We started today by walking back down to Hollywood Boulevard as we hadn’t really looked round that area the other day, we walked a slightly different way and stopped at the Musicians hall of fame on the way, this was created in 1985 but I have to say it doesn’t have a lot of people and groups I would expect there so for example they don’t have Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, LED Zeppelin but they do have Queen and a lot that we hadn’t heard of! Eric Clapton has really long fingers, but I have pretty much the same size hands as Bill Haley! By luck we joined Hollywood Boulevard just at the start of the walk of fame which has a statue on the corner with four female Hollywood stars from different backgrounds holding up a canopy which has a statue of Marilyn Monroe on the top, also at this point are stars for Elvis and the Beatles which seemed a little strange as they are right at the start but this is quite a long way out as the whole walk of stars covers 17 blocks although not all have been designed yet. The stars are in a strange order, some really famous names seem to be quite a way out of the centre, then there are people that are significantly less famous right in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. We walked down to the Chinese Theatre which is probably most famous for the fact that it is where the hand prints are in cement, apparently this started because the owner of the Theatre was visiting the site when it was being built and accidentally stood in the wet concrete, the foreman said that if something wasn’t done about it immediately it would be there forever which gave him the idea of creating the area of handprints. We checked out the size of a number of people’s hands (and feet at this point), some are a lot bigger than you think but most are a lot smaller, I have the same size hands as Ava Gardiner but unless she had very high heals on my feet are quite a bit bigger! We played around here for a while then jumped on the Hop on Hop off Bus to do the Red route which is the only one we haven’t done yet. This took us round to the Farmers Market area but we went past this and got off at Melrose Avenue which is full of very designer shops, the commentary seemed to suggest this is where the really rich people come possibly over Rodeo Drive! We didn’t go in any we just walked back to the Farmers Market which is now a collection of grocery shops and restaurants, but first we went to the shopping centre called the Grove behind it and they should have been linked by a double decker tram but it wasn’t running today, it possibly has the most up market entrance to a shopping centre you will ever see, for the very rich there is valet parking right out the front, then there is a concierge that looks just like a hotel reception and the most up market loos I think I have ever been in outside of a 5* hotel! Looking at the store map there was an inside with a couple of floors of shops, but we couldn’t quite work out how to get in there so we had a walk round looking in a few shops but this isn’t really us, then we decided to have something to eat and went to an Italian that had pictures of the rich and famous on the walls. After we had eaten we had a bit more of a walk round the started heading back to the hotel. We had decided to walk as it is only a couple of miles and again it was really nice walking though the residential areas, a bit like parts of London it is hard to remember you are in the middle of a major city like Los Angeles. The road we walked up wasn’t quite as impressive as the one we had done yesterday the houses are definitely smaller and although some people have gone to a great effort to keep the front looking nice, others don’t seem to have done so. When we got back to the hotel we went up to the roof which is where the pool is and should have fantastic views over the city, we both thought the pool would be an infinity pool but it isn’t and is actually quite small so rather than sit up there we came back to the room for a coffee and relax before deciding what to do tonight!
