LA: Sightseeing in Hollywood

 Hi everyone, here comes my first blogpost from Los Angeles!
I arrived in America two days ago after a veery long trip (Kyoto - Tokyo by night bus, and then Tokyo - Taipei (Taiwan) - Los Angeles by plane. Arriving in Los Angeles it took me about 2 hours getting through the security procedures, and then another thirty minutes waiting for the shuttle bus to pick me up.
It was a fairly long and tiring trip, but then again I got to relax a couple of days in America before I'm heading towards Bolivia so I'm happy none the less:).

The Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Grauman's Chinese Theatre up close

Yesterday it was time to explore the city, at least the touristy areas.. To be honest, I'm not that fuzzed about celebrities and stuff, but I guess being in LA it is something I just had to check out (This is actually my second time to LA though, me and my family stopped here during our roundtrip in America about 8 years ago).

Along Hollywood Boulevard you can see people dresses up as various famous movie characters, like Jack Sparrow..!

Michael Jackson's star is still one of the most popular stars on Hollywood Boulevard

 This time, however, I had bought myself a Hollywood City Pass, which made it a easy for me to decide what to do. I started out doing one of the Kodak theatre tours, which I already had experienced once before with my family.. 

The entrance to the famous Kodak Theatre

This time I have to say that it was better though, cause a group of the dancers from Circus de Solei were practicing for their evening tour at the stage, so we had some good entertainment. Not to mention that the guide told us a lot of interesting facts and stories from the Oscar shows and everything, she seemed to like her job a lot.!

The square next to the Kodak Theatre

View towards Hollywood Boulevard

 After my little visit to the Kodak theatre the next post was a tour with the Starline busses giving you a tour to Beverly Hills etc where the stars has their homes.
Though of course it is a bit limited what you can see, because most of the houses are hidden by huge walls and hedges.

The gate to Ringo Starr (The Beatles)'s home.

Poor celebrities, I felt like we were on safary and that they were the animals we all wanted to see.. :p Anyway we did see one more or less famous guy but I have already forgotten his name.

View from the car

We also drove through Rodeo Drive, which is the street where celebreties likes to go shopping.

We also passed the Beverly Hills-sign..

And this was the closest we got to the Hollywood-sign. Did you know that the sign originally read "Hollywoodland"?

Checking out the view of Los Angeles

The last thing I did was to check out the Madame Tussauds. It was alright, but I have already been to the one in London so I guess I wasn't overly excited about it. Haha.. I might be mistaken, but I got the feeling that the one in London is a bit bigger..

A Marilyn Monroe-statue from Madame Tussauds in front of the entrance to the metro

Anyway, I had a free ticket through the City Pass so at least I got the chance to use it.

There was another ticket as well for another kind of round trip, but it was getting late and I decided not to bother. I think it was a pretty interesting day, and I am definately glad I had bought the City Pass in advance.

About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.