First of all, sorry for the confusion about our last blog.
We got our days mixed up and instead of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it should've been Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Saturday the 17th:
We booked a bus tour to visit Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive etc.
We went through the centre of LA and stopped at old LA where the original buildings from the 18th century were, there were lots of spanish and mexican people there.
On the way to Hollywood we went past the Staples Centre, that is where Michael Jacksons memorial was held and where the LA Lakers now play.
The approach to Graumans Chinese Theatre was a bit underwhelming and tacky, and to be honest we all thought Hollywood was overratedd. Although the footprints and the handprints outside of the theatre, the walk of fame and the hollywood sign are worth seeing. The street performers (people dressed up as hollywood stars and characters) added a very tacky atmosphere and wouldnt leave you alone and would only allow you to take photos/videos of them if you gave them money. Leanne had a bit of a run in with freddy kruger!!!!!
The drive through beverly hills and rodeo drive was good and we also saw some infamous celebrity sites, like the Viper Room where River Pheonix died.
We stopped at Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach and although we couldnt get onto the pier we did walk down onto the venice beach boardwalk and saw 'muscle beach' and saw some black guys playing streetball.

Sunday the 18th:
We went on a bus tour to Universal Studios, after our experience of lines in Disneyland we invested in a 'front of line pass' which got us into the front of each line for rides and reserved seats for shows. Universal Studios is excellent. The backlot tour where we saw movie sets and tv sets such as: Desparate Housewives Wisteria Lane, Bates Motel from the movie Psycho and the shark from Jaws. Leanne and Emily's highlight was driving down Wisteria Lane and seeing all the outsides of the houses.
The rides are modern and exciting and the shows are really good.
The family favourite was the Simpson Ride. That was another one of Emily's favourites.
Outside of Universal Studios is an area called City Walk, which has lots of cool shops, the only hard rock cafe in California and many eating places. It is suprisingly better than Disneylands 'Downtown Disney.' The last ride of the day was Chucky's Funhouse, which wasnt fun at all for Josh. It was a walkthrough type ride where things jump out at you. Emily didnt go on it as she is scared of things like ghosts etc.
All Josh kept saying during the ride was: 'Dad, hurry up i dont like it!' and words to that effect. Leanne was so scared that she made a guy dressed up as a mummy laugh.

Monday the 19th:
This day was the first day with the hire car and we had originally planned to revisit Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Venice Beach.
After a family discussion where we all agreed that what we had seen on Saturday wasnt worth repeating. Instead we decided to drive to San Diego and visit the world famous San Diego Zoo.
San Diego is about an hour and a halfs hour drive from LA and although we had no problems on the way there or back the enourmous freeways in California don't do much for Leannes nerves.
The Zoo is epic in size although we were there for the whole day we didnt get to see it all.
One thing for certain though we wont have to line up when Adelaide gets their pandas because San Diego has pandas of there own which we saw.

Tomorrow we leave LA and drive to Las Vegas we will update you in a few days.

From Emily and Carl.