LA LA land & Hollywood - the land of dreams!

For all Romeo and Juliet fans, (the real Leo DiCaprio film version guys, not that soppy Shakespeare stuff!!), Venice Beach was our first stop after landing down at LAX, sunglasses on & acting like celebrities before we walked out the doors! I was in trouble immediately for the catastrophic mistake of forgetting that I had an orange in my bag from Mexico, but after batting my eyelids and 'feigning' ignorance, which believe me isn't too difficult, we escaped without a fine - hooray!

Sorting Sup's eye treatment out took some time so we spent 5 days in Venice inbetween appointments, visiting Muscle Beach for a giggle on the monkey rings, walking down to Santa Monica Boulevard and celebrity spotting on Santa Monica Pier. I was pretty excited to be back in the USA and Maroon 5 were having a photo shoot at the end of the pier which was pretty cool!

We then found out that we would need to stay in the area for about 2-3 months in order to be successful with Sup's eye treatment. This was a big worry initially in terms of finances, but our decision soon turned our 3 days planned travel in Los Angeles to a wonderful and unforgettable 2 months of adventures.

We had also discovered the world's most amazing dessert - a Diddy Riese double chocolate cookie peanut butter icecream sandwich so we weren't going anywhere - a spectacular $1.50 treat that ruined my figure and was totally worth it! Sup then decided that he hated Venice Beach and it was "the worst place he'd been in the world"(!) Downtown LA held the same kind of feeling for me, although I had to agree that Venice Beach and its faux hippy slash homeless 'vibe' wasn't our kind of place, and there was a certain famous ceremony starting in just a couple of days, so we searched and found the perfect opportunity - to stay and work in a hostel in Hollywood, right by the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, within sight of the Hollywood sign. 24 hours a week of work in exchange for free accommodation, pancake and maple syrup breakfast, laundry and BBQs - USA hostels changed our travels!

Although travelling itself has been an incredible dream and a journey that seems too good to be true, Hollywood was a place that surpassed all feelings of reality and threw us into the realm of the surreal.

Having the Oscars on our doorstep at the Kodak Theatre, along with the film premieres of The Losers and Nightmare on Elm Street at the Chinese Theatre and Iron Man 2 at El Capitan,was amazing and gave us our best ever celebrity sighting - the man himself Samuel L Jackson, who turned and personally gave us the biggest grin which left us gobsmacked and lost for words! Sup also had the pleasure of meeting the infamous Ron Jeremy and walking along Sunset Boulevard one night we met Paul, the hitman from Prison Break, who was such a nice down to earth kind of guy - a great sighting considering we were both obsessed with the series back in the UK!

Aside from the celebrities, we met some awesome people while working at the hostel and had some fabulous and glamorous nights out, including a real American house party complete with a rock band set up in the backyard and a Police shutdown due to the noise!

We also went to a US club for a dubstep night, watched friends performing live on stage, experienced some funny and some cringeworthy moments at the hostel

comedy nights and went on a Limo ride around the city with free champagne and vodka - ahhhh, the LA lifestyle! Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park was a real highlight of the trip and together with friends from the hostel we braved about 11 of the scariest, fastest, tallest rides of our lives - an exhilarating day!

On a more laidback note, there was a beautiful canyon just 15 minutes walk away from our house and we enjoyed a long walk around it, with incredible views of the city from up high. I also took an outside Yoga class at the canyon which was a fantastic experience in the California sunshine. No trip to LA would be complete without looking at some really rich people's homes and walking down a street where you can't even afford to window shop, so we took the Beverly Hills , Bel Air and Rodeo Drive tour which was a lot of fun - taking a rickety bus to a multi million dollar mansion was pretty surreal and trying to find a bus stop between Gucci and Armani is pretty demeaning - the Bugatti would have been a much nicer ride!

At first sight Hollywood is a strange place, nothing like what you would expect, with a lot of homelessness and more tack than Cancun. It's a place where people come to dream, some make it, loads don't, but once you see past its flaws and facade you realise that it is essentially a city filled with hope, never giving up on the dream and this is one of the reasons I fell a little bit in love with it's childlike optimistic charm.

And just when we thought things were as crazy as they could get in our little Hollywood bubble, we came across an amazing plan that would give us one of the best experiences to date... watch this space..!!!

written by

SupandNic on May 24, 2010 from Los Angeles, United States

from the travel blog: Sup and Nic's World Tour!

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