Here is a couple of highlights and random observations from our week in Hollywood.
The good:
- We scored free stand-by tickets to a Jimmy Kimmel show; He interviewed Kellan Lutz from Twilight (who seems like a real moron) and Magic Johnson (who seems like a real awesome!).
- The Hollywood cube was shut down for the Christmas parade where we saw massive Cat in the hat themed floats and the marching bands of local schools (they are actually like what you see on TV).
- We have been eating mostly from the supermarket each day and cooking in the hostel most nights. Whole foods is so damn awesome, its like a store made of Wolf. Its also been fun trying some different foods- Wolf has been eating Yams the last few days and Amy has fallen in love with Kefir, a probiotic yoghurtish drink.
- We have also been eating some of the local cuisine such as 'Pink Berry' which is frozen yoghurt place which seems to be a big thing in LA. We have also tried Hersheys, Starbucks, Subway etc
- The hostel has been good, free cable TV and kitchen has been good at night. The best part about cable is that Amy can watch her new favourite shows: 'I didn't know I was pregnant', 'Transgendered and pregnant' and 'Pregnant and addicted'.
- The DASH bus is 25cents. ftw!
The bad:
-As we have grown quite used to the previously mentioned homeless Crazies here, we have been fine to catch local buses around the city each day. We have been staying on Hollywood Bld which basically consists of strip shops, tattoo parlours, nail salons, take away joints and the strip famous for Mann's chinese theatre/wax museum/kodak theatre etc. The touristy bit lasts about a block (people dress up as famous characters from movies and pose for photos) though the rest is fabulously sleezy.
- The tourist strip of Hollywood blvd is infested with tour guides who will follow you down the street trying to get you to go on their tour. Wolf even had to raise his voice!
- Some of the 'hipsters' that have stayed in this hostel, like two punk emo kids who tried to convince us they had inherited $70K and were now blowing it in Hollywood (as if).
- The different tastes of some foods. Chicken we have found to not to be the same as at home and foods that are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup don't quite taste as nice/as we are used to.
And the celebrities:
We have walked for hours each day- Melrose,the sunset strip, the Grove, farmer's market and rodeo drive which are very manicured and celeb haunted. We crossed the lights next to Sylvester Stalone, came face to face with J.Lo in a bookshop, saw Amy Smart having coffee in a cafe and saw Chanel Iman in a health food store. Also in the parade there were C grade celebs like Oscar and Meredith from the Office and the cast of Bold and the Beautiful and Days of our Lives (Booyah).
Thats all for now. New york tomorrow!
Wolf and Amy
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
KOOKS!
We checked into our hostel (and met the 90% Australian travelers and staff-typical) and slept for 15 hours on the first day/night. When we had regained some normalcy we took a trip to 'Ralphs' which is kind of like Aldi except way cooler - we stocked up on good vibes and took some pictures of the retardedly fattening foods available here for cheeeaaaappp!! The stove in our hostel took 30 minutes to boil eggs, maybe we should have gotten $1 hamburgers.
Venice beach is the kookiest place either of us have ever seen. EVER. The boardwalk is like nothing we were expecting- a million tattoo shops, cheap rip off clothing, homeless people yalking and laughing hysterically to themselves, medical marajuana 'clinics', tie dye, skaters, joints, pimps, hos. The whole place smells like joint. The beach is beautiful though, its like baywatch (minus the Hoff), we hired bikes and rode for a couple of hours all the way up to Santa Monica and saw the gradual rise in real estate from state housing to mansions. Hiring bikes was also a nice way of circumventing the kooks.
We were done with Venice in a couple of days so we packed up to head to Hollywood. Again we were pretty much the only white people on the public bus and we met a new friend called 'Sly' (name tag still on from perhaps an earlier AA meeting?)- he would mutter a few words and then crack up laughing so we just kind of laughed and tried not to appear nervous. We changed buses and after a long time and lots of uriny bus smell we had arrived in Hollywood yayyyyyyyyy! We got off the
bus, looked down and saw stars on the pavement, looked up and saw the Hollywood sign :)
Again our hostel is in an 'unsavoury' area of hollywood boulevard - when asked about the area, the hostel people say 'turn left but never go right' when you leave through the front gate.
