WeaselAdventure

The mistake we always make when we go to other countries is we do the bus tour later on in the trip and then we say to each other - 'we should have done that first' so this time we booked ourselves on to the city tour bus guide with Mikey-Z for 6 hours of guided tour round LA. Not bad.

I found a horrible hat in the room we are staying and borrowed it for the day because I felt ill yesterday after the burning beach insident and my heads still a bit red. Graeme hates the hat.

The tour was great and fully worth the money. LA is so massive and although we have a car I don't know where we would start, plus the driving here is crazy.

Our first stop was at the walk of fame which is just on another shopping street full of tourists, crazies and high street shops like H&M. Saw the chinese theater where the premier of the X-Files was showing so all the guys were setting up with lights and carpet and stuff. I was SO busy I didn't know where to walk. There's a lot of people just wondering, dithering and stopping in the middle of the pavement. You wouldn't like it love.

We went on and the next stop was the Hollywood sign. You cant actualy get up to it because idiots want to vandalis it but the driver took us up to the veiwing points above the city and took our photos with the sign in the back ground and all that jazz. You can see the road from the start of the original Batman, that was quite fun.

From there we drove round and came down the beach at venice. Graeme picked up a hat and a wallet and I got a big old bowl of fruit. Yum! The lady asked if I wasnted salt or sugar on the fruit which was strange to say the least. We drove aboutt he wee canals and saw some ducks and pretty houses before we headed up to the most popular part of the tour, apparently.

We then went up in to the hills to see the celebrities homes. I was kinda bored with this part of the tour because although the gardens, hedges and fences are lovely, you cant see anything but them apart from the odd roof sticking up and the odd gate opening for services. Although, Cristpher Walkens house was lovely.

In honesty, only about 95% of the people who live there are 'famous' and the rest are wealthy folk in the movie type industry. You can pick up a wee bungalow there for about $2,000,000. Except theres no pavements and you'll probably never meet your neighbours and you'll almost definetly get cancer from the smog that hangs over the city. It's pretty gross.

As we came of the hill se went to a public part called Greystone- not affiliated with He-Man at all because that is GreySKULL. It was very pretty with fun veiws of the city and the smog. We saw a lizard but Graeme wouldn't touch it.

From there we drove down to Rodeo Drive, The big money shopping street with all the massive expensive shops like Prada, Lois Viton, Tiffiney, etc. I got some shots of some lovely shop fronts and the people in the sunglass shop were jolly nice to us because they saw we had nice shades on. Thanks Greig. The Jimmy Choo shop, not so much. LIke I could shove a pair of shoes in to my 5 by 4 inch handbag. They vogue just now is rubbish anyway.

From there we came back via sunset trip where Mikey pointed out all the nigth life spots and places to eat.

While driving we saw alsorts of lovely other places as well that we didn't get out the car for like the Disney Opera House (tasty tasty), UCLA, City chambers, The police department from Beverlyhills Cop, the new arts and design school, marvel comic building, the 4 tier highway intersection from the Chilli Peppers song 'under the bridge' and a whole bunch of other fun things.

When we get in we just got changed and headed for the strip. We got some mexican and margiritas and listened to some iniane american chat. Headed up to The Red Rock which was cool and again had some entertaining man child customers. Graeme told some jokes and as we were leaving a hooker came in to the bar. I've never seen fake boobs so close before. She looked like she had ahd a hard life poor thing. From there we went to the Rainbow. We tried to go to the Whisky-A-Go-Go but the cover was $12 and it was dead so we passed over to the Rainbow. I don't know if it was because we were there quite early or what but it was quite disapointing and smelled slightly of sick. Graeme chatted to a lesbian that looked and sounded like Bob Dylan and I felt quite pissed due to the lack of measures system here. We went from there to The Viper Lounge which was wholy disapointing so after one drink and watching a guy wearing 2 belts mince about on stage we left for The Standard which was the best bar we went to. I was quite sleepy by this point but Graeme was hype so I let him push me on the swing at the bar for a while.

