Day 1
After travelling more than 24 hours from Penang all the way to Los Angeles (LA), we finally arrived! We were in another continent at the other end of the world!
Upon reaching the airport, we looked around to purchase a data sim card. Since we'll be in the States for one month, purchasing a sim card seems logic as we do have plans to use Uber once awhile and maybe to google for maps. Our 1st shopping list started and to our horror, there were no sim card being sold in the terminal that we arrived. We have to walk all the way to another terminal which took us around 15 minutes outdoor walk. That's when we realised the weather in LA was hot! Seems like our jackets will not be in any good use throughout our trip.
After we paid for the sim card (and hurt our wallets after converting to Ringgit), we had our first Uber ride to our Airbnb accomodation in
Kahn's apartment.
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| Living Area with Mini Kitchen |
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| Bedroom |
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| Shower/Bathtub & Toilet |
We were starving by that time, so we headed out to hunt for food. The weather turned out to be colder by now. Looks like we need our jackets after all.
After food, we decided to just go for basic grocery shopping and then back to our accommodation and call it a day. After all, we might suffer from jetlag!
Day 2
The real holiday begins! All of us work up early and started our day. Everyone seems to be recovering well and no jetlag syndromes were spotted. After a simple breakfast at the apartment, we headed out to explore LA!
We walked our way to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As we also purchased the 3-days LA Pass earlier online, we headed to make a booking for The Hollywood Movie Star Homes Tour later in the afternoon. Then we headed to the Egyptian Theater where our first itinerary of the day begins - Hollywood Behind-the-Scenes Tour.
Hollywood Behind-the-Scenes Tour is a short 1-hour walking tour that gives us an overview of LA. Also, the tour points out important landmarks and tells a little history of LA, which all of us agreed that this would be a good start to our trip in LA.
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| Egyptian Theatre where celebrities were called "Stars" were introduced for the first time in the world |
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| The Pretty Woman building where Richard Gere brings his limousine and climb the stairs up to Julia Robert's apartment at the ending |
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| The place where Hollywood Walk of Fame first begin |
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| Hollywood & Highland Center |
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| HOLLYWOOD sign |
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| Dolby Theater, where the Oscars were held every year |
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| inside Dolby Theater, where the celebrities graced the stairs each year during Oscars |
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| Chinese Theater |
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| Handprints / Footprints in the Chinese theater |
We had a quick lunch of pizzas and then headed off to The Hollywood Movie Star Homes Tour that we have booked earlier.
The tour started with bringing us to a high rise area for a view of LA skylines and Hollywood sign.
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| LA skyline |
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| Can you spot the HOLLYWOOD sign? |
Then the movie stars' homes tour begin. The tour was a disappointment to us as we realised that the tour does drive us around to see celebrities' homes, but we only see their front gate and fences. LOL Most of their mansions are covered by high fences / hedges that it was impossible to glimpsed at their pretty mansions. So it's practically just driving around the neighbourhood in a big bus. My advice to those going to LA, skip this tour! Waste of time!
Furthermore, we were suddenly hit by jetlag at this hour. We were trying very hard to open our eyes, but all four of us ended up sleeping on and off throughout the 3 hours tour.
The tour however does bring us drive pass Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Tower Records etc.
The good news after the tour was we had our power naps and was off from jetlag again. We were energetic and ready to continue explore Hollywood again! LOL
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| Random interjunction in Hollywood |
We continued to walk around, and set off looking for Ellen Degeneres' star. It was quite a long walk from where we were.
After that we headed off looking for dinner and decided to try Hooters! Yeaps, four girls walking into Hooters restaurant to look at pretty girls. LOL
The restaurant was quite full and we were seated in the corner. We had difficulty calling the waitress that served us. I think being all girls might be one of the reason she wasn't so attentive as well. We waited for almost 1 hour for our food, and we left with a bad experience.
Then, we had a short walk around Hollywood at night and then headed home to rest for the day.
Day 3
It's Universal Studios Day! We took an Uber ride and get our tickets by showing our LA Pass at the counter.
Being kiasu Malaysians, we've read the list of MUST TRY rides, and even researched which ride to queue up first. LOL Once the park was open, we headed (or should I say, RAN FOR OUR LIVES because everyone else was also running) to queue for Studio Tour. Our hardwork paid off as we managed to be the first batch for the ride. If we missed it, we have to wait for 45 minutes in the queue for the next batch.
In that ride, there's only one word to describe it - WOW!
Not only did we get to see the real sets used to film Hollywood movies, we get to experience flood, earthquake, jaws attack, experience being in Fast &Furious, King Kong and many more!
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| Flood experience |
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| Before earthquake in an underground station |
Of course, being a Potterhead, right after Studio Tour, we headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The beautiful village of Hogsmeade came into life.
And also Hogwarts! Love the ride 'Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey' located inside this castle.
The little touches in the village was so impressive. Like if you purchase the wands from the gift shop, you can actually perform magic in that world. Just flick your wand and say the spell following the instructions on the pavements, the items / things will react to it. For example, just 'Swish and Flick' your wand while saying 'Wingardeum Leviosa' and the cakes and cookies on the window display will fly! So MAGICAL!
We were also very lucky that September was consider off-peak season, so we only queued for an average 10-20 minutes for each ride. We managed to play almost all the rides in the park, including the new attraction - The Walking Dead!
