Day 2 in LA

Every Tuesday night, the hostel gets musicians in to play in the lounge/bar. There are singer/songwriters and bands so we listened to those for a little while and had $3 drinks. Apart from this, I had yet another terrible night sleep, I think I got about 4 hrs but this time it wasn't due to the noise. I believe I have become nocturnal as I feel asleep on the bus a couple of times today!

So today we decided to go on the hop on-hop off bus that takes us around Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It was really tacking but at least we got rides to some of the places we wanted to go and we got out of Hollywood Blvd. The Sunset Strip looked better than 'our' end of Sunset Blvd but we decided not to get off the bus. Instead we took a ride to The Grove, which is a cute shopping area, and I became very overwhelmed by all the books (well all the YA ones we don't have and the huge range available here) in Barnes and Nobel. I believe a few boxes will be getting sent home.


We then got back on the bus and went to Rodeo Drive, and while it is nice and expensive, we weren't going to go into the shops, if they would have even let us! One of the stores, Bijan, you could only go into if you had an appointment and suits started at $15 000! Below is a picture of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Rodeo Drive (the hotel used in Pretty Woman).


Some of the other sights we saw from the bus were Whisky-A-Gogo, The Viper Room, La Brea Tar Pits, Paramount Studio and Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

We have had major problems getting sims for our phones and everyone has been really unhelpful except for one guy in a stationary store. We weren't able to buy a sim card separately but we have US numbers now so that's good. The guy who sold them to us wants to show us around Santa Monica and Venice Beach tomorrow so looks like we have local guide which will be good.