All the big hits
Trip Start
Aug 03, 2008
1
32
Trip End
Oct 28, 2008
Los Angeles, California
Friday, October 23, 2009
Understandably we were awake at 6 but this worked out well as we were the first one down for the free all you can eat pancake breakfast. Well those seppos don't mess around! There was a 30L saucepan choka block full of mixture which made pancakes the size of Friz! 2 of those topped with butter and mayple syrup and we felt like we had had all the calories allowed for that fortnight and with very big tummies we headed out for a walk of the area. Found a very nice area of town all decked out for Halloween before heading out to Beverly Hills. Walked past some very nice houses, each with signs in their yard supporting different political propositions. Made it to Rodeo Drive with flash backs of pretty woman and window shopped the length before plucking up the courage to enter. Strolled over to the Beverly centre buying a huge bag of fresh fruit on the way and casually ran into Orlando Bloom getting off his motor bike on our way back to the bus stop. I think he looked a little star struck when he saw me and nervously asked me if I wanted a lift but I had Greg with me so I had to refuse. What a shame. Another long walk and a bus back to the hostel before heading out on the metro to staples stadium. The people at the hostel said it would probably take us ages to get there - especially as it was game night - but we arrived with about 2 hours to kill! A beer and a souvie shop later we were in and after a quick snap with the clippettes and some very weird and disappointing nachos we were ready for the game to begin. It was a pretty unreal experience but I think it showed us more what it would have been like in the real season. The crowd was at about 25 percent capacity and we were in the nosebleed section. Half the players (or certainly all of the players that Greg had primed me on) weren't there and so both the crowd and the game were a bit lack luster. But still a worth while American experience. Home by midnight.
Some real TOOLS checked in at 1am and decided to be real WANKERS in our room. As it was just greg and I we had our shit all over the place and I had all my stuff ready for the next day on the bed above mine. So when these guys come in one of them decides that the best bed was the one above me. And he goes to work setting it all up and gets really confused when he finds all of my stuff. So he jumps up and down off the bed a few times, looses his keys and get the hostel staff to come into our room and look for them so by the time they get organised and have showers ect its 3am. Not happy.
A quick decision the day before got us up at 5:30 to have pancakes (poor tummy!) and catch the earliest bus out to DISNEYLAND!!! Left the hostel before 7 and after about 2 hours on the metro and bus we were at the home of dreams by 9:30. At the gate we were greeted by possibly the happiest person on earth who gave us tips, tickets and all the information we could possibly need to enjoy our day. Entered via main street and headed straight into adventure land. Fast passed the Indiana Jones ride, checked out Tarzan's tree house and wondered straight to the front of the line of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The lighting and sound were pretty amazing and was probably a nice ride to ease us into the day. Next we headed to the night before Christmas ride which was a pretty scary introduction, lowering us into a haunted dungeon to start with! And the ride after was pretty cool with loads of animation, holigrams and special effects with the cart spinning us this way and that to see everything. We still had some time before we could go on Indiana Jones so we called into splash mountain in Critter Country which because of the time still didn't have the line ups we were expecting. The kids who got out of the log we were to get into looked a little damp of the side of their t-shirt so I got a bit worried. But there was nothing to fear. With Greg in the front and two fat ladies behind me we were COMPLETELY soaked and in hysterical laughter by the end and having a marvellous time. The camera however was not. We jumped onto the Indiana Jones ride and Greg got to be the driver of our whole cart! It was an amazing ride with all of the special effects and we even got chased by the rolling boulder. I tried to take a photo of Greg behind the wheel but the camera decided that it was too wet and gave up. Oh dear. After that we took everything out of our pockets and everything out of the camera and sat on a bench to let us and everything we owned dry. After half an hour and an enormous ice cream we were ready to hit the track again and wandered straight into Fairy Land. After a quick burn on Mr Toads wild ride we jumped into the beautiful tea cups for a spin, which turned out to be the most sickening ride of the day with Greg trying to spin our tea cup the fastest! Idiot! Luckily at this point our camera started to get some strength back and by the end of the ride it was willing to stick it out for the rest of the day. After passing Tinkerbell's garden with all the little girls lining up to meet the fairies we strolled into Mickey's Toontown. After checking out Goofy's playhouse and Miss Daisy's boat we went for a burn on the Inspector Gadget ride which was quite sweet! Looked in Chip and Dales tree house and popped into Mickey's house but there was a bit of a line to meet the mouse himself. After that little adventure we wondered into tomorrow land to fast pass Autotopia and enjoy a space burger while watching the jedi's masters train young jedi's in the ways of the light saber. Autotopia was next and was quite sweet. It was like driving semi guided go carts which would have been amazing for kids and pretty fun for us to. After using that fastpass we headed to space mountain where we realised that this was a very popular ride and couldn't get our fast window for almost 3 hours!!!! But not to worry!! There were plenty of rides to do in the mean time! First we went on the Buzz Lightyear ride where we had ray guns to shoot targets on alien enemies and Zurg. I thought greg always had the best spots to shoot