Day 1- Melbourne to USA 13 April 2017

What a big day! We made it to H.o.l.l.y.w.o.o.d!
We shuttled in yesterday to the airport & stayed at the Parkroyal hotel. Went over to PJ O'Briens the Irish pub for our traditional 'last supper pint and dinner'. Then up at 6am & over to check in for our flight. Thought we would try Qantas this time and all was going well until they call our name in the lounge right at boarding time - never a good thing! They said Graemes and my seats in bus.class had no entertainment systems, so would we mind flying the 14 1/2 hrs without them...ah yes! Apparently the plane was pretty full but they offered us 2 seats together elsewhere- except ones seat recline is broken so its jammed in the upright position. Do we mind, ah yes! lol, was a bit of a comedy of errors really, we ended up being separated for the first bit, then together in the broken seat. The A380 was surprisingly tired in the cabin, one of our tv's kept jamming & they ended up putting a plastic crate under the foot of one of our seats cos it kept falling on the ground. It was murphys law & that irish blood again haha but certainly not value for money this time.

Anyway, staff were nice & we landed fine at 6am, thru finger printing & border control no worries, despite so many planes in at the same time.  Finally found our shuttle & into Hollywood. The hotel we are staying in is about 100mtrs from the walk of fame, dolby theatre, the chinese theatre & a big shiny shopping mall. Thanks trip advisor - my best planning partner.
Great to have a whole apartment for the 3 of us while Danni is here. Really friendly staff who let us in early after wandering around for a couple of hours - accidentally finding the viewing area for the Hollwoood sign amongst all the rest Hollywood has to offer.

Mickey & Mickey

 Twilight movie stars footprints

My beloved Patrick Swayze

Danni showing what she thinks of Mr Trump- he is the hot topic of her uni politics classes too often!!

Later we went to a crepery - the food here is so fresh! Sussed out the tax and