UniversalStudios - Blogabond

We spent the last couple of days visiting attractions in Hollywood - mainly the standard fare along Hollywood Boulevard and Universal Studios. I think it's all quite touristy so here are just some of the highlights:

HOLLYWOOD

Great view of Hollywood Boulevard from 4th floor of Hollywood and Highland Centre.

The Walk of Fame where names of stars in the fields of radio, movies, live performances, recordings and music decorate the pavements on either side of Hollywood Boulevard in total randomness. It's quite fun reading the names on the first few stars but it get's quite tiring after awhile cos the names are set in bronze against some brown marble pattern. Like the tests they make you take for colour-blindness.

B-Boy street performance along Hollywood Boulevard - cool!

What was pretty cool to watch was the impromptu street performance by a group of B-Boys. It gathered a huge crowd and the guys involved volunteers from the audience. They pulled the people out first then went around collecting money from the spectators who paid to see what the volunteers would have to do. Smart performers.

Bumble Bee made an appearance in Hollywood!

There were quite a few costumed characters parading the street offering themselves for photo ops too. You really need to have a good costume to get the fans. A Spiderman costume that looks like kids' pajamas is an immediate failure. There were 3 Spideys wandering the street practically harassing passers-by to pay for a photo op. Not cool, Spidey, not cool. Superman cut a lonely figure in the crowd too and so did a super ugly Yoda with 4 eyes. The most popular guy, for obvious reasons, was Bumble Bee! Check out his costume! It's amazing. And he was really friendly too. No superhero harassment. Now that's the way to go.

There was loads of shopping, from the strings of souvenir shops all selling Oscar lookalikes for the anyone and everyone. Best Boyfriend, Mother, Father, Engineer, Manager, Professor, etc.

Hollywood & Highland Centre - bizarre mix of Egyptian and Indian elements in the architecture.

There were also some outlets at the Hollywood & Highland Centre, whose selling point is the view of the famous 'Hollywood' sign on the hill. The design of the building is freakishly bizarre though, like a confusion of Egyptian and Indian elements.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Our last stop was at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I personally thought it was a grotesque misrepresentation of lovely traditional Chinese architecture - rather hard to identify with it except for the stone lions.

Fanboy goes to Hollywood!

Still, it's rather fun milling around with other tourists in front of the theatre, most of whom are trying to fit their feet into the prints of their favourite movie star, and ignoring the calls of the tour attendants to sign up for tours of the theatre. Dan was thrilled to find his idol's prints!

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

We got our rental car - a spiffy little Japanese compact - and zipped off down the 101 Highway to Universal Studios Hollywood. Visiting a theme park is a great way to burn calories cos we were hurrying from ride to show, show to ride and only squeezed in half a hotdog each for lunch while standing in line for a show. We bought our passes online, which is pretty cool cos you get one free day to come back again and you zip straight to the turnstile with your print-at-home (or in the office, heh heh) ticket and skip the ticketing queues!

One good tip - offer to do the visitor survey at the entrance. You get rewarded with a priority pass for the Studio Tour which means you get to skip the queue and sit in the first car near the host. Super!