the baddies until I realised that the crank in the middle of our space ship spun us around and gave me much better angles. Unfortunately after such a disadvantages start Greg got more points than me. Grrr! Next we went back into fairy land and we popped into a surly looking caterpillar to go on the Alice in Wonderland ride which was a slow twisting and turning ride through her adventure. We got out just in time to see the start of the Disney pageant so we ran to the castle walls for a high view of all the dancing, songs and festivities of Cinderella, tinkerbell, beauty and the beast, pinochio, the little mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion King, all princesses and all the classic characters. Great show! Mosied into frontier land where I met Woody and we went on thunder mountain which was just a country inspired roller coaster. Back in Adventure land we went on a dingy cruise around the south American canals where we saw animals frolicking in their "natural" environment. The best bit about the tour was the guide who was pretty funny in a dry paying us out kind of way but towards the end I think he was just a bit over it and hated all the tourists! Ate the most ENORMOUS turkey leg for dinner as the sun was setting over the castle and with still an hour until our go on space mountain we headed back into Mickeys Toontown to go on Roger Rabbits Ride. We still could not fastpass the ride and thought the estimated wait of 50mins was inaccurate judging by the line up but we shortly found out that they were very right. A very painful wait for a ride that was not that great which was a real shame as it was the first annoying thing for the day. Needed some fresh air after queueing for an hour inside so headed for the classic Dumbo ride. Probably an acceptable 20 min wait for this but it was so cute it was totally worth it plus the lovely attendant offered to take our picture when she could see we were getting no where trying to capture the vibe. FINALLY after hours of wait we were able to enter space mountain. Space mountain was debatably the best ride of the day. Its amazing how much more fun a rollercoaster becomes when you take away the ability to see where and when the next turns are about to happen! We were loaded into a space rocket and loaded into the exit tunnel for outer space where we were blasted out into a black and star strewn sky. We floated around for a bit until we went into hyper speed and our rocket was quickly following the waves and currents of space. This way and that, up and down we had no idea where we were going or when it would happen and we were nearly wetting ourselves laughing having such a good time! AMAZING! The one ride we had not yet gone on was the finding nemo ride which did not have a fast pass so we faced the challenging prospect of skipping it or qeuing again with a very unappealing wait time of 45 mins. We waited and while we met a nice guy who used to work at Disneyland who had some very funny babies and was quite cute again it might not have been worth nit, athough the hollidgrams, underwater scenery and information was done very well. We got out just in time to catch the end of the fireworks. It was after 10 by thus stage and while we had bought no souvies or post cards yet we ran to the shops to get there in time before the last bus at 11:10. We just made it on the bus and fell asleep for most of the hour long ride back and then a metro ride we were home in bed by 1. WHAT A DAY!!!
After a couple of long days we treated ourselves to a slightly later start. More monster pancakes swimming in syrup, that we were both glad to be leaving behind at the end of the day before packing our bags for the trip home and checking out. As our flight wasn't until 11pm we put our bags in storage and caught the bus out to Santa Monica Beach. A very helpful and informative bus driver told us all we needed to know about changing busses and how to get home from the beach however 2 thick as brick Seppo's still could not figure out the whole public transport thing. The pier was fairly pretty with a bubba gump shrimp company on the edge of the jetty and lots of little souvenir shops the whole way along until the end which turned into a theme park with loads of rides. Had a little wonder up and back before asking a life guard how to get to Venice Beach. We could either drive, take the bus or if you're keen it was about 20 mins walk! We walked. An ultimate beach frisbee comp along the way caught our eye but our eyes were quickly taken with the spectical which was Venice beach. Hippies everywhere selling all kinds of wares. We walked all the way along already eyeing off what we would have for lunch as well as keeping an eye out for another one of those fruit stalls that was so good the other day. We eventually made it all the way to the Venice beach basketball where 5 or 6 white men cant jump style games were going on. We watched for a while but then decided to get some sunglasses, lunch and come back. This is where slight problems started as none of the little atm stands seemed to want to accept any of our cards so we had to walk back from the boardwalk where we found a bigger bank which allowed us to get some cash out. Now we were quite hungry which was lucky because the Mexican we got was absolutely massive. Back to the basketball to watch the black guys and one weedy old white guy talk trash while we took our time getting through the ridiculous amounts of food they had given us. We walked back past a street performer demonstrating how white/asian/black/spanish men dance and past the man holding a sign that said "support your local alco" singing "jingle bells jingle bells help me get drunk" (leah got very annoyed when this song got stuck in her head) and eventually got back to santa monica pier. After picking up some bits and pieces we went to catch the bus and after quite a few false alarms a bus with our number on it eventually actually stopped. Made it back to the hostel where we caught our pre booked shuttle bus to the airport. After losing each other in the shops we used up the last of our US dollars on 2 cheeseburgers and a Mcflurry and boarded our plane for home.
