LOS ANGELES 2ND TO 5TH JANUARY

Air New Zealand to Los Angeles. Arguably one of the best flights I’ve made and the best for this trip so far. We arrived at LAX ahead of schedule and had relatively few difficulties clearing customs. Knowing the paranoia of the USA we were expecting more of the third degree but it was pretty well plain sailing.

When we went to pick up our hire car we were jet lagged and tired. It was 8-30 pm when we collected the car but 04-30 in our little heads. As  such we only wanted to get to our hotel and sleep. To cut a long story short, despite having pre-paid the car hire we were sold insurance, rented a GPS, charged extra breakdown insurance and paid for a full tank of fuel (mandatory). I’m sure I heard “Do you want fries with that” as we left to get the car.

Hey, it’s a nice car though!

Our hotel was superb, part of the Hilton group so that was a good compensation.

We dumped our bags and then went for a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant before crashing and sleeping well. Unfortunately we woke up very early, once again the jet-lag/body clock was working against us.

On day one we drove towards Hollywood and called into Venice Beach.......

and Marina Del Ray........

before continuing onto Hollywood.

We had lunch in the Hard Rock Café, surprisingly inexpensive considering the name. 

After this we just took in the sights of the main drag.

Walking down the ‘Walk of Fame’ with all the stars names are stuck in the pavement – OK, not very exciting but we didn’t feel like doing anything dramatic.

We are going to Disneyland at the weekend so decided to give places like Universal studios and Movie-world a miss.

We had planned to take a drive to the Hollywood sign and to drive around Beverly Hills, Santa Monica etc. However, there were plenty of touts’ out and about flogging tours and we soon got sucked in. The best decision we made!

On a 2 for 1 deal we had a 3 hour tour just sitting back and seeing all the key places.

We’re not interested in seeing where various stars live, but we were interested in seeing the houses in the multi-million dollar range. 

This tour took in these places and included Rodeo Drive, the drive to the sign and more.

Day 2 took us for a lengthy drive to Laguna Beach.

Driving on the right is not too bad and so-far we have not had any prangs! The freeway system is massive, many areas being up to 6 lanes each way. Scary!!!

In spite of it being winter here it is surprisingly warm. OK, not warm enough for swimming in the sea but warm enough to walk around in shirt sleeves and to dispense with the coats.

Laguna Beach is a very pretty place, really upmarket with million+ dollar homes. It is probably equitable with Cottesloe Beach in Perth (but the sand is far superior at Cottesloe)!

I would have gone for a swim had the weather been warmer.

I believe the swimming would be a lot safer in Perth since the sea here appeared to have a lot of rips. Oh, and a tsunami risk!!!! I wouldn’t be happy letting my kids go swimming here without supervision.

On return to our hotel we cleaned up and went out for dinner. There was a Sizzler nearby so that was our choice. From my point of view Sizzler here is as under-whelming as back home in Perth!

Problems began overnight with poor Julie being up a couple of times in the night with an upset tummy. More of this in the next blog.