The hostel itself, however, has some pretty nice perks. 20 minutes after checking in we were shuttled off to a FREE thanks giving dinner which was totally free( did i mention it was free?). We met a few other fellow travelers from our hostel. We sat down, ate food, met a few cool people and booted once the food ran out. Once again our bus ride home was an interesting/creepy experience but we made it back none the less. As we found out later that night, kooks come on a sliding scale and the kook who checked into our dorm that night was somewhere around the Tom cruise circa Oprah interview end of the scale. Its hard to describe him in a way that does justice to his kookiness so we thought it would be better to describe the random items that he had brought with him. Among his suitcases, boxes and plastic bags, he owns one pair of glittered (mirror ball styles) platform hiking shoes, a pink womans purse as a toiletry bag (which was never used, judging by the stench of his beard/layers of soiled clothing) and multiple boxes that seemingly contain nothing but other boxes and pieces of scrunched paper. Traveling essentials, no doubt. He also seemingly did not find sleeping to be a red flag for conversation so at 1 am when we were (trying) to sleep, we were well briefed on his life story and traveling history. He woke us up to tell us about how his laptop got stolen in London in August etc and then left the room (he did not return until the next evening). LA is kook central.
Love
Wolf and Amy
Venice beach is the kookiest place either of us have ever seen. EVER. The boardwalk is like nothing we were expecting- a million tattoo shops, cheap rip off clothing, homeless people yalking and laughing hysterically to themselves, medical marajuana 'clinics', tie dye, skaters, joints, pimps, hos. The whole place smells like joint. The beach is beautiful though, its like baywatch (minus the Hoff), we hired bikes and rode for a couple of hours all the way up to Santa Monica and saw the gradual rise in real estate from state housing to mansions. Hiring bikes was also a nice way of circumventing the kooks.
We were done with Venice in a couple of days so we packed up to head to Hollywood. Again we were pretty much the only white people on the public bus and we met a new friend called 'Sly' (name tag still on from perhaps an earlier AA meeting?)- he would mutter a few words and then crack up laughing so we just kind of laughed and tried not to appear nervous. We changed buses and after a long time and lots of uriny bus smell we had arrived in Hollywood yayyyyyyyyy! We got off the
bus, looked down and saw stars on the pavement, looked up and saw the Hollywood sign :)Again our hostel is in an 'unsavoury' area of hollywood boulevard - when asked about the area, the hostel people say 'turn left but never go right' when you leave through the front gate.
The hostel itself, however, has some pretty nice perks. 20 minutes after checking in we were shuttled off to a FREE thanks giving dinner which was totally free( did i mention it was free?). We met a few other fellow travelers from our hostel. We sat down, ate food, met a few cool people and booted once the food ran out. Once again our bus ride home was an interesting/creepy experience but we made it back none the less. As we found out later that night, kooks come on a sliding scale and the kook who checked into our dorm that night was somewhere around the Tom cruise circa Oprah interview end of the scale. Its hard to describe him in a way that does justice to his kookiness so we thought it would be better to describe the random items that he had brought with him. Among his suitcases, boxes and plastic bags, he owns one pair of glittered (mirror ball styles) platform hiking shoes, a pink womans purse as a toiletry bag (which was never used, judging by the stench of his beard/layers of soiled clothing) and multiple boxes that seemingly contain nothing but other boxes and pieces of scrunched paper. Traveling essentials, no doubt. He also seemingly did not find sleeping to be a red flag for conversation so at 1 am when we were (trying) to sleep, we were well briefed on his life story and traveling history. He woke us up to tell us about how his laptop got stolen in London in August etc and then left the room (he did not return until the next evening). LA is kook central.
Love
Wolf and Amy
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
After 20 hours of flying and 15 hours of sleep
The flight to Auckland was rad because we got to sit in the emergency seats on the plane. This was great for leg room (especially for Amy as she is so tall)-The seats apparently came with some responsibility or sommat re helping open the doors in an emergency- except we just fell asleep and luckily we didnt need to use our training. Auckland airport was GHEY because of two reasons;
1) Apparently Auckland airport is run by my 2nd grade teacher because there was no chewy gum "allowed" to be sold ANYWHERE! so not only did we have gross breath, our ears were blocked so we couldnt even communicate :( and 2) the staff at every store didnt let us use our debit cards or atm cards so we even if there were chewy available, we wouldnt have even been able to pay for it! Why a store in the international section of an airport would not allow overseas credit cards was beyond us, thankfully Amy was too tired to argue so we slept and waited. A few hours later we were on the plane- LA bound.
