Los Angeles

Tuesday 22 November 2005

We walked from Venice Beach to Santa Monica which took an hour and it was beautiful white, wide sand all the way with many little street shops, hawkers and street entertainers. At Santa Monica we went on the big wheel, watched the singers and dancers, and had a shrimp lunch at Babba Gump's Shrimp Company. When the sun began to set we walked all the way back again enjoying the beauty of the sunset on the sea against palms trees. We are having a quiet evening, enjoying our last night in our huge penthouse on the beach!

Patsy gets to grips with nature - Venice Beach, LA

Venice Beach, LA

On the Big Wheel at Santa Monica Pier

Monday 21 November 2005

We did the genuine tourist thing today and took an all day guided bus tour of Los Angeles. It started at 8am and we have just returned at 8 pm. It was pretty good and we enjoyed it. We toured Venice Beach, Santa Monica, town central, Hollywood Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, the high peak with the view of the whole of the city, the Hollywood sign, down town and up town, peeping at the houses of the famous and we lunched at the Universal Studio area. We saw the first mission when California belonged to Mexico and we walked along the pavement with the stars names and foot and hand prints set in cement and we saw the chinese theatre. We experienced the unbelievable volume of traffic. We were in a seven lane highway and to enter we had to obey a traffic light flicking red and green to try and stop too many cars entering the highway at the same time through the slip road. When we squeezed onto the highway we crawled at 15km/h for one hour to get to the exit we wanted. There are so many cars and they cannot all fit on the road so everybody edges along carefully in one continuous traffic jam. Who would want to live here if they had to drive every day? Crazy. Anyway, we were happy to witness this as visitors. A good day. We like this sunny, gawdy place much more than we expected to.

View of Downtown LA from Hollywood Hills

Hollywood Hills

Hollywood Bowl

Sunday 20 November 2005

Woke up at 5:30am to get on the road back to Phoenix to catch our 11:15am flight. We did not want to say Goodbye to Liz and Wayne but consoled ourselves with the fact that they will be in Australia (Perth for Michael's wedding) and in Brisbane (seeing Wayne's brother) in January and we will see them then. Enjoyed the scenery again for the three hour drive and it was very pleasant tootalling back to the airport (we think we are really getting the hang of right side driving now)!

A short flight to LA and a local bus service trip into Venice Beach Hostel. LA is not much like Phoenix at all. It is absolutely huge and sprawling, really big in every way. Bright, hot and sunny, many cars (some highways have 9 lanes both ways), many palm trees, and it all seems very commercial and glitzy. We reached our hostel and were expecting really dire conditions for $27 per night but we were bowled over when we walked into our private room for two! It turns out that we have an apartment! Scruffy and shabby, yes, but clean enough and we have two double beds (just like the Hilton!), a bathroom ensuite, a room with a safe(?), a room with a kitchen including a microwave and fridge, a TV that works, a private balcony and FREE internet in the room! When we said to the guy that we could not believe what we were getting for our money, he said, "Oh by the way, there are free pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast every morning and every night there are beans, rice and pasta for dinner....er...it is also free but I am so sorry to tell you that you have to cook it yourselves!" Wow, this is unbelievable.

We walked one block to the beach and it was so like the movies it seemed surreal. Huge white sand beach, hundreds of roller bladers/skate boarders with good bodies and tiny shorts, street entertainers trying to outdo each other, blaring music at various intervals, palm trees and hot sunshine. We walked the hundred metres of beach down to the water and watched a magnificent sunset (with the clouds Liz and Wayne were looking for in Arizona, shining brilliantly). We were just gob-smacked at the whole spectacle. Returned to penthouse to microwave rice and beans with a packet of chicken soup. Not bad and we still have treats to enjoy thanks to Liz.