Los Angeles aka LA

Los Angeles (Carly): Sun 28/01/2007 10:03 PM

Hi guys!

I'm still trying to catch up with my emails - we're just having too much fun here in Florida!

Anyways I'll fill you in on LA now! We stayed in the Hilton in Universal City which was a very posh hotel and walking distance to Universal Studios and tons of shops and restaurants. We visited lots of iconic movie sites including Griffith Park Observatory (James Dean's Rebel without a cause) we had to climb a steep hill through a lot of undergrowth to get there but it was well worth it. We had amazing views of the Hollywood sign and the whole of LA spread out in front of us. Adam perfected his James Dean impressions by a statue of his hero. We looked for Clark Gable's grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery and though we didn't find the grave we did find the "new world's answer to Westminster Abbey" trust me not as grand as the guy on the video made it sounds (but I guess I know what the real one looks like. Inside were lots of copies of Michelangelo and other famous sculptors works, 'La Pieta' was particularly interesting as the sign was worded as if it was the original. Adam and I were not fooled though as we saw the real thing in St Peters in August! The stained glass copy of Da Vinci's Last Supper was very impressive and there was a voice over with some interesting info about the original and the copy.

We had a stroll along Hollywood Boulevard looking out for our favourite celebs on the Walk of Fame. We visited La Brea Tar pits where we stood on a bridge watching the gas bubble up and imagining the horrible death of the prehistoric animals who fell in. We drove through Beverly Hills and of course had a good look at Rodeo Drive. We tried following a limo to see if we could spot any famous people or their homes but no luck! We also saw Paramount Studios and Hollywood Bowl (where the Beatles used to play).

We spent a day in Universal Studios which was lots of fun. On the Studio Tour we saw stunt cars from Fast &Furious Tokyo Drift, a dinosaur from Jurassic Park, the entrance of Wisteria Lane (Desperate Housewives), King Kong, Jaws, an earthquake in a subway station, sets from all over the world and the psycho motel & house! There were tons of cool rides, Mum screamed like crazy on the Mummy - a dark indoor rollercoaster, I liked Shrek 4D andall the boys liked the Terminator 2:3D which included live actors. We went Back to the Future to catch Biff who was tearing through time, saw fire effects on Back draft and Scott got eaten by a robotic monster in the special effects show. Mum and Adam got soaked on the Jurassic Park water ride - they thought they were in the back row queue but it turn out they were at the front! All in all it was a brilliant day out!

That evening we drove out to Santa Monica for dinner. Scott was map reading and we ended up driving through Inglewood (apparently where lots of gangster rappers are from). Luckily we didn't have any trouble though!

On our way out of LA we found the place where Dad had lived when he was little. We found his first school too! We drove through Long Beach which had a huge harbour and saw the Queen Mary from a distance.

Can you believe that we did all this and more when we only stayed in LA for 3 nights? I really liked LA and would definitely recommend it to people especially film addicts!

Love Carly xxx

Los Angeles! (Adam): Fri 02/02/2007 4:44 PM

Hey Everyone,

I'll just pick up right where i left off. We arrived in LA and booked into the beautiful Hilton hotel in Universal City. The hotel was really fancy although we were so busy seeing Los Angeles that we didn't spend much time in there.

We spent the first day mostly driving around. It takes forever to get anywhere in that city because of the traffic. The roads are in a huge grid like most American cities but the difference is that LA has traffic lights on almost every junction so u seem to just drive 100metres then stop at a red light over and over and over. We finally made it to Forest Lawn Cemetery

Next we saw the Griffith Observatory where scenes from the James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause were filmed. If you haven't seen the film then my advice is that you should because it's very good. Anyway we took a few pictures and found the area where a knife fight was filmed between Dean's character Jim Stark and another kid from his school. The views of LA from up here were spectacular and it was as close as we got to the famous Hollywood sign.

After this we got back in the car and slowly crawled through the traffic to the world-famous Mann's Chinese Theatre. The theatre is actually what we call a "cinema" and it is built in a very extravagant "chinese" style (somehow nothing like the buildings we saw in China but very impressive anyway). Outside on the pavement are the handprints, footprints and signatures of many a famous Hollywood star set in the concrete. Some names among them are Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, John Wayne, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, George Lucas etc etc. Outside the Theatre lining the pavement on both sides of Hollywood Boulevard are stars with the names of other famous actors, directors, singers etc. For instance they have such great luminaries as Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee and David Hasselhoff to name a few.

Obviously we had to drive up into Beverley Hills and see some of the incredibly extravagant houses up there. You can tell that some of the houses were designed by their occupants and not by professional architects because they look like something out of a Dr Seuss book. There are some really outrageous ones and some ones that u might actually like to live in too, as opposed to just looking at when in need of a laugh. They all have one thing in common and that is their enormous size.

Our second day was spent at Universal Studios. It was a really fun day, not too busy so we managed to fit everything in. We saw the Waterworld show in which actors battled each other on jet skis and boats before blowing up a plane and an oil tank. The shows we saw were all very impressive but i think the best one was the Terminator 2 one which combined actors onstage with a 3d movie and kept switching seamlessly between the two. It also had seats that move which are entertaining on their own let alone as part of a show. We rode on a few roller coasters and even managed to get Mum on them and to her great surprise she actually enjoyed them. Her and I made the mistake of sitting in the front row of the Jurassic Park water ride and got completely soaked just at that time of day when it started to get cold, good move. Of course we took the studio backstage tour which took us around the backlots to see old sets movies including the whole set from Spielberg's War of the Worlds where Tom Cruise emerges from the basement of what remains of a house into the town where a passenger jet has crashed amongst the houses.

We went to a special effects show where two guys demonstrated the tricks of the trade with help from members of the audience. One guy got electrocuted, another had his arm chopped off and Scott got mauled by a giant animatronic werewolf. At the end of the show all the volunteers returned unharmed which was good because the daughter of the guy that got electrocuted was crying the whole way through asking if her dad was really dead! Apart from this we went on the Return of the Mummy rollercoaster and experienced a warehouse fire first-hand in the Backdraft effects show. All in all a great day out which i would recommend to anyone with an interest in movies.

That night we drove down to Santa Monica to check out the pier. After walking around the fairground we saw the merry-go-round which Robert Redford and Paul Newman sat on in The Sting. That just about rounds it off for LA, I seem to have written an awful lot for just two days but that's coz we did so much i guess.

Anyway i hope ur all well and life is going as planned,

Take it easy

Adam