Vacation 16: Hollywood

After we dropped off our RV, and picked up the rental car for the next couple of days we drove up Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills, and then went to our hotel in Hollywood. It was in walking distance to the Hollywood Boulevard, with all the main attractions. I remembered it as a dump, and not much has changed.

The famous HOLLYWOOD sign

The Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars are now being held

Grauman's Chinese Theatre - the old place of the Oscars, and where there are
the famous foot and hand prints in the front.

The famous stars on Hollywood Boulevard - there are endless rows of them, many of which are dirty and in pretty dodgy parts of the street...

Jack Sparrow...

The next day we went to the Universal Studios. We went right away to the new Simpsons ride, because we knew it would be the most popular one. And we were right, we only had a short wait, while later that day there were long queues. The following photos were taken outside the ride. The ride itself was in an animated car, and hard to describe other than it was absolutely fantastic!

We then took the "train" to the real studios. It went through a number of scenes and themes from previous movies and TV shows, including some special effects.

From "The Fast and the Furious"

The "car park". The Ferrari is from "Magnum P.I."

A Mexican village.... it starts raining...

...and a flash flood is coming down the street...

...and wipes everything away.

From "Jurrasic Park" and "The Lost World"

From "JAWS"

From "King Kong" (the latest edition)

I can't remember for which film this was, but they used a real B 747 jumbo for this scene. It is the most realistic aircraft crash scene ever made...

Mr Bates from "Psycho"

From "Desperate Housewives"

Universal Village is outside the park (i.e., you don't need a ticket for it). It is an artificial street full of eateries, souvenir shops and a multi-cinema movie complex...

After we had done all rides and shows, we had to head back to LAX, where I checked in to my hotel for the night. After a short while it was time to drop Neil off at Terminal 2 for his flight back to New Zealand. We had an absolutely wonderful, elephantatsic, amazing vacation! I loved every bit of it. It was really sad to see Neil going back home, while I had another two months of travelling ahead. Next day I was to head north to Alaska!

Vacation 15: Disneyland

On the way from Joshua Tree National Park to Los Angeles, we stopped a night in Palm Springs. It was conveniently on the way, and I also wanted to see it ever since I had been doing some research on gay tourism. Palm Springs always had the reputation of being one of the vacation destinations for gay travellers, as well as the weekend escapte for gay guys from Los Angeles. Well, we found an outrageously expensive RV park and stayed there the night. The city was not as "gay" as I expected, but we did encounter some fine examples - exactly the stereotypical gay guys who would holiday here ;-) Anyway, we walked a bit around town (but it was incredibly hot) and had a wonderful dinner at a Mexican restaurant. One of the best meals we had on these holidays, and the portions were so big that we even took a doggy bag back to the motorhome... At the RV park were a few hummingbird feeders, and rest assured there were a few of these little birds buzzing around them. Here a few photos:

And next day we finally made it back to L.A.! We reserved a RV park around the corner of Disneyland for two nights, because we certainly wanted to go to Disneyland. We found the RV park easily, and settled in quickly. Setting up for the night became routine for us, i.e. see how level the site was, if not level enough, drive the RV on blocks on one site, then hooking up water and power, and then extend the slide-out (the RV needed to be absolutely level for that, and it needed the combined power of motor and generator to operate the slide-out). We had a nice beer outside and enjoyed the warm evening.

Next day we walked over to Disneyland, which took about 30 minutes. On the way we saw a stand in front of a hotel, selling tickets. The ones for Disneyland were slightly more expensive than at the gate, but they would save us queuing for a long time. So we decided to buy them there. The guy there was so friendly and honest, that we decided to already buy our tickets for the Universal Studios from him as well. And for this, he even had a 10% discount...

At Disneyland, there were long queues at the ticket counters, but we only had to queue briefly at the entrance. We decided to walk through the park anti-clockwise, and see the rides we assumed to be most popular first. We also took advantage of the fast pass, which you can get at each ride. You just insert your park ticket in a machine and get a fast pass, which tells you a certain hour during which you can come back, and then get in much faster than with the normal queues. It worked very well, and quite a few rides did not even need a fast pass. Apart from the submarines I think we never waited very long. Throughout the day we took pretty much every ride for adults (and a few for kids ;-), and at 7pm there was the Disneyland Parade on Main Street, which ended just before closing of the park at 8pm. Overall, we enjoyed the day very much, but I can't see why people are always that hyper about it. For kids it is fantastic, but for adults there are better theme parks...

Our first ride was the Toy Story BUZZ Lightyear Astro Blaster. You went in a small
spacecraft around the attraction, had a laser gun and were to shoot on round and triangular
targets to collect points. Neil looks very concentrated, but look at my score!
(If you haven't figured it out, my score is the one on the right ;-)

They take photos at every ride, and when you exit you can see them on a TV screen,
and then purchase them. $US 25 is a bit steep though, so I just took a photo
of our photo on the screen. Thus, the quality is poor, but the faces are worth it!

Oh, micha figured out something new: You can also upload video clips on the Blog, and I always forget that my small camera has a video function. But hey, at the end of the holidays I did remember, haha. Here is one of the last float of the parade. I wanted to upload a couple more, but will have to do that later - it takes ages to upload here at the hotel...