California Tourists: Hollywood Edition

Our second day as LA tourists we headed over to the Hollywood area.  Savannah showed some interest in seeing the Hollywood sign... she said that she has seen it in movies and wanted to see if it was real.  Easy enough.  Plus, I did some research and found out the location of Elvis' star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.  I knew that she would be crazy excited about that special surprise.  Ryder was pretty much just along for the ride on this outing.  Other than the insane people yelling and cruising around in costumes everywhere, there wasn't a whole lot for the little mister to look at and enjoy this go round.  He was a trooper though... a whole day walking around Hollywood and surrounding areas and then a 4 hour drive home (thanks to insane traffic)... not many toddlers would handle that well.  I barely survived the craziness myself.

They make the Elvis star very easy to get to.  He and the Beetles are located in a fancy center island on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea.  Once we got to his star Savannah didn't want to leave it.  She sat there and talked nonstop about Elvis and how cool this was.

In order to avoid and confrontation or misunderstanding with any of the crazies out on Hollywood Blvd. I made sure to not be obvious about my picture taking.  I made it appear as if I as taking pictures of buildings and other landmarks instead of their shenanigans.  This insane incident that happened there recently made me super paranoid... click on link to news story to see what I'm talking about 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/woman-23-fatally-stabbed-hollywood-walk-fame-article-1.1377724

Right after I took this picture of nasty looking chewbaca, he took his mask off and started yelling at some bus of tourists for taking pictures of him.  Good times.

Not the best view of the Hollywood sign... but it was definitely the quickest and easiest view.  Turns out that the mall we parked in on Hollywood Blvd. has a back patio where tourists can go to take pictures.  Savannah was very happy to see that the sign was real and not just in the Muppets movie.

After our journey down the Hollywood Walk Of Fame we drove around for a bit checking out sites and then ended up parking in Beverly Hills and walking around town for a bit.  

California Tourists

Sometimes it's fun to be a tourist in your own backyard.  Granted, I'm not from the LA area, so it's not my backyard actually... more like my neighbor's backyard.  You get it.  Anyhow, Eric had to fly out to the Long Beach area for work this past week so the kids and I drove up to see him.  Since he had to work all day we got to venture out and explore some of the LA areas.  Our first stop as Cali tourists was Santa Monica.  It wasn't too far from Long Beach and I knew that the kids would LOVE the amusement park on the pier.  I foolishly thought that we would only spend a few hours in Santa Monica and then be done and ready to move on to the next beach town.  Yeah, that was so not the case.  Between the pier, the downtown area shops, and the Muscle Beach people watching, we ended up spending all day there.  Before I knew it Eric was calling to say he was done working and ready to go eat dinner.  That's how you know you've had a good day... flies right by.

Ryder with his hand up in the air saying "let's do this!"... boy has no fear.  He loved all the rides.  I was surprised that he was allowed to ride some of them.  As long as Savannah went with him he was allowed to ride.  There were a few that Savannah was kinda afraid to ride and he was pulling her into the line saying "peeze ride, sissy".

The ferris wheel was pretty awesome.  I am not typically a huge ferris wheel fan... kinda too high and shaky for me... but this one is over the ocean, how could I say no.  I am glad that I went on it... the view was amazing.

After our first round of rides we headed down off the pier and went strolling along the famous Muscle Beach.  I was pretty excited to find out that it is home to the original Hot Dog On A Stick stand.  One of my favorites!  So we grabbed some corn dogs and sat down and people watched for a bit.  There are some absolute crazies out in Santa Monica, so the people watching was pretty spectacular.

Our last stop of the day was to an old school arcade that is on the pier.  Seriously, this place still takes quarters to play the games.  I was shocked when I didn't to prepay and load a card or something.  There were a few newer games, but 95% of them were old school.  Savannah and Ryder both were in arcade heaven.  The games must have been pretty cheap, because we only spent $20 and we played almost everything in there multiple times.

Who knew that the historic route 66 came to an end on the Santa Monica pier.  I sure didn't.  Pretty cool factoid.  Savannah had no clue why I asked her to take a picture with this sign.  Since everyone else around us was doing it too, she didn't question me for long.