LA, Hollywood, Santa Monica

Saturday 21^st May

LA, Hollywood, Santa Monica

We really didn’t have any firm plans for our visit to LA and decided to just wing it.  So with the weather being so glorious this morning, we went for a long walk.  Firstly we start with the Angel’s flight which is just near our hotel, and it’s the title of a book by Michael Connelly that himself has read.   We then meander down to the central market.  We are totally amazed by how cheap the food items are, a punnet of blueberries for $2.00 UISD

There are a lot of homeless people in LA, more so than we saw in NYC, very sad indeed.  LA is far less busy than NYC and pretty well organised and from the little that we have seen it looks fairly well organised.  We have been however, warned not to travel the subway at night.   What ius very striking is the number of palm trees that line the streets, very wide streets at that.

We walk down to Perishing Square on our way to catch the subway into Hollywood.   In Hollywood every Disney character imaginable is in the main drag waiting for the tourist to want a photograph with them and for them to charge an arm and a leg for the picture, we smile quietly amused by all the activity.  Woody, darkvader, cat woman with the hugest cleavage, spiderman, you name it and they are there!  

The walk of fame is a bit disappointing really, but never mind we got a shot or two just the same.  We jump on a hop on hop off bus and head off down route 66.  We do the whole lot of Hollywood, route 66, Beverly Hills, Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica…to be honest we do the whole tourist thing and you know what we loved it.  Not for one minute did we expect it to be as good as it was…it was great.  We saw a whole lot of iconic places that you see on the telly and we loved them all.  Santa Monica was fantastic.  Our bus broke down whilst we were there so we had a heap of time to soak up the atmosphere.  If anyone had told me that I would love it, I would have thought they were crazy, but it was great.

I have to admit that one of the highlights of the day were of gays in car that I looked down upon from the bus, let me tell you that a girl at my tender age should not have born witness to what I saw going on in that moving vehicle, but it kept me amused all day!!!  I say no more, except that it was very graphic!!!

We finished the day with a lovely dinner at our hotel to celebrate the last full day of our fantastic adventure.  We have had the best time on this holiday, it far exceeded all our expectations.   However, now we are ready to come home.   We have a lot of stories to tell and a lot of catching up to do.   We leave for home tomorrow….bring it on!!