K, back to me!
Originally this was supposed to be a travel day, but thanks to our excellent time on the last two days of driving we were booked into our Hollywood hotel a day early and spent the whole day just wandering around Hollywood and the surrounding area.
Got up in the morning and decided to wander down to the center of Hollywood, which took a lot longer than we thought it would and wound up having us walk through some pretty sketchy parts of town. That being said, we had our first, and possibly only, star sighting: Gilbert Gottfried! Once we did get there though, we got to see the Kodak Theatre, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and the Walk of Fame that surrounds it (along with all of the dressed up performers who seem to sprout from the ground there).
Across the road from the Kodak Theatre we found a tour company that was offering two hour air conditioned tours of Hollywood and a general intro to the whole area. We jumped in and ended up seeing all kinds of stuff: an excellent view of the Hollywood Sign, Hollywood Bowl, the Valley, and LA; saw a ton of celebrity houses up on Mulholland Drive, in Bel Air, and in Beverly Hills; and got a tour of Rodeo Drive and the Sunset Strip. There is a possibility we saw Marc Anthony jogging up on Mulholland Drive, and a SLIM chance of we saw Sarah’s dear favourite Sir Anthony Hopkins down on the Strip! (The second one is unlikely though, unless he is filming a movie as a fatter hairier man - that didn’t stop her from freaking out a little though!)
Upon returning to the center of Hollywood we decided to be adventurous and hopped a bus to try to find the La Brea Tar Pits. We eventually did get there, and were quite impressed with the big park that the pits have been preserved in. Unfortunately the museum and all of the more interactive parts of the pits was closed as it’s Sunday, but we still got a good look at the big open pits that they’re not currently excavating. We took the bus back to the middle of Hollywood, and the subway from there to get back to our hotel for an early night before Universal Studios for the next two days.