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| Priority pass because the ride shut down for maintenance while we were queuing halfway |
A few more rides worth mentioning was Revenge of the Mummy Ride, Jurassic Park & Transformers. Please put priority for these rides as well if you were to visit Universal Studios Hollywood.
We had a fun time the whole day feeling like a kid all over again. The rides in Universal Studios Hollywood were really cool and high tech and never fail to make you go WOW!! And being off-peak season, we also managed to take photos with some characters without queuing for a long time.
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| Robert "Bob" Terwilliger from The Simpsons |
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| Evil Minion from Despicable Me |
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| Margo, Edith & Agnes Gru from Despicable Me |
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| Scooby Doo & The Mystery Machine Van |
We left the theme park only after it was close as we stayed behind taking photos of the beautiful props.
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| Moulin Rouge Theater in French Street |
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| Krustyland |
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| Random vehicle props |
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| Hogwarts Express |
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| Random crooked building in Hogsmeade |
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| Another photo with Hogwarts Castle |
We took an Uber back to Hollywood and had dinner nearby before we walked home to our Airbnb apartment. Then we met up with our high school friend, Jade who is currently based in LA was so kind to meet up with us in the evening. We headed to a yummy bubble milk tea place called BOBA.
We havent met in a loooooooong time, so we had fun catching up with each other and of course we talked about our plans in LA. She was furious that there's still lots of places in LA that we haven't visited because of lack of time, and was very kind to offer to drive us to LACMA.
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| CPTarians reunited in LA |
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| Urban Lights outside LACMA |
Then Jade drove us around downtown and showing us the beautiful bridges, Asian towns, and skyscrapers in LA before dropping us off in our apartment. Thanks Jade!!!
Day 4
Another exciting day in LA!! We headed to Warner Bros Studio Tour which we've book under our LA Pass using Uber ride.
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| At the entrance, we were greeted by a poster of our favourite comedy series - The Big Bang Theory |
It's very different from the Studio Tour in Universal Studios Hollywood. We had fun and gained so much knowledge about movie/film making from this 3-hours tour.
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| The famous Warner Bros water tank |
The tour was very interactive as we get to come down and go inside the buildings and touched the real props. Also, lots of credits to the tour guide for keeping us entertained the whole time!
Fun fact: We learned that Hollywood uses potatoes and paint them white to act as snow!
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| Like the windows and curtains on this building are actually painted, but looks very real through the camera lens |
The tour guide remembers which building were in which movie in which year. This was how good he was!
When we were there, we get to witness from far a filming of a movie. One of the street were blocked as real actors and actresses were filming a scene. Cooooooool!!
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| Random fake building |
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| The bricks on the building were not real bricks |
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| Random fake street |
There's this building that has superhero exhibition where it features the costumes / props used in superhero movies. Some of the comic books inside the glasses worth $1million as they are the original 1st edition.
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| Surrounded by comic books worth millions |
We even get to visit a few sound stages. One of them were an active sound stage of the series 'Pretty Little Liars' (PLL). Too bad no photography were allowed inside, plus I didnt watch PLL, thus I'm not a big fan.
One of the last building we visited were the storeroom for props. It was so damn huge. Reminds me of Ikea but an even better version because everything from every generation / era can be found there.
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| Random decos |
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| The Oval office |
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| Iron Throne used in Conan's Game of Thrones Skit |
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| Phone from every generation ever |
There's a room where it features all the Batmobiles used in all Batman movies.
We even managed to join a taping of a short skit in the original Sound Stage of FRIENDS. And yeaps, sat on that very same sofa!
After the WB tour, we asked around and found out there's a nice place for food nearby called Dog Haus. We had our lunch there since it was on the way to our next destination.
After lunch, we headed to our highlight of the day - The Ellen Degeneres Show Taping!
I've blogged about my experience in full details in
THIS POST. Click away!
After the Ellen taping, we decided to call it a day as we need to head back early to pack our luggages. It was a day very well spent indeed!
Day 5
After a simple breakfast to clear all our food stock in our Airbnb apartment, we took an Uber ride and headed to LAX Luggage Storage nearby the airport. We parked our luggage and headed off to Santa Monica Beach via Uber. We walked to Santa Monica Pier and had our lunch from the local hotdog stall.
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| White sandy beach on a hot summer day |
Then, we headed to a the shopping district and walked a little.
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| The Cheesecake Factory! |
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| Apple Store |
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| Random interjunction |
We were not in a mood for shopping so we decided to take Jade's advice given to us yesterday and walked along the beach towards Venice Beach. A loooooooooong walk under the hot sun, but worth it as the view along the beach was so lovely. Clear blue sky. Palm trees. Confirm in LA!
By the time we reach Venice Beach, it was almost time for us head back to collect our luggage and head towards the airport. We had to leave slightly earlier to avoid the LA traffic and expensive Uber ride during the peak hours!
We then had our dinner in the airport and then meet up with the tour group we are joining for the next part of our trip - San Francisco!
The tour started with bringing us to a high rise area for a view of LA skylines and Hollywood sign.
1 comment:
Excellent diary SM! i Havent visited LA but will make use your youthful experience, oviously a lot of research has gone in, thank goodness for the WWW. HP
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