I’ve always wanted to know what a root beer is. Is it a cross between a plants root and a XXXX? Well, no. You’ll be surprised to know that in Australia we would call it a ‘Double Sars’. You know the one, carbonated sars + cordial sars. That’s what it tastes like.
Whenever talking to a Mexican and they say “HrummmgphBaubbba Dogeeeegsuuu” it means “Would you like Black Beans or Brown Beans?”
The view of the rocky desert from the plane flying into Vegas is pretty amazing. But nothing compares to our excitement when we spotted ‘The Strip’. This place is unbelievable! It’s like one gigantic fun park. It’s really hard to sum it up in words, and I don’t think we’re capturing it too well with the camera either.
I wasn’t sure what Vegas would be like, but everyone assured me we wouldn’t be disappointed. And of course they were right. There is just so much to see in a short space. After an afternoon, night and morning, we’re stilll wandering around wide-eyed checking it all out, and discovering more and more cool things.
Just to give you an idea, our hotel-casino, Luxor, is a gigantic 4000-room pyramid – complete with restaurants, adventures parks, all the gambling you could need, and tombs, sphinxs and every other bit of Egypt! The strip is lined with crazy hotels just like ours. New York New York is next door. It’s the shape of a row of skyscrapers and has its very own rollercoaster, a mini Brooklyn Bridge, fake Central Park, and everything else you could imagine.
The only problem is the rain has followed us from LA. We had a Grand Canyon helicopter tour booked for this morning, which we have postponed until tomorrow. Fingers crossed it clears up.
The rain has meant one cool thing has happened. Our hotel room had a leaking window, so we have been moved near the top of the pyramid to the most amazing room we have ever seen. It has two enormous bathrooms, a huge bed, lounge room and bar. Two nights in luxury!
The rain never stopped after it started on our second day. It just kept on coming, downfall after downfall. The news were reporting major flash flooding and mudslides wiping out homes.
The rain couldn’t be stopped even after I stopped Michelle from doing her rain dance so we had to re-plan our days to suit the new climate. Instead of heading out to Disneyland on our 3rd day we headed out to beautiful Santa Monica and hoped the rain would stop by our 4th day so we could enjoy Disneyland.
Santa Monica was probably my favourite place in LA. The beachside town was just beautiful and there were plenty of good shops around. A favourite was visiting the “Apple Computer” store. They had all the funkiest equipment there. I just wanted to buy it all.
After visiting Santa Monica we headed to downtown LA. The bus trip there from Santa Monica took ages and was filled with dodgy people but it eventually dropped us off somewhere downtown. Michelle and I were a bit freaked out when we got off though. There were crazies everywhere. We hightailed outta there and were soon in the nicer part of downtown. There’s not much to see there but we did enjoy the walk up to the Walt Disney Music Center where the LA Philharmonic orchestra play regularly. An awesome building. It looked beautiful.
Afterwards we did another walk along Rodeo drive and then grabbed some dinner at this greasy burger place called ‘Islands’. Should have avoided it. The chips weren’t so much solid as they were oil.
We awoke the next morning with our hopes high ready to see Mickey and his crew, however, the rain was still pouring. The conceirge said there was no point heading to Disneyland as they will just send us back home. We decided that there wasn’t much else to do but to sight see more of the city and maybe see a movie. We headed out to Century City – right next door to Beverly Hills – and had a bit of a mosey around all those stores. The shoppin in the US is great. There are so many funky clothes, shoes and accessories. I wanna buy em all but I have to save money plus I don’t have any room in my suitcase :(
We decided to see a film called “Hotel Rwanda”. It was a moving film that has you in tears. It revolves around a true story of a Hotel Manager who takes in refugees during the Rwanda civil war of the 90′s.
stickfly.com rating: 8.5/10
After the movie we decided to walk the long trip home. It was great to get a sense of the city streets by foot but we were ready to rest our feets by the time we were home. We popped in for a corona in the hotel bar before heading our for an awesome Japanese Tepenyaki dinner.
LA is a nice place to visit but it isn’t majorly different to Sydney or Melbourne. It’s just a city. Hollywood is a dirty, uninspiring place full of weirdos. If you decide to visit LA I recommend staying out at Santa Monica or some other beachside town and just busing into the city to see the tourist sites. Off to see Las Vegas.
This is the first of many entries being posted under the Lost In Translation category.
At Universal Studios we decided on a Dodger dog (named from the LA Dodgers) and chips. We received our hot dogs and were waiting for our hot chips. Eventually the lady said to us, “You can just take whatever packet of chips you want.”
A rookie mistake for us foreigners. We knew they called hot chips fries over here but we didn’t expect to get a packet of crisps with a hot dog that cost $6 usd.