Los Angeles and Las Vegas

Los Angeles & Las Vegas (20th November to 24th November)


Arrived in Los Angeles late afternoon after an all night flight. Long trek to our hotel up near Hollywood (in quite a rough looking area), so a first gruelling experience for both lugging our backpacks on the metro (2 chages, 1&1/2 hour journey). Did't help when exited the metro & headed off in the wrong direction for 10minutes - added 20 minute carrying time. Lots of whinging from Gill & 'your my husband so you should carry my luggage'.

Next morning early set of on the coach to Las Vegas. Not sure how but seem to have booked some Chinese bus, so passengers mostly Asian & the driver speaks no English. Drive through the desert that all looks the same after the first 5 minutes but takes 6 hours. Eventually when dropped off have no idea where we are & do the usual thing off heading off in the worng direction again. This is hard to do in Las Vegas as pretty much everything is on one straight road 3 miles long! Gill has the map!

Head up to hotel in downtown Las Vegas which is the original Las Vegas, 3 miles up the stip in the Freemont Experience - worth the visit as differento the new hotels on the South Strip. Staying in the old El Cortez which is the first casino in Las Vegas, and is now full of wrinklies shoving their pension into slots as fast as they can. Gill & I feel right at home, & start shoving our redundancies into slots as fast as we can. Actually we only put $3s in, as after this we realised we had no idea what we were doing & all these biddies were looking at us in surprise as we seemed to playing the machine a totally different way to everyone else & surprsingly not winning.

Decided to then go see what Las vegas was all about & did a comprehensive walkabout. Very bizzare coming here after India, as wealth is so evidently on display, with every new casino trying to outdue the previous ones. I had never imagined there would be so many & they are still building more. How many slot machines are there in this town & when will the world economic crisis finally ride in to town?

The highspots are the Bellagio & the fountain display, the Venetian for its shere grandeur, & the MGM for shere size (& sadly the drugged lion in the cage).

22nd November: return to Los Angeles by air. Dine at wonderful Crazy Chicken mexican fast food joint.

23rd November: now do the tour around LA. Start by catching the tour bus from Hollywood Highland. Gill is overwhlemed by the number of Johnny Depps there are here, dressed up Cpt Jack Sparrow. Assaults 2 of them (picture to follow). I spot Elvis sitting in cafe so he's not dead (picture as proof to follow). Also tracks down the JD star in the street & then heads off to the Viper to find out JD has sold it. Bus takes on a tour of Beverley Hills & Rodeo Drive, but have chained Gill to her seat so no shopping takes place. When get back to the start then deide to get back on the same route to take all the photos we missed the first time & get a link to another route half way round. Get dropped at the Farmers Market. Find the Chilli sauce shop for Nick Matthews ( only around 500 different varities, with interesting names like 'Wet Fart' etc..(pic to follow...). We then get stranded here as there is no other route bus that connects here, and then all the roads in & out of the market close for the big Christmas festival, so we see other buses just bypassing the whole matket area!!. Local centre customer service comes to the rescue & calls the company & manage to get the last bus back to the start. Back to El Pollo Loco again - the chicken is so good & Gill has a loyalty card.

24th November: touring around again on the LA Tourist bus. Decide to do the tour in Hollywood Hills but have no time to do the Universal Studio (which looks like a full day out on its own. However, the bus we are on goes there & comes back, so the driver gives us 5 minutes to take photos so we can pretend we were there. So sighting of JD much to Gill's distress. Back to Bus start point & head off to do the 2 routes around the city & downtown area, to find that only 1 route exists now. Have the bus all to ourselves for the ahole route & we have 2 drivers. Feel like a real celeb in LA, bet JD doesn't get this treatment.

Back to hotel to collect bags & do the long metro journey back to the airport. Interesting journey as get to meet some locals while have a few others going nuts in the carriage. Get to airport safely. One word from Gill & the bad guys run a mile. 9pm we fly (13 hour flight) to Auckland. leave on the 24th & arrive on the 26th (shame if you birthday was on the 25th, as it bypassed you somewhere in the Pacific.

Next update from NZ....