Walking back we popped in the giant 24hour Hustler store where you can get EVERYTHING gross and also get a coffee, tea, smoothie or bagle to read your smut with. We laugh so hard and got ID'd by a guy who could't have been much older than 18 himself but it made our day.

We walked back to the hostel because we didn't know what time the bus came at. One didn't pass as we were walking so I was glad we didn't wait.

Today we're driving the coast. Going to see what the breakfast here at the hostel provides us with. I don't know if my heart can handel another day of pancakes, meat and syrup... but maybe well find ourselves in another 'googie'

We have no plan so Dustin might find us with him a day earlier than expected. Don't tell him though, it's supposed to be a surprise.

The mid morning sun did absolutely nothing to help our hangovers and the executive decision to have breakfast in Venice was take without knowledge of the LA traffic. It took us at least two, event filled, hours to even reach the coastline. During this time, I managed to crash the car into the back of an uptight Audi and we found ourselves on the hardshoulder of a five lane highway.

I wish I'd take a picture of Eli standing on the central reservation in her hotpants and shades, but I was too busy trying to calm mr average down. He was visably shaking when I leapt out of the car and bounded over to him, enthusiastically, and apologised. I kinda like when stuff like this happens. It makes for a good story.

Anyway, neither car was damaged, nothing a good scrub and polish couldn't fix, and were soon on our way to the beach. My accident did nothing to help Eli's nerves as we navigated the heavy traffic and fought against a sea of no right hand turns and long lines of mayhem.

Eventually we reached the beach and took a little paddle in the water for an hour or so. It was such a beautiful shade of green and we squinted to see China in the distance. I think the smog got in the way.

Meanwhile the hunger was eating us alive and our poor we Glasgow-coloured bodies were turning a distinct shade of pink. For $16 dollars we enjoyed a massive burger, chilli dog and two portions of chilli cheese fries that we ate as we strolled along the promenade to Venice beach, taking in the freakshow that it is. Think the barra's only sunnier and with people openly begging for weed.

It's strange to think that in some states you can face serious prison time for smoking pot, but in California, a state ruled by a republican tight-fist by the name of Arnie, you can get it on prescription for any acute pain you happen to suffer. They even buy their crop from the illegal growers so it's not even quality controlled. One of the many contradictions in America.

After our second beach jaunt in as many days we drove to the hostel and checked in. It was lovely to have a chance to lie to down and a quick nap soon turned into a epic, cuddly, sleep.

Around 11pm we took a stroll down Melrose avenue and drooled in the shop windows. Thankfully they were closed, cause we'd have to eat our luggage if we'd started spending money on clothing.

This morning we headed to, what might be the highlight of the trip so far, Norms Diner.

It's what's called a' googie' a coffee shop with kinda futuristic fifties style architecture. We sat at the bar, cause them's the rules, and read the funnies as we tucked into our bottomless coffee and enormous breakfast.

I had three dinner sized plates of hashbrowns, pancakes and eggs. Eli had two, full of meat and syrup. We rolled back to the car, giddy with sugar and excited to see what else LA has to offer.

Today we opened our live-journal account so all you lovely people can follow the adventure.

With less than three weeks to go, we're getting rather itchy feet. So far we've bought one pair of sunglasses, tried on some sun tan lotion and generally read suitably cool books about California.

Graeme bought a book on Andy Warhol to read when we were there, but he read it already.

The list of things to do is pretty extensive before we go...including apply for a new drivers license, cause eejit lost his wallet last weekend in St Andrews, and it's vital to rent the car.

We've also got a bit of tidying up to do, cause, well... who likes to come back to a messy house?

So over the next wee while we'll update this fairly irregularly while we try out HTML linking, inserting pictures and maybe even a video or two.

Anyway.. if anyone has any hints or tips for LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas or some fancy web jibberish, do let us know... in the meantime, enjoy this wonderful video, guess what Graeme's excited about?