After a good night's sleep, we set out to continue our exploration of the neighbourhood, now with the security of daylight. Incidentally, the area of LA that our hostel is in, is called Inglewood. At the time, this meant nothing to us, but over the next few months, we heard more and more about it...Inglewood is the notorious dodgy area of LA. Many films, including Pulp Fiction, use it as the home town of tough guys and hardened criminals. Oh well...at least we didn't know that at the time! But even though we noticed a number of 'dodgy characters' we didn't have any problems, generally everyone was really nice to us.

In the afternoon, we hopped on a bus to the famous Hollywood Boulevard, armed with bags for souvenirs and cameras for memories. Now, after years of being a big film fan, I was really looking forward to seeing this worldwide icon of movies and cinema. Unfortunately, it was little bit of a disappointment. We wandered down the famous boulevard looking at the stars (on the street), the symbols of everything Hollywood, and took a few photos of our personal favourites. Unfortunately the whole street was really dirty, and there were building works everywhere, obscuring half the stars, which kind of ruined the feeling. Would it really be that difficult to keep this world famous street clean and clear?

With my Rough Guide in hand, my eyes were drawn to a review of the Lingerie Museum...(what's wrong with that?). When I told the others, we eagerly began our hunt for this (free) attraction, however, we couldn't find it (shucks!). So we continued walking down the rest of the Boulevard. The only other sight of interest was the famous 'Chinese Theatre' where loads of film premieres are shown. After a few photos, we moved on to find some other Hollywood attractions.

Of course, we couldn't come all this way without taking a look at the famous, big, white Hollywood sign, or at least trying to have a look. We wandered around for a while, trying to us the bad map I had, to get a glimpse of the six-feet high letters. However, we had no luck at all. After an hour of marching up and down hills, we soon resigned ourselves to just being able to see 'HOLLYW' faintly in the distance. Oh well. The only way to get closer seemed to be at the other end of the Boulevard, far too far away. We turned round to head back to the bus station to notice a tall building with a great, big, inflatable, pink pig on the top. After a few photos of this interesting sight, we moved on.

Back on the bus to Inglewood, we started chatting to a lady (who heard us speaking some 'quaint' English phrases. She was really excited to hear about our travelling plans. Once we'd exhausted our stories, she thought for moment, then invited us to be in the audience for the next episode of 'Hollywood Squares'. Wow! This is a top Californian TV program and we had a chance to see a live. She scribbled her details down on the back of a business card and left us at the next stop.

Excitedly, I tried phoning her the next day, but I couldn't get the number to work. Darn it! Oh well.

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing in the amazing swimming pool and lounging around enjoying the relaxed atmosphere. Wow! We're actually on our gap year travels! No work, no responsibilities, no nothing. Just complete freedom! Ahhhhh, this is the life!

The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we jumped on the free bus (provided by the hostel) to of California's famous beaches, Venice Beach.

The bus dropped us off at a quiet road near the beach, then we all dashed off eagerly to see our first, hopefully of many, golden, sun-kissed beaches. We weren't disappointed! Eagerly we touched the golden sand (we live next to a not-so-lovely stony beach in England) and stared around in awe at the scene before us. A lovely, quiet beach, lined with huge tropical palm trees, splashing blue waves and Californian beach life unfolding slowly around us.

After we'd had our fill of the sand, we wandered over to the beach promenade, a hive of activity, quite a contrast to the quiet beach. Although quite hot for us British folk, it wasn't good enough for lazing on the beach, so the crowds mulled around on the concrete path. The crowd moved chaotically along a long line of stalls selling all sorts of bits & pieces, including beachwear, art and henna tattoos. We took a wander along all the stalls and were amazed at some of the strange trinkets and...um...surfy type things being sold. There was also more than enough places to snack and replenish your energy to continue shopping.

After we'd walked up and down the promenade, we decided to let one persistent vendor give us Henna tattoos, he seemed to be offering a good price and he seemed to be quite popular with other punters. After spending ages flicking through his catalogues and umming & ahhing, Stinge and I finally decided on having 'FIRE MONKEY' in Chinese symbols put on our arms. (It's a long story what a Fire Monkey is, suffice to say it's means something to my friends. If you want to know more about the origins of the Fire Monkeys, then mail me and I'll gladly explain). Em chose a funky flower and Nat got a quality gecko design. About an hour later, we were all proudly sporting our Henna tattoos.

At the far end of the beach, we found a packed basketball court, and it looked just like it does in the movies. A big group of rough type street kids (and some looking a good deal older) were dashing around on court, playing a serious game of ball. They were all dressed in the traditional gear of chunky jewellery, big baggy trousers half-way down their butts, with their designer boxer shorts proudly showing. It really was just as I imagined it. The all seemed to play really well, and a small crowd had built up around them. Every so often, the crowd let out a quiet cheer, not quite sure whether it was ok to cheer the hard-looking guys.

As the bus didn't come for another hour or so, we continued wandering around the housing estates near the beach, trying to have a good look at LA life. The streets were quiet, with a few 'greasy spoon' cafes around. We also found some pretty amazing graffiti art on the sides of the buildings. A few months later, we saw the same pictures on TV! Woot! 'We've been there!' we shouted in chorus when we saw it the second time.

We went to the pickup point about 15 minutes early, and then soon wished we hadn't. On the opposite side of the road was a small car-park with a guy working there, trying his best to coerce people to enter the carpark. He'd wander out into the road, do an annoying whistle, wave his flag, hold up a sign saying '$5 parking' then wave the car into the carpark. Obviously, most people just ignored him, and drove past. It seemed to work enough though, because every time there was an empty space, he'd soon find a vehicle to fill it. The annoying part, was his whistle. He whistled exactly the same way, an irritating two-tone pitch, at about 4 second intervals. However, we soon grew to find the whistle funny, and started imitating him. He seemed to ignore us though, this must happened a lot. The whistle quickly became one of our ever-lasting memories of LA. I took the photo to prove it.

When we got back to the hostel, we quickly packed away all the last bits and got ready to leave for our next destination. We really liked LA, and it took quite a lot of will power to move on. But as we have to return here later (our flight to New Zealand is from LA) we can always enjoy it when we come back. All packed and ready, we left for the train station with, what we though, would be plenty of time to spare. The journey there, though, turned out to be quite an epic...

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