Santa Monica Pier

Today we took one of the “hop-on, hop-off” bus tours from Hollywood Boulevard via Beverly Hills to Santa Monica beach. We didn’t spend much time in Beverly Hills -  it’s mainly geared up for (very expensive) shopping or celeb spotting and neither really interest us. The celebrity/tourist thing is a bit crazy: on part of the tour today, they actually said “to your left is a major tourist attraction, it’s  where OJ brutally murdered his ex and her lover in a gruesome cold-blooded attack”. Really? That’s a tourist attraction? We also saw lots of places that have featured in lots of films, as well as the Viper Room (to be fair, the only reason I’ve heard of this place is because of River Phoenix), and the blues club House of Blues owned by James Belushi.

We enjoyed the coast much more though. Santa Monica  pier and beach are nice. We then walked along the coast past Muscle Beach to Venice Beach. It’s a huge beach, and surprisingly quiet. We saw the Pacific Ocean properly for the first time and went for a paddle.

A couple of things were confirmed today:

1. Hollywood is a bit of a dump.
2. Food portions are HUGE and everything comes with cheese. We ordered a sausage sandwich and a bacon wrap for breakfast at 10am and didn’t feel like eating again until 8pm. In future we will only order 1 meal to share between the two of us.
3. Americans don’t actually say “have a nice day!”. I’ve been here 2 full days and haven’t heard this phrase once. Despite this, I’ve still had 2 enjoyable days.

Tomorrow we plan to go to downtown LA to take a look at the markets and Grand Union station. Our flight to Auckland doesn’t leave until around midnight so we’ve got another full day in LA. Looking forward to New Zealand though because that’s where the holiday properly starts.

Oh, and I had my photo taken next to Jimi Hendrix’s star on the Walk Of Fame…

With just 3 weeks to go until our sabbaticals start, we’ve finally confirmed our travel plans which look something like this:

• Leave Heathrow (21st Sept)
• 2 nights in Los Angeles
• 25th Sept arrive Auckland, New Zealand (North Island), hire a car, travel around. 7 nights.
• 2nd Oct: Sydney, Australia. 5 nights in an apartment by the harbour
• 7th Oct: Hobart, Tasmania for 5 nights. Hire car, travel up the east coast spending one night in each of Hobart, Port Arthur, Swansea, St Helens, Launceston. Fly out of Launceston
• 12th Oct: Fly into Melbourne, stay one night, pick up car and drive West down the Great Ocean Road, stopping overnight in Apollo Bay and Port Fairy Warnambool before returning to Melbourne.
• 16th Oct: Cairns (2 nights)
• 19th Oct: Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays (3 nights), return to Cairns on 22nd.
• 22nd Oct: Cairns to Singapore (2 nights)
• 25th Oct: Back to Heathrow then Ipswich, then a week at home to rest, do washing and organise photos before resuming normal life.

In total I think we’re away for 34 nights (including at least a day lost somewhere across the dateline). Lots to look forward to as well as lots to organise. Flights, cars and most of the accommodation is booked but we still need to decide our route for the places where we want to travel around. On top of that there’s important stuff to figure out like the best way to organise/backup/upload photos, post updates for friends & family, navigate between places… I think I might need to check-in an extra case for all the tech!