"Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world"...guess what we saw tonight - Glee the live tour! It was fab need I say more??? Yes I shall but first lets start at the very beginning - I've heard it's a very good place to start!!
We had a bit of a well needed lie-in this morning as it has been all go, go, go in LA. We left the hotel around 11am and headed to Venice Beach. Now if you're like me all you know about VB (Venice Beach that is and not Victoria Beckham) is that it's famous for muscle beach and everyone being toned and fit. Yes there were some of course, but it wasn't as vain as I thought it would be!
We parked at a fairly quiet part of the long white sandy beach. The sea air smelled amazing so we took a stroll and found ourselves entering the "muscle beach" part of the area. There was a gym outside with men with bigger muscles than Schwarzenegger lifting weights and bench pressing but the song "you're so vain" didn't even enter my brain as they seemed to be genuinely working out rather than putting on a posing show.
The sidewalk (how American am I turning?!) part of the beach was packed with street performers, stalls, tacky shops, and cafes. Tourist are bustling along enjoying the sights, and while some hire bikes or roller blades, the likes of us two buy a giant pizza slice and a hotdog and sit on the beach and watch the world go by for a bit:-) There's nothing like good food.... this was nothing like good food but it was still yummy! The atmosphere is really chilled and relaxed - part of me thinks that's to do with the constant smell of marijuana in the air, people are holding up signs selling it and the police nod to them as they stroll past - guess it's legal here...the waft certainly helped clear up my headache anyway!
The street performers were fab, a group in particular were amazing, 5 guys (not called Mo) did somersaults like I've never seen and I watch a lot of dancing programmes! The finale to their act was to get 10 members of the crowd to stand in a line while one of the guys took a long run up somersaulting, backflipping and with one massive jump managed to somersault over all of them in one giant leap - my jaw practically hit the floor! There were also some strange sights, like men in their pants working in shops/stalls, a man walking with bottles on his head (no idea why) and a near naked man holding snakes. Ooh and I lost count of how many small cute dogs I saw, litterally everyone had one (well jel), my fave was a "dwarf" shitzu called Little Stinker:-)
After VB we drove to Santa Monica beach, it was too packed to even find a parking space (Memorial weekend) so we just had a drive around, took a few snaps then headed back to the hotel. On the way we couldn't resist finding a geocache, our first in the US, it was located in a plant pot just inside the Jim Henson Production Studio - sadly the only muppet I saw was the sercurity guard...oh and the giant Kermit on the roof!
Another quick shower and change of clothes later we were in a cab on our way to downtown LA, we had a light dinner in The Marriott hotel bar, very swanky but friendly. As we were finishing our dinner an American couple asked if they could sit on the spare chairs, we ended up chatting and they were a delightful couple (have to say that in case they are reading this - haha only joking Paddi and Jeff)! They gave us some v good tips on places to visit all over the US, Paddi having visited every state! We have swapped e mail addresses and are going to meet up for dinner when we are back in LA in a few months - a lovely case of serendipity meeting them tonight:-)
Oh yeah forgot to say why we were in Downtown LA, cos Oli managed to get us good seats for the Glee live tour:-) For those of you who don't know, I'm a Glee fan, and if you are not I can only presume you have been living on another planet for the past three years! We really enjoyed it, they sang live and their voices were amazing - I preferred it to the auto tuning we hear on the show. They opened with Don't Stop Believing of course and finished with Queen's Somebody to Love, I videoed some bits throughout and will try and upload to fb soon. Before we knew it it was over and the arena was filled with confetti - time to hang up my giant Glee foam finger for the night! But what a fab ending to our time in sunny LA.
Tomorrow morning we are heading to Vegas - hope to be there by the early afternoon. We have booked into the beautiful Bellagio hotel and are thinking of seeing the show "O" by Cirque Du Soleil. We're planning on staying for three nights - they say it's the party capital of the world but we've had four fab hectic days in LA so we're hoping to chill instead of raving every night!
Catch you later!
J&O x
It's been a hectic 5 days (and seems so much longer) so today we decided to have a relaxing chilled one and hang around the Bellagio pool.
I say pool but there's actually probably about five of them of different shapes and sizes set amongst a lush green garden. The poshest bit is a roped off pool where the rich and famous and celebs hang - I kept having a nose but I didn't recognise anyone, just a bunch of wannabees! It surprises me that we always seem to be on the go even with our lives at home but I find it so easy to switch off and forget it all when I'm sitting in the sunshine! The temperature is hot but not overbearing at a lovely 30 degrees which keeps Oli and his freckly skin happy :) We had a late lunch at the pool cafe, choosing the healthy option of a salad each. If only Oli hadn't had the whole jug of blue cheese dressing on his! After a couple more hours round the pool and a quick dip, we figured it was time to get off our bums and go see some Vegas! In the evening we walked past four or five hotels (doesn't sound a lot but it took 25 minutes!) to get to the New York New York hotel. This hotel's structure boasts a replica New York skyline complete with a Statue of Liberty. If this wasn't enough what makes this hotel stand out even more is the giant loop-the-loop rollercoaster weaving its way around the outside of the buildings. We didn't manage to go on the ride last time we were here but this time around we made it a priority! It was 8.30pm and there was hardly a queue. As we took our seats on the carriage I wanted to change my mind - I'm two years older than the last time we were here but clearly not two years wiser! Before I knew it it was over and I wanted to ride it again, not at $14 per person though!
A couple of massive new hotels have been built on the strip since we were last here, very impressive considering The Shard at London Bridge seems to be taking forever - the Americans would have that baby built in six months! We returned to our hotel for dinner, Oli asked me what I fancied having and I said "noodles", we looked at the restaurants list in our hotel and there it was, a restaurant called "Noodles" - talk about faith!
