Tourist Buses

MP3 Track of the day: When you were young - Killers

Weather: cold and cloudy

Tuesday 7th September

Well after I blogged I got a text from Chuck to say that he couldn't make meeting up tonight due to work, I therefore went and got myself tea (pizza) and had an early night as I was still tired from the jet lag.

Wednesday 8th September

Getting up a decent time I had breakfast and then headed to the nearest 'hop-on. hop-off' tourist bus stop. Due to LA having no real centre, LA's attractions are located over a massive wide area with slightly run down areas in between. Having only today left to sight see I decided to pay $35.00 for a 24hr, all routes, pass on the Star-line tourist bus.

This allowed me to travel on three buses; the Hollywood (Red route), Downtown (Purple route) and the Santa Monica bus (Yellow route). Each route took two hours so this was basically an all day event. I started with the downtown bus and I saw how many different diverse areas of LA there are (this included, Korea town, China Town and Little Tokyo). After this I took the red route which showed me Beverly Hills, the building that was used in Die Hard and the most expensive shopping area probably in the world (one shop sells suits for $15,000 ... if anyone is planning to go there you can get two suites from Burton's in Derby for around £300.00). Finally I took the bus to Santa Monica which took me to the beach where Baywatch was filmed and the sign that Tom Hanks ran through in Forest Gump.

Unfortunately, due to the weather, there were no chicks on Baywatch beach ... the whole day was freezing and I was in an open top bus. At one point we were travelling on a local motorway and I reckon I almost got frostbite.

Anyway the tour took me until around 7pm. I have to say I'm not massively impressed with LA; it's okay but it's too big and there is no theme in the design or layout of the city. It feels like there are loads of separate communities that just so happen to have buildings connecting each other ... it's all abit weird.

After this I met up with Chuck and we went out to see if we could see the Hollywood sign (which used to say 'Hollywoodland', until the last four letters were destroyed in an earthquake) but, for some reason, it isn't lit up at night (the Brasov sign in Romania, same design as the Hollywood sign, is lit up at night ... go figure). We then travelled down sunset boulevard and we went for something to eat at the 'sunset ranch' which had a bucking bronco (I didn't have a go). Again Chuck wouldn't let me pay for my meal and I felt quite bad when we got back to his car and he had a parking ticket (we didn't see the meter). He was okay with it though and so he dropped me back at my hostel; I said goodbye and thank you for showing me around. It was nice to meet up with Chuck but tomorrow I was off to Fiji.

Thursday 9th September

Happy Birthday Sister!

Waking up early today I got ready and checked out of my dorm. It's a shame I had to get up early as my flight isn't until 11:30pm tonight, but I had to check my bag, re-pack it, and check out of my dorm by 11am.

I'm now in the lounge watching the US open tennis and just checking info for the next part of my trip. Don't know if I'm going to do any sightseeing today as everything that I haven't seen in great detail is so far away. I think I'm just going to have a lazy day and casually get to the airport (thinking about it I haven't had any info sent to me about my next flight so I might turn up early to make sure all is okay).

So my next post will be from Fiji. In north America the internet has been everywhere and free, I don't know if this will be the case in Fiji and so don't expect an update everyday.

Toodle Pip!