Monday, April 30, 2012

California Trip: Day 5

If you're a little behind, here are the previous days of my trip:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4


**This post is going to have a LOT of pictures!!**


When my sister and I were talking about what we wanted to do in L.A., I told her I would REALLY love to do one of those cheesy hollywood tours!  I mean, I doubt that we would find a ton to do if we just drove around and we wouldn't have any clue at most of what we were looking at, anyway!  Plus, if we were there with the boys, they totally would not want to do it - that meant that this was our chance!  She completely agreed, so we set aside all day to accomplish this task. 


Driving to L.A.!

We were *just* talking about how there is no Chik-Fil-A in California (we didn't think) and we saw this one smack in the middle of L.A.  It is literally the ONLY one we saw the entire trip.



We looked up different tours, and finally decided on one.  We followed the directions on where to meet up, and parked near the Kodak Theatre.  We bought our tickets ands till had about 1.5 hours to spare before our tour.  Behind the Kodak Theatre is actually this little shopping mall type area, so we found a place to sit and eat some lunch.  Laura did a little tiny bit of shopping, and we headed back to our meet-up place for the tour.  We were one of the last ones on the bus (totally not our fault), and we ended up sitting right behind the driver.  Not cool.  It blocked a lot of our view, but it was an open-air bus (I told you - completely cheesy!) and most of the stuff we were looking at was out of the sides of the bus, anyway. 

On the bus and ready to go!

You know the song, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"?  This is the parking lot she was referring to.


Grauman's Chinese Theatre (where they have all of the handprints and stars on the sidewalk).  I'll be honest - it was a MUCH smaller area than I had pictured that it would be.


This is the church where they filmed "Sister Act".

The Hollywood sign!

Can you see downtown L.A. in the background?

 The Hollywood sign again.

Again

Totally can not remember who lived here  - Laura - help?!  I do remember that this is a "fake" entrance and none of this is actually part of the house.

Sacha Baron Cohen's house (Borat)

The whole tour was worth it for this - Justin Timberlake's house.  :)

Justin's house again

The famous Muholland Dr.

Katy Perry's house


The "paved paradise" parking lot again.

 The very first House of Blues!

This is a grocery store - and they'll totally deliver to your house.

The Viper Room

Remember the show "Dr. 90210" that was on for a while?  This is the medical plaza where it was filmed.

We are officially in Beverly Hills




Wolfgang Puck's house

Elton John lives at the top of this building.

This is Greystone Mansion.  They've used these gates in plenty of movies (like Batman)

Remember these gates from "The Osbournes"?  Chrsting Aguilera lives here now.


Just showing how BEAUTIFUL the streets are!


Sonny and Cher USED to live here.

George Clooney lived in the pool house of this house way back when he was trying to "make it".

Dr. Phil's house


While it has a different name, this is the hotel featured as the "Hotel California" on the front of the Eagles album.

Another pretty street

Ready to do some shopping?

Rodeo Drive

It's hard to read, but it's there.





This is the car dealership that was featured in, "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" when Kim bought a new car.  Notice they specialize in Rolls Royce and Bentley.

TMZ offices

Back to the Chinese Theatre to walk around a little bit!






Did you know that celebrities actually have to pay to get a star?  Yep.  They run about 30k.  You can also get them for three things: film, music, and broadcast (??  can't remember the last one).









After the tour, we began the long journey back to the hotel.  It was only like 20 miles, but with L.A. traffic, it took FOREVER.  We decided once we got back to the hotel to just eat dinner on the veranda instead of trying to leave again to find somewhere to eat.  

Pretty View 

Plus awesome food
(this was literally the BEST guacamole that I have ever eaten in my life.  I'm STILL dreaming about it)


= Happy Girls!!



It was SUCH a fun day and I really loved it!!  This was probably my second favorite day that we had on the trip.


Up for day 6 - beginning the journey home!!!

Photobucket