USA Day 3 - hooray for Hollywood

Total States Visited: 1
Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Doubletree LAX

We started out the day with breakfast at Pat & Lorraines's Diner, as seen in Reservoir Dogs. We tried their biscuit breakfast special... it was like a large dry salty scone. Don't think I will order that again, but at least I am brave enough to try new things. Next up, TomTom sent us the most retarded, backwards way to the Hollywood sign.

We were driving up the narrowest, windiest roads I have every had the misfortune to drive on. I am sure that everyone who lives there are used to it, but Clare and I found it a little stressful. At the end of it though, we made it to a fantastic lookout with LA in one direction, and the Hollywood sign in the other. Not bad for a housing development sign :)

Next up we visited the Van Nuys Water Reclamation Plant and Japanese Garden, or as it is more commonly known, Starfleet Academy :) We wondered the gardens and I half expected Boothby to come around the corner. Keeping with the famous location theme, next up was Venice High School, as seen in Grease.

 

We drove down to Vennice Beach where we got to walk along the beach before visiting the many market stalls. We saw an outdoor gym, a basketball game and street acrobats. In the stalls we saw all sorts of weird things, but best of all, we finally got to have some lunch! It was only pizza from a cart, but it was wonderful.

Back in the car, we were off to touristy Hollywood - the Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame. Along the street there were a lot of cheesy (i.e. bad) costumed characters such as Spiderman, Spidergirl, Camptain America, Darth Vader, the Emperor (or an old man dressed as a Jedi) and so on. We saw so many hand and foot prints (and Jimmy Durante's nose print) and I even got to see that my hands are about the same size as Bing Crosby's. We visited the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards, and I managed to stumble upon the stars for William Shatner, Kermit the Frog, Cubby Broccoli and the talented Rod Serling.

We did a little shopping at the Hollywood Mega Store - the place for all your usually traditional Hollywood souvenirs, and Clare even got to build-a-bear :) Back on the road again, and we were off to dinner at the Dumpling House on Baldwin Avenue in Arcadia. It was very nice but sadly no BBQ pork buns :(

We have driven on so many different freeways today, including driving through the centre of LA. The 6 levels of flyovers were something to see. All in all, driving on the freeways is not that stressful once you get used to it, even when there are 7 lanes in each direction. The most important rule: no fear!