By LA, all four of our eyes were completely blood shot and it took customs a while to realise that this was probably normal and we werent a pair of dodgy kooks. The sunlight of LA at 7am was beautiful... We were greeted by a massive 'man of colour' outside who proceeded to tell Wolfie how pretty his girlfriend was (Felt 50% flattered, 50% sceptical)... turns out he was a
missionary wanting a "small" $20 donation for some thanksgiving dinner blah blah bullshit! We took a mulligan on this and made our way to the local bus (BIG MISTAKE). We wanted to save cash on the shuttle...silly us.
We got on the bus where we stuck out out like two very white sore thumbs. There was us (the sore thumbs) and the remainder of the bus was comprised of a colourful mixture of 50% employed, 50% unemployed. The bus driver let us on for free because he was unable to break the $100 bills that we had, adding extra soreness to the aforementioned thumbs. We are still debating weather he was truly unable to break our $100 or if he thought it would be a nice gesture to two tourists that may not make it off the bus. The Shaquana opposite us looked us all up and down and shook her head at the nerve (or courage?) of us getting on this bus which was apparently bound for welfare town. We started to notice that most people were in fact homeless and generally kooky (the dude sitting next to us was singing and tapping on our seat the whole time). We then got off the first
bus and decided it may be good idea not to be flashing $100 bills on city buses so we looked for the first place that would A) not mug us and B) change said notes. We finally found a store that looked like it would probably fill said criteria but in order to break we had to spend $5. This is where we were first struck by how cheap food is in America. We tried to find the cheapest thing to make five dollars but we ended up with a donut, a large crazy tapioca drink with whipped cream and a large bottle of water. By the look of the other customers in the store, if we took out the bottle of water, we were eating the typical American breakfast. There was heaps of people there getting their morning donuts (as one does). We got on another bus which took us to Venice Beach.
More later.
Wolf and Amy
1) Apparently Auckland airport is run by my 2nd grade teacher because there was no chewy gum "allowed" to be sold ANYWHERE! so not only did we have gross breath, our ears were blocked so we couldnt even communicate :( and 2) the staff at every store didnt let us use our debit cards or atm cards so we even if there were chewy available, we wouldnt have even been able to pay for it! Why a store in the international section of an airport would not allow overseas credit cards was beyond us, thankfully Amy was too tired to argue so we slept and waited. A few hours later we were on the plane- LA bound.By LA, all four of our eyes were completely blood shot and it took customs a while to realise that this was probably normal and we werent a pair of dodgy kooks. The sunlight of LA at 7am was beautiful... We were greeted by a massive 'man of colour' outside who proceeded to tell Wolfie how pretty his girlfriend was (Felt 50% flattered, 50% sceptical)... turns out he was a
missionary wanting a "small" $20 donation for some thanksgiving dinner blah blah bullshit! We took a mulligan on this and made our way to the local bus (BIG MISTAKE). We wanted to save cash on the shuttle...silly us.We got on the bus where we stuck out out like two very white sore thumbs. There was us (the sore thumbs) and the remainder of the bus was comprised of a colourful mixture of 50% employed, 50% unemployed. The bus driver let us on for free because he was unable to break the $100 bills that we had, adding extra soreness to the aforementioned thumbs. We are still debating weather he was truly unable to break our $100 or if he thought it would be a nice gesture to two tourists that may not make it off the bus. The Shaquana opposite us looked us all up and down and shook her head at the nerve (or courage?) of us getting on this bus which was apparently bound for welfare town. We started to notice that most people were in fact homeless and generally kooky (the dude sitting next to us was singing and tapping on our seat the whole time). We then got off the first
bus and decided it may be good idea not to be flashing $100 bills on city buses so we looked for the first place that would A) not mug us and B) change said notes. We finally found a store that looked like it would probably fill said criteria but in order to break we had to spend $5. This is where we were first struck by how cheap food is in America. We tried to find the cheapest thing to make five dollars but we ended up with a donut, a large crazy tapioca drink with whipped cream and a large bottle of water. By the look of the other customers in the store, if we took out the bottle of water, we were eating the typical American breakfast. There was heaps of people there getting their morning donuts (as one does). We got on another bus which took us to Venice Beach.More later.
Wolf and Amy
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