Sat 2 - LA City Tour
Grace drove U.David, A. Cath and myself to Santa Monica. Walked down to the pier and shopping mall. Had afternoon tea (I had lemon drink) at Organic cafe.
Saturday 2/10/2010 - Hollywood Tour
Get a wake up call from Evan at 7.10am. We're all up and ready by 8.20am and down to the lobby to wait for the shuttle - Starline Tours. Janet forgets our booking numbers, so rushes back up to get the booking numbers. Turns out she also needed the itinerary with the vouchers as well.
We get to the main office just before 9am, after collecting a few other people, not necessarily doing the same tour. Need to queue to get a boarding/booking information and have to pay as we didn't bring the vouchers. Janet pays and hopefully will get a refund when we come again tomorrow for the Universal Tour.
Seems this company collects all the people doing tours, brings them back to the office and then processes them all sending back out to their respective tour buses. I think they should find a quicker method, especially as most people have already booked and prepaid and now need to line up again to confirm the bookings. That's a lot of people and a lot of wating around.Lucky we were one of the first mini bused people to arrive otherwise we would have had to wait longer, as it is, we still have to wait for the other people in our tour to be processed.
9.30am and we're still waiting in the mini bus for 2 others.
We start off at the main office, which is at the back of the Kodak Theatre, so the tour guide walks us around the block and to the front of the wax Museum, Graumann's Chinese Theatre and Kodak Theatre . Here he give us the spiel and lets us take photos, before herding us on to the next thing. Take photos with the wax figure of Laurence Fishburn, then outside the Chinese Theatre, take photos with hand/foot prints and stars on the walk of fame.Then he takes us up the grand staircase of the Kodak Theatre and through an arcade out into an open courtyard which features giant Egyptian buildings - an open shopping centre, shops surround the courtyard, but no time for shopping. Take photos and then its back through the arcade and alley and back to the bus depot. Hop on the bus and we begin our tour of the star houses. Begining with Nicole Richie, Bela Legosi, Ben Stiller, Charlize Theron x 2572 Mulholland Drive, Orlando Bloom, Then to the Hollywood Bowl Overlook, were we are allowed a few minutes to hike up some steps to see the Hollywood Sign which is way off in the distance. Janet and Fiona remain at the bus, while U. David, A. Cath and I climb the steps and take photos.
Next the bus takes us to some famous houses which have featured in movies, such as Parenthood, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street.
Then on to more star's houses, such as Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, greystone gates - Batman's House. Tom Cruise's house, which has paparazzi waiting outside. Then madonna, Columbo, Lucy ball, Michael Jackson's and Gene Kelly's house.
Next we drive up Rodeo Drive, with a quick glimpse of the Beverly Hills hotel which featured in Pretty Woman, and then back down again, before heading to the Farmers Market, Grove Shopping at 12 noon. Here we can do some shopping, do our own thing, and make own way back to hotel, or can come back to the bus at 12.35pm - only allowed 30 mins. So we buy raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, bananas and I buy some borzorkas - which are like gozlemes, which we take back to hotel to eat. Janet and Fiona not in happy mood probably cause we are all starving. Janet is trying to contact Grace to organise a meeting. Rush back to the bus which takes us back to the hotel, only two other on the bus, the rest staying on. Get back to hotel and eat the strawberries, very nice. Also eat the borzorkas. Bought 2, one with vegies and one without.
Grace arranges to meet us at our hotel, so we wait for her, which is long after we've eaten our lunch. Janet decides to stay back with Fiona, while U.David, A. Cath and I get driven to Santa Monica by Grace. We park in a parking station near the shops and walk down the block to the beach, the beach is still a long walk away from the footpath as it is up on a hillside. Walk along the footpath towards the Santa Monica Pier. Have to walk on the boardwalk down to the pier. Looks like a long hike to the beach if you wanted to go swimming. Do a loop of the pier, but don't buy any souveniers, except for A. Cath who gets an "Evan" plaque/licence plate with california on it. Then we head back up to the shopping mall. Go into Forever21 shop still looking for dresses for Kaylene, but although they have lots of other dresses, they don't have the ones, she has specifically sent me photos of. Would have been good to spend more time here.
Stop and have a coffee/lemon tea at an organic cafe. The fog begins to roll in as we're nearly finished, so we head back to the hotel, where we invite Grace to have dinner with us. She drops us off and arranges to meet us back at the hotel for dinner. We walk to a Pho restaurant "Unphogettable" which I had seen the other night, just up the street from the hotel. U. David has a pho, while the rest of us share dishes with rice. Walk Grace to her car, which she has parked up the road on a side street and say our goodbyes before heading back up to the hotel.
Sun 3 - Universal Studios Tour
Sunday 3/10/2010 - Universal Studios Tour
Another early day and 7.10am wake up call.
8.35am, we go outside to catch the pickup to the Starline office again. Different driver.
At the Starline office, Janet fixes up the paperwork and gets her refund, before we hop onto an open top bus. There is no other option. There is no downstairs or inside seating on the bus. Every looks for a door to go in, but there are only stairs to go up. Like it or not, we are sitting in the open and it's an overcast day, very foggy and slightly cool. We leave the office at 9.30am and get very wind blown on the drive to Universal Studios Lucky the day fines up.
When we get to the entrance to Universal Studios, the guide on the bus is not very clear in her instructions or where or when to meet back to catch the bus back to our hotels. She just tells us to meet back at the same spot where we get dropped off.
We take photos out the front then go to get a wheelchair for Fiona. Head to the Studio Tour, which is a 1hr tour of the backlot and features, Back to the Future courtyard and buildings, King Kong - very scary for Fiona, Earthquake, again scary for Fiona, Mexican Village with the tidal wave - not so bad, Jaws - wasn't expecting the shark when it did appear, Houses and Wisteria Lane from the Desperate Housewives series, Psycho with a bit of role playing with Norman Bates and the Bates Motel, Plane Wreckage from Tom Cruise movie "War of the Worlds" (I saw the movie when we got back to Sydney and recognised the set).
After the Studio Tour, we went into Shrek 4D which didn't have much of a line up. It's special effects with moving chairs and air blowing and 3D movie was fun. Fiona remained in her wheelchair so didn't get to feel the effects much. We sat in the front row.
It was lunch time and we were getting hungry, so we bought hot dogs for lunch, which seemed to be the quickest and convenient and sat down to eat.
After lunch we walked around and looked at the shops, taking photos of the halloween displays. We decided to just stay on the upper level and not go down to the lower level. Went to see the Animal Training show at 1.30pm, then walked around again. No line up for the Haunted House, so A. Cath, U. David and I went in. Janet and Fiona would meet us up at the exit. It was hilarious. At one stage I walked through some curtains, expecting A. Cath and U. David to be right behind me, but I waited and waited and no sign of them, so I went back through the curtains. They were still standing there, wandering where I had gone to. From then I got A. Cath to hang on to me, and U. David to hang on to her. Lots of screams from other people when actors popped out of nowhere with axes, etc. Got a fright at the end just before exiting, but the lady behind us couldn't stop screaming.
Buy Dipping dots, rainbow and banana split, 2 small $7.10, got into see Special Effects show at 2.40pm. Here they show us how they dangle people from heights using the blue/green screen, sound effects, fight effects, boat scenes. After the show, U. David buys Ben & Jerry waffle cone ice cream - too big. A. Cath shares hers with Fiona. Walk around some more and look in the shops. Janet wants to buy souveniers for housemates and Fiona.
4.30pm go to see Waterworld show. It is still the same as it was last time we came, except they propably have different actors.
5.00pm give wheelchair back and we go outside to walk Universal Walk shops. Looking for our bus, but have no idea which one it is, as there are so many Starline buses each picking up people. Walk up to check out whether any would be ours after having sat outside and looked out for people who were on the bus when we got there. Apparently they send out smaller vans to pick people up and drop them back to their hotels. We could have been waiting for ages. Find the van which is going to our hotel and get in and wait. Not very organised at all.
6.00pm and our van takes us back to our hotel. 6.30pm we go out to Trader Joes (supermarket which sells grocery and food items) and buy 2 bottles of water $1.18.
Go back to Unphogettable again for dinner. Tonight service is very slow, but the other option is Mexican or California Kitchen across the road. Order pineapple fried rice, vegie stir fry, rice with char broiled pork chop and dice beef steak.
7.45pm the food arrives.
This time the order is right for the 5 of us. $53.00, JT gives $70.00
Walk back to the hotel 8.30pm
Shower, pack, upload photos, and videos and go to sleep at 12.30am.
Mon 4 - breakfast and long wait for coach to take us to Anaheim
