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Los Angeles
Entry 68 of 92 | show all | print this entry |
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Julie writes ..............
So we'd arrived in 'the city of angels'...it was about 8pm & we were taking a shuttle bus to pick up our hired car which was to be our transport for the next week - carrying us all over the state of California & eventually into Nevada. So as you can imagine we were quite pleased when we were offered 2 free upgrades to a much bigger, faster car. What we didn't realise was that the final bill was to be a lot more than expected with the full insurance & 5 different taxes!! Well that's another story!
After driving up & down the same road 3 times we finally worked out the right direction & proceeded to our hostel in Venice Beach. We checked into our room which was all right - nothing spectacular & then headed off to Ralph's Supermarket to get something to eat. The American airlines don't seem to believe in serving food or even making it available to buy, so we were pretty hungry!
The next morning we drove up to the Getty Centre which is a huge property in the hills containing beautiful works of art all inherited from J. Paul Getty's collection or purchased with money which he donated. We had some coffee & a bagel & then decided to take a guided tour around the gallery. We were lead by a really interesting & knowledgeable lady who showed us some of the most important works of art in the collection which span over the various periods in art history. She explained the history behind the different pieces & really made them come to life for us - it was fascinating. My favourite was the awesome, life-like sculpture of Saint Gines de la Jara carved by Luisa Roldan, a woman. Greg enjoyed the neo-classical sculptures of the three women revealing themselves to Troy in an attempt to find out who would be crowned 'most beautiful'. The story that went with this - the Greek Myth of Helen & Troy - really made this come to life. We then did a self-guided tour of the photographic section which Greg also found intriguing.
We left the Getty Centre & took a drive along Mulholland Drive, past the mansions of the rich & famous. We ended up on Sunset Blvd after this & sat in some serious traffic before arriving at Griffin Park to see the famous Hollywood sign. It was much further away than we'd anticipated but was worth a photo nonetheless! The rest of the view over the city was marred by a nice cloud of smog! CITIES!!
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking down Hollywood Blvd looking for the stars names on the stars on the pavement. We were quite surprised that they were not in a glitzy neighbourhood, but rather a sleazy, seedy part of town! It was only once we got right down to the Chinese Theatre that it felt more classy & this was where we found the likes of George Cloony, Charlize Theron, Fred Astaire, Sylvester Stallone, Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews (just to name a few)! This was more like we had expected it to be & we spent some time just taking it all in. Being Halloween there was quite a festive atmosphere with many people dressed up & some kids already trick or treating!
We decided to spend the evening at City Walk, a part of Universal Studios. Here we made our first visit to Abecrombie & Fitch where I got a nice, warm hoodie & Greg found a T-shirt and a sweat-shirt. We then decided that you couldn't come to HOLLYWOOD & not see a movie, so we bought tickets to see 'The Kingdom'. We then ordered pizza which came with the classical all-American bottomless, help yourself soda fountain! The pizza took a while & we ended up putting it into a box to take with us into the cinema. On the way I decided that we may need a soda top-up to see us through the movie so I calmly walked into a 'Subway' & topped up our 'Pizza Hut' cup - no one even blinked an eye! Of course Greg & I were laughing our heads off all the way to the cinema. It was great!
We decided to head back to the hostel at about midnight, but only got in at 2:15am after being entertained by the most amazing fancy dress parade we'd ever seen all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard. Men in g-strings with capes seemed to be the hottest look of the season...& girls in a range of sexy outfits were somehow very 'Halloween'? The fact that we were stuck in traffic became superfluous as the sights before us were unbelievable. Greg's only regret was having put his video camera in the boot & not being able to capture any of it on film!
So this was our first full day in Los Angeles....wow! Tomorrow it was off to the beaches & Rodeo Drive!
Latest Comments (1)
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Hi Guys (reply)
Nov 23, 2007 14:47 EST by wendykay
Thanks Jules, that was fun to read & it was great to have some contact again. Keep it up! What a pity you couldn't have captured the parade on camera. Love you Mom xxx
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