Los Angeles and Hollywood

Sunday the 17th of June was my only full day in Los Angeles and I decided to spend it in Hollywood, where I was staying. I woke up at 8 and had breakfast, before heading out for a walk around Hollywood Boulevard. Because it was so early on a Sunday, there were few people around and I got to see the Walk of Fame and the signatures in the concrete in front of the Chinese Theatre in relative peace and quiet.

Hollywood is really what you expect it to be; a superficial theme park style tourist attraction. There are big brands, shiny new malls, huge cars and all the souvenir T-shirts you could ever need. It's a place of bored security guards, pilgrim tourists and tacky attractions.

That's not to say that the novelty isn't enjoyable though. You can walk around all the places that you've seen on TV or read about and that's quite satisfying in itself. I went and walked around the Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars are held each year and the Hollywood and Highland mall, a meticulously shiny new development.

At 11:30 I got on a 2 hour tour of Hollywood, mainly focused on Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where many of the stars live. The guide drove us up to Mulholland Drive, where we stopped briefly at a panoramic viewpoint over the city. You could see the famous Hollywood sign and the rest of L.A., although you had to look past the endless smog. The whole of the city is consumed with a haze and it must be one of the most polluted places in the developed world.

We continued along Mulholland Drive, spotting the first of many celebrity mansions along the way. The hills are home to many expensive houses, but it's also some of the most dangerous real estate around. Mudslides occasionally claim a multi-million dollar home, with no 'mudslide insurance' available to cover for the cost.

Part of Mulholland Drive includes The Summit the most prestigious of the few gated communities, where Jennifer Lopez and the like live. Britney Spears was currently staying there with a friend, and there were around 20 paparazzi SUVs waiting for any sign of movement outside. We also drove pat Leonardo DiCaprio's solar-powered house and few few other notable homes including Meg Ryan's and John Travolta's.

We headed down into Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where the impression of being in a toy town increased dramatically. Immaculately maintained streets with matching trees either side of the road are home to many of the rich and famous. It demonstrates the huge contrast between the bubble of wealth and the rest of the city outside. The area has the only post office with valet parking in the US and has a hgih school where the fees are around $50,000 a semester. The guide was great and the trip was certainly enjoyable, but you couldn't help but feel as if you'd just been driven through someone's fantasy world.

After the bus tour, I had lunch and then went to an Internet cafe before booking tickets for a film later on. I had a further walk around, then met up with a couple of the guys in my hostel room to go out for dinner. We found a typically-styled American diner to eat at, and then I went to see Ocean's 13 at the Chinese Theatre. The film was entertaining if predictable, but it was nice to see a Hollywood blockbuster in Hollywood.

Flying to Los Angeles

Yesterday I flew out to LA from Heathrow on what can only be described as the most secure flight ever. You had to go through security as normal, then had to put your shoes through a dedicated shoe scanning machine, then get your passport checked again. If that wasn't enough, at the gate itself everyone had to empty their bag, get frisked and had their shoes inspected. That's about double the normal security measures!

The flight itself was fine, although I didn't get any sleep. We got to America without actually crossing the Atlantic; we went via Iceland, Greenland, Hudson Bay and Canada instead. Seeing all the endless sheets of ice was a surprising bonus. I watched The Shooter on the plane, a mediocre action blockbuster and Without a Trace.

A few things made me chuckle. First were the portrait photos of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the walkway which you walked down as soon as you landed; I can't see us putting Blair and Brown photos in Heathrow! On the CBS channel on the plane there was a documentary about global warming, which helpfully assisted those viewers who weren't aware of the most basic geography, "In Antarctica, at the bottom of the world, ..." There was also one question on the visa waiver form which was bound to catch out anyone who's up to no good, "Have you been involved in, or are currently involved in sabotage, espionage, or were you involved in any way with the atrocities commited by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945?".

So I went through customs with no problems, then got a shuttle bus to the hostel I was staying at in Hollywood. The driver was pretty friendly, he was from Belize and had been in the US for about 10 years. Anyway, it took about 30 minutes, but only cost $13, which was a bargain compared to the cost of a taxi. The hostel is pretty basic, but it's cheap and centrally located. By this time my body thought that it was 5am, so I went straight to sleep!

Ready to go

Well I'm all packed and ready for the flight tomorrow. I filled up my backpack completely, as before, but this time I've somehow lost 4kg of luggage. When I went to Australia and New Zealand, my main backpack was about 17kg, but now it's 13kg. A bit odd, but I'm not complaining! Anyway, the flight is tomorrow at 15:15 from Heathrow, but because of the time zones, after a 12 hour flight I arrive in LA at 18:35. I think I'll be heading for an early night!

Hello

Welcome to my travel diary for my trip around the USA in the summer of 2007. Here I'll be sharing my thoughts, observations, plans and photos. I've never been to the USA, so I don't really know what to expect from it. Well, it's bound to be familiar to everything we see on TV and in popular culture, but I'm sure there's more to it than that. I hope so anyway.

I'll be travelling first to Los Angeles, where I'll stay in Hollywood for a couple of nights. I'm then going to go on a 7 day Trek America backpacker bus tour to San Francisco, going via the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Yosemite National Park. After spending 5 days in San Francisco, I'll be travelling to Reno, where I'll be working in the Lake Tahoe area, doing conservation work for 7 weeks. In the first week of September, I fly to Washington D.C., then after a couple of days, go to New York. After a week there, I fly home.

I leave on Saturday, so this week I've been getting everything ready and making sure that I have all my kit. I'm re-using a lot of stuff that I bought for my trip around Australia and New Zealand, so I know what to take and what to leave behind.

Anyway, check back for more posts soon. I'll try and keep this as up to date as my internet access allows.