Our final day in Hollywood then home to Melbourne
Trip Start
Sep 09, 2009
1
10
Trip End
Sep 23, 2009
Hollywood,
Florida,
United States
Monday, September 21, 2009
We have a tour booked at 2pm and then our flight home is at 11.40pm, so we just bum around and request a late checkout for 1pm. Prior to this, we then decide to tour Warner Bros and thoroughly enjoy it. Seeing all the sets, studios etc.
At 2pm we are met with our private tour in a 1966 Cadillac convertible. Our guide and drive Johnny promises we will have a tour to remember, so the next 4 hours we are in his capable and knowledgeable hands.
We start off getting used to Johnny's French accent and then head to the wonderful Hollywood homes of Beverly Hills. Mind boggling properties with the greenest manicured gardens (something drought effect and water restricted Aussies miss deeply)
Wanna go for a ride?
. We get glimpses off Tom Cruise, David Beckham, The Playboy Mansion, Aaron Spellings mansions. The later is currently for sale by his widow for $150 million – she is currently living in the home alone, all 500 squares of it.We even pass Lionel Ritchie taking a phone call at the side of the road in his Bentley.
Everywhere you look there is this massive wealth, where money isn’t an object and the homes are at times ridiculously huge but at no time gaudy. We are both loving looking at all the home designs.
We then head down to Venice Beach and on the way pass a movie shoot, so our driver heads to the area that they were filming and drives us right through the production. They stop shooting to let us through and actually ooh and ahh over the car as we pass through.
Venice Beach is a little different and is a mish mash of cultures, not my cup of tea and after half and hour we head on our way. Johnny points out the high school that Grease was filmed and sure enough we are looking at Riddell High
Outside Michael Jacksons place after he died
! Wonderful.We also pass icon areas like the Viper Room, The house of Blues, The spot Lindsay Lohan crashed her car (do we care?) and many more. We also get taken through a residential area which has beautiful homes that really make us dream of building a new home when we return. We pass a design that we both gasp at as it is what we have in mind for our own design, so Johnny drives back past so we can take a heap of photos.
The tour is coming to a close and we have had a brilliant time and really seen areas that you don’t normally see. Also the one of one of a private tour makes it stand ahead of the rest of the tours on offer. Golden Oldies Private Cadillac Tour is one that we highly recommend.
We are returned to our hotel and we collect our luggage and grab a taxi to the airport. It doesn’t take us long and before we know it we are checking in our bags and heading to the lounge to wait for our boarding call, which is still a few hours away.
We then board the A380 at about 10.30pm and settle in for our long flight home
Cruising around in the Cadillac
. I am not hungry and by the time we take off and have food offered it is 1am so way too late for me to be interested. I am still suffering from stomach cramps and running to the loo, so I try to get some sleep. I wake a few times but tend to get a bit of sleep. Eventually the cabin starts to stir and I get up and change out of my Qantas pj’s. Breakfast is served but it is pretty ordinary. Toast that is too hard to cut and greasy bacon which makes my stomach do somersaults, so I only manage to tentatively eat the scrambled eggs. About 4 hours later we are touching down in Melbourne and I can’t wait to get home. I have been homesick for the past week and am really missing my dog Mickey. We collect our luggage and notice that Kermit has had it locks smashed, so we head to the baggage claim area to report the damage and are given a voucher for repair. Ok but we have to take Kermit into the city for repair and have 6 months to do it.Our car driver is waiting for us and we settle in for the reasonable drive home and are arrive home before we know it. Mickey is excited to see us and finally we drag everything inside and then rest for the rest of the day. Home at last.
All in all we had a great trip, yes we got sick but this can happen anywhere and we have been lucky until this time. It’s just the luck of the draw.
