11/8/2010 - Los Angeles, California, USA - Scenes of Los Angeles Tour
The weather at the port of LA looked rather threatening this morning, and it was reasonably cool out on deck. After another face to face customs inspection, with lines running from one end of the ship to the other (no joke, it was ridiculous! the line started at the vista lounge and went all the way to the front of the ship at the Wheelhouse Bar!) - we eventually got off the ship!.
We picked our tour today based on that it would give us a good overview of the city, rather than concentrating on a single place (we had thrown around the idea of visiting Universal studios, but due to our limited time in LA decided on a more general tour).
After a drive from the port to the main part of LA and getting to experience a bit of the LA traffic, we started a narrated drive that took us past places like the Olympic stadium, the University of Southern California, The LA Convention Center (which is HUGE) and The Grammy Museum we had a photo stop within sight of the City Hall. 
We picked our tour today based on that it would give us a good overview of the city, rather than concentrating on a single place (we had thrown around the idea of visiting Universal studios, but due to our limited time in LA decided on a more general tour).
After a drive from the port to the main part of LA and getting to experience a bit of the LA traffic, we started a narrated drive that took us past places like the Olympic stadium, the University of Southern California, The LA Convention Center (which is HUGE) and The Grammy Museum we had a photo stop within sight of the City Hall.We proceeded past Union Station and then worked out way over to the Hollywood Bowl.
The Hollywood Bowl is well worth visiting, it's quite an amazing place - the way sound bounced around was mind-blowing. Stranger yet it's a natural formation, and all they've done is added seats and a stage!.
Out next stop was a view of the Hollywood sign (yes it's visible in the picture above, way in the background!) and a visit to the Chinese Theatre and the walk of fame. We had a bit of trouble with the bus and spent about 45mins just waiting for it to come back.
We then continued on travelling down sunset boulevard, we passed the House of Blues and then headed into Beverly Hills. We passed by several places featured the movie Beverly Hills Cop as well as many other movies. Next we headed for Rodeo Drive and got to look at all the extremely overpriced stores and people showing off the size of their wallets!
Our tour then took us to Century City - part of LA that's relatively new (it used to be the back lot of one of the big movie studios, guess which one?). The drive back to the ship was better than the drive in, traffic was quite good.
All in all LA was a great place to visit, the climate felt a lot like home and it was a friendly and pleasant place to visit. Like New York, I could spend at least a couple of weeks here at some point in the future!
The Hollywood Bowl is well worth visiting, it's quite an amazing place - the way sound bounced around was mind-blowing. Stranger yet it's a natural formation, and all they've done is added seats and a stage!.
Out next stop was a view of the Hollywood sign (yes it's visible in the picture above, way in the background!) and a visit to the Chinese Theatre and the walk of fame. We had a bit of trouble with the bus and spent about 45mins just waiting for it to come back.
We then continued on travelling down sunset boulevard, we passed the House of Blues and then headed into Beverly Hills. We passed by several places featured the movie Beverly Hills Cop as well as many other movies. Next we headed for Rodeo Drive and got to look at all the extremely overpriced stores and people showing off the size of their wallets!Our tour then took us to Century City - part of LA that's relatively new (it used to be the back lot of one of the big movie studios, guess which one?). The drive back to the ship was better than the drive in, traffic was quite good.
All in all LA was a great place to visit, the climate felt a lot like home and it was a friendly and pleasant place to visit. Like New York, I could spend at least a couple of weeks here at some point in the future!
Comments