Yesterday we arrived in Santa Monica and after checking in walked down to the beach. We resisted the urge to demonstrate our prowess on “muscle beach” but watched the locals on the rings. Was impressed by the “shortie” that made a sand mountain to climb on so she could reach- that would have been me!
Today we left at the unholy hour of 7:30 for a full day of organised touring. We did the whole of Hollywood, Los Angeles, Beverley Hills, Sunset Boulevard – The Strip and Rodeo Drive. We even took a tour of the streets of Beveley Hills looking at the homes of the famous – dead and alive. To be honest I hadn’t heard of half the people we were looking for so I wouldn’t have recognised them if I’d seen them. We saw David Beckham’s house and the homes of Elton John, Marillyn Monroe, Ringo Starr, Simon Cowell, Elvis Presley and Tom Cruise. Most of the time we saw only the gates and a glimpse of a bit of building – but some got very excited. I was more excited at seeing “Hotel California” that inspired the Eagles classic. Not sure I’m an LA person, although I enjoyed Hollywood because of its history
It was a long day and it taught us we can’t sit on coach tours for 8 hours solid- we need to hop on and off. We’ll go back to Hollywood and peruse it in our own time