LA For The Day

How much of LA can one person see in one day?
Quite a lot actually.

I arrived into LA and walked out to the exit of the Airport disappointed. One of my favorite TV shows is LAX, not just because of Heather Locklear (but that is at least 70%) but I actually like the show. Thinking about the show and the airport I am not convinced that they actually film there. The airport isn’t that flash (maybe it was just the part I was in) and I did not see Heather. I thought she would have been waiting for me at the arrival gate.

I noticed a few things about LA straight away. I am very poor. Most people there are not. If you do not have a dog you are not cool. Everyone has a dog and if they don’t have the actual dog they have pictures of it. Our driver had a pic of his dog on his dashboard and so did many other cars that I drove past.

I got on a shuttle bus because I wanted to see the sites ASAP. The last time I was scared in a Taxi was in Spain but that was nothing to the horror that this driver put us all through. He was very verbal (and not the words you would say in front of your parents) he was horn happy and I was genuinely scared. He dropped me off at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre which is the central tourist point on Hollywood Road. It is parallel to Sunset Boulevard and leads you to Rodeo Drive where all the expensive shops are. Outside the Theater is where all the hand prints are in the concrete. There is a vast range of hand prints and many names I have never heard of but I have pics below.

I was planning on sleeping in the Airport but I decided to drop my stuff off at a local hostel as I didn’t want to carry all my stuff around.

I dropped my stuff off and headed back to the Theatre as this was the pick up for my City Tour. This was a cool tour as it took you round all the areas of Hollywood that you would want to see. We went to the Magic Theatre on the top of the hill. The theater was not that exciting for me but it is the best place to view the Hollywood sign.
(Interesting fact about the Hollywood sign. It used to read Hollywoodland as it was used as advertising for a real estate company. But after a dejected actress jumped of the H to end her failed career they decided to review what it was known for)
The tour was great and the guy who did all the talking was fun. He like me cause I was from Belfast. The rest of the people were other Americans and Asians who couldn’t speak English but liked to take pics. We went all around the celebrity’s houses (pics below) drove past the shop that Winona Ryder had sticky fingers in, the park where George Michael became ‘famous’ and the House of Blues club where many musicians start off their careers.

I never did get to see someone famous but I was given an invitation to the unveiling of a star. The stars are all along the sidewalk. You get them awarded for 4 reason: movies, music, radio and television. I was invited Bruce Willis getting his star presented. I didn’t go as I had to be on the plane.

After the tour I was talking to some random guy and got a free ticket to be in the Audience for a live showing of Family Feud (hosted by a guy who was on Seinfeld)

After the show I walked up the town and went into the Guinness Records Museum, Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, and the Waxwork museum. These were all fun. I then headed back to my hostel and was about to enter and realized that the road had been closed off. They were filming the new Ford commercial and it was a big job. I didn’t realize how many people they needed to film a commercial. It was cool to watch, I had a look in the new car chatted to some random people and headed off to get a sleep before my early rise and hopefully not scary trip to the airport (and yes it was scary and he nearly got me there late. I think it was Samuel Jackson driving. He told me he fought in the war. I told him that I have never fought in a war. The conversation stopped there and I went back to closing my eyes.

I jumped on the plane. Next stop Toronto.