's finest fire fighters. Lucky it was just a bloke smoking in the toilet.