City of Angels — Los Angeles, CA
We flew from San Fran to LA in the early evening which gave us some pretty rad sunset photos over our new hometown. We hustled through the dirty rankness that is LAX and hopped on a shuttle bus which proceeded to take us over to the rental car place for us to pick up our wheels for the next week. After initially thinking we had hit the jackpot with some kind of upgrade (we took the wrong car...) we slowly made our way with our pale blue Hyundai Accent to the house we were staying in. It was a bit strange having my steering wheel on the wrong side because it throws out all your spacings as you're driving along. I kept finding my self on the right edge of the lane so installed a Jamie warning system to let me know when I was moving to the right. Got the hang of it pretty quick though including the weird US rules of being able to turn right on red lights and taking your turn at the intersections! (They don't use roundabouts so basically you go at the intersection in the order that you arrived.) The only other drama was when I was turning right at night time, and here they have a central lane that you use for waiting to turn across traffic. I turned the corner and saw two lots of lights blaring at me so thought I had turned down a one-way street. Did a rapid, and very unnecessary, u-turn on what turned out to be a normal two lane road.
We had a few issues finding the place we were staying. We had booked a room in this guy's house, Paul, because hotels are crazy expensive in LA. I told Jamie the wrong address though so our GPS taking us to a dodgy looking place at 1140 instead of 1240. We had been warned Paul's neighbours were having a party - which at first we were excited about because he let us know we were welcome to mingle etc, but by the time we got there we were exhausted and everyone was mostly already on their way. We deposited our bags, got something to eat and pretty much crashed. The house was super nice. A two bedroom flat in the middle of West Hollywood. Everything was new and really nice with free chocolates and waters by the bed, coffee makers, free fancy muesli (granola) bars, and a lovely dog, Romeo. Paul is a writer for the Ellen show (omg) so he worked pretty long hours and we hardly saw him. When we did he was a great host and really nice. Helped us out with the local area and things to do, kept refilling the chocolates, and was all around a good host, making our second AirBnB stay very enjoyable.
The first day in LA we headed down to the stars outside the Chinese theatre to have a look and do some touristy things. Was all a bit **** because it was jam packed with people. We got accosted by a man - who thought we were Australians - selling us a tour around Hollywood for a good price, but it ended up being mostly a tour of the stars homes, which was boring apart from a few good spots like the Hollywood sign. We didn't see anyone famous which Jamie thought was a total rip off but then she realised that it was the Emmy's later that night so everyone was out getting ready. We got to see Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills and other various famous hot spots.
The tour guide was pretty average (we learnt more facts from listening to other people's tour guide) and while we've come to find it's pretty normal for tour guides to remind their subjects about the American 'tradition' of tipping, she repeated herself about four times to make doubly doubly sure we understood that she expected a tip. On the bus there was also a sign with tipping 'guidelines' which were ridiculously high ($10 each adult for an 'OK' trip, $35 each for an awesome trip etc). There was no mention of a **** tour in which we thought it had been. She had a lot of attitude and had typical in your face mannerisms so when we hopped off the bus, (we were third behind two other groups that hadn't tipped) she got all up in our grill as we exited 'y'all going to tip your driver?' - In the most ghetto way possible. Jamie was pretty ****** off at her and started walking away but I chucked her $10 or something ($5 each so she understood we thought it was ****!). Double what we would normally call a good tip because we're cheap! But lesson learned (reiterated in New York by a hot dog saleswoman to a group of tourists in response to a beggar she had just yelled at to stop bothering people in her line: "y'all shouldn't get intimidated if someone gets up in your grill - they only do it to tourists because it don't work on New Yorkers," so I'm assuming it was a tried and tested approach to getting more tips from tourists). Apparently it's part of the right of passage for Hollywood for something ****** like that to happen and we learned (and can now see why) that lots of people, especially Americans, hate the Hollywood area.
We attempted to walk down Hollywood Boulevard to find some cool stars but there were just too many annoying people (especially around the very famous ones) and temperatures were souring. We found refuge in a tacky Hollywood souvenier shop which was as tacky as tack but had some amazing air-con a flowin'. We finally left and that was our Hollywood experience over. It was definitely our least favourite part of America so far. We didn't bother going anywhere near it again.
Next day everything picked up dramatically. We drove up to Universal Studios for the day. It was awesome. We hit up the new Transformers ride (awesome) with hardly any wait - 10 minutes tops. Came out and walked straight onto to the Mummy Returns ride (old school but awesome), and then walked straight onto the Jurassic Park ride (super old school and but still a bit awesome) - even better because we got a bit splashed and it cooled us down! That had ticked off our big ticket items in less than an hour so we went back on the Mummy and Transformers for round two. Had a bit of a wait the second time for transformers, but only 20 minutes when it can get to over and hour in the afternoons and apparently up over 2 hours on busy days is not too shabby. It was a good mornings work.
After that we went back up to the main lot and went on Shrek, which was a kind of average 3D movie. As we walked out exclaiming that it was pretty **** but kids probably loved it, a little kid ran past us yelling "that was AWESOME," so case closed on that one. Following that was the studio tour. Went around the different sets they use to create different cities (they have a permanent New York set and European set but they often repaint windows and little fixtures to completely change the location. It doesn't look very impressive compared to how real it looks once all the filming and editing has been done but still pretty neat roaming through these fake little cities. We got attacked by T-Rexs and saved by King Kong, as you do, on the 3D ride and got a look at the miniature boat model and Monkey Island that Peter Jackson used for his King Kong movie. We saw Wisteria Lane and cars from Nightrider, Fast and the Furious, Madmax among others! There were examples of how rain and flash floods and explosions are used which was pretty cooo and lastly we saw a plane crash where they had used a real 737 and ripped it apart for one of the scenes in War of the Worlds (I think they use it for most other plane crash requirements too otherwise it'd be a waste!) They were amongst the favourites anyway!
Afterwards we finished the day with a pretty sweet Simpson's ride, a special effects show that showed how awesome CGI is and a bunch of other stuff, and went to the Waterworld show, which was more EPIC than we ever thought it could be. Great end to the day.
Best thing about Hollywood was the food. Crazy amounts of takeout close by. Paul informed us that no one cooks, everyone just hops in their car and gets take out. Sushi, Mexican, burgers, burgers, burgers, subs, Mexican all around the place. Found a sub place that did amazing salads for cheap so that became the default dinner for the week and I think we ended up eating salads for four nights we were there. It's really all you feel like in the heat. Another thing we noticed, and you can actually see in some photos, was how muted the colour of the sky was. It was like a grey blue. There was no crispness and no wind which means even the skies are dirty in Hollywood with a constant smog overhanging.
Because everything was so spread out we decided to hit up a supermarket so we wouldn't have to drive an hour everytime we wanted something to eat/drink. The hardest part was the cereal isle. Jason spent a good 10 minutes trying to decide what sugary kind to get. There is a whole isle of cereal with any one kind giving you marshmallows, chocolate, or custard coated bits. Even the muesli was a good 25% sugar. It was hard, but finally he decided to go with lucky charms, until we turned the corner and I found a cheaper Olympic collector edition cheerio things. I'm not even kidding. We also got Twizzlers because I wanted to try them. They were yuk (Jason warned me but I didn't believe him).
The next day we drove out to 'The Grove' which is somewhere Paul suggested we visit. It's a big lovely outdoor mall, very fancy and has constant Jazz playing through the outdoor speakers. Very swanky and a popular hangout for celebs too. Right next door is a huge farmers market, but it wasn't really a market as such, just a lot of permanent vendors in the style of a market. All the food looked amazing but we just got a coffee and left. No celebrities did we see. We then drove out to Venice Beach for some good old California beach time. It's massive, it has a big walk way lined with shops and food places. It has people dressed in green trying to sell you 'legal' medical marijuana. It has amazing golden/white sand for miles. It has proper big surf waves. It has a mint skate park. It has muscle beach hardouts. It has a predominant bike track/trail which you are not allowed to walk on. It has real life Baywatch towers with life guards who carry those bouy things! We had a bit of a walk around and watched some very good skater boi's doing their stuff. Then we hired bikes and rode from one end to the next. It was probably the best thing we did in LA. We sat on the beach. We tried a fancy German chicken sausage (hotdog style) which was amazing. We watched buskers. The water was freezing. We didn't know if it was because we had come accustomed to the amazing warmth of the Malaysian and Thai oceans or if it was because they were just coming out of winter, but it was a bloody hot day - like 38ish degrees! So that seemed weird. There were only surfers in the water but quite a few people out sunbathing. I would hate to be there in the height of summer. I can imagine how packed the beach would get and understood why there were so many of the Baywatch lifeguard towers so close together!
After Venice we drove up the road a bit to Santa Monica Pier. This wasn't really planned but we stumbled across it and decided to hang out there a bit and wait for the sunset. Also it had a roller coaster! Jason was a ferris wheel virgin so I talked him into doing these two rides! It was a very tame coaster ride that lasts for all of about 10 seconds. No upside downs, steep drops or swirlies at all. The guy operating even let us go two times around because it was that lame. The two people behind us where screaming their heads off and when they got off I heard them say it was the best EVER ride they had been on. But novelty is what counts! We walked the pier. Got the snaps. And even made a profit off a drink vending machine giving us three times as much change as required!
Our fourth day was spent at the happiest place in the world! DISNEYLAND! Jason had checked that a Wednesday was apparently one of the quietest days of the week but if what we experienced was a quiet day then ****. It felt like the whole of America decided to sneak in on this 'quiet' Wednesday. We pretty much got in and went straight to the four major, most popular rides (even though they are at all different ends of the park) in the hopes to miss the long waits. I was rushed through and past the castle and all the cool things and wasn't allowed any photos so that we could get to these rides. First up was Space Mountain, it took longer to walk through the empty maze of barriers (which is usually filled to the brim) than what it did to wait for the ride. It was awesome. We only went on it once but at the very end of the day we went to see if it was worth going on again and the line was over 60 minutes long. I hate to think what it was at during the peak midday craziness! Splash Mountain, The Matterhorn, Thunder mountain, were then next up and at most we waited 15 minutes tops! I was freaking out for splash mountain and nearly didn't do it due to the crazy steep (vertical) drop at the end. But I did and it was good. We sat in the back and it was all gravy. The rest of the day, the lines for these four rides grew and grew and grew. We would see a line of people and not even know what ride it was for because it was stretched so far behind or away from the start. Wait times well into 90+ minutes. So we got lucky.
The teacups were magical and the haunted house which was all dolled up for Halloween was pretty awesome too. We couldn't believe the amount of people who hire the automatic old people scooters just so they don't have to walk around. It was unbelievable. I found Princess Jasmine and had photos with her. She was amazing. Then I made Jason line up for like 45 minutes so I could have photos with the rest of the Disney Princesses. When we got there, there was a long line of little girls waiting for Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and another Jasmine. I felt silly (there was only one other group of older gals) but Jason reminded me I had waited all my life for this. Which was true! Then it was time for the princesses to swap (before I had got a chance to see them) but it was actually awesome because even better ones came out! Belle, Cinderella and ARIEL were the ones I got to meet! Belle called Jason my Beast and Ariel asked if he was my Sailor! I replied 'No, he's my Prince Eric'. Omg. They all talked really 'cutsie' and 'sweet' and had their arm movements and poses down. We made it just in time and they swapped again about five minutes after we were done. There was no sign of Mickey and Minnie though.
Right at the end of the day we decided to go on Splash mountain again but this time we got seated at the front. Complete different ride. By half way through we were both completely drenched and at the end, the drop was way worse. The camera survived. Just. At 7:00pm we made an executive decision to flag the parade and get the last three rides done. We were wet and pretty cold by this time but it was worth it. I couldn't find any candy floss, so settled on caramel popcorn. And then, just as we were leaving, there was Micky, Minnie and Goofy next to the exit doors! The lines to have photos with them were closed so I just took photos with them with the other randoms next to them. Just as I got my last photo in of Micky the camera died! The park extended its closing time by an hour due to the hordes of people but we were so done. We took our wet, sore feet, legs and backs outta there for our hour long drive home.
The next day we totally chilled out. We drove down to Long Beach to see our other American friend Molly and had a delish lunch out with her! There wasn't much else in Long Beach so we took Molly's advice and drove back up along the coast which was very scenic and beautiful. We stopped at a stunning golf club estate which also doubled as an amazing spot for a sea lookout over the cliffs. We saw a camera crew but, sadly, still no one famous was spotted.
Not much more was done really. The last day we went to an outlet shopping place but as you'd expect there wasn't much stuff. I bought some shoes but Jason couldn't find the ones he wanted so we headed back into town to The Grove where he bought some too. I was approached by one very flamboyant man, who complemented me on my tan.
We said goodbye to Paul and Romeo and braced ourselves for what would be Vegas. At the airport our flight was delayed which was good because it meant we could sit in the airport and live steam the All Blacks and Argentina. We got to see the whole game which was awesome but we must have looked weird sitting there with our headphones and every now and then either yelling 'what the '*&^*%*****' at our tiny screen or getting happy and excited. However, the delay also meant we would be cutting it pretty close for our ticket pickup for our Cirque Du Soleil show we booked for that same night. Stress!
All in all LA wasn't really our bag. We wouldn't live there and may not ever even visit again. VEGAS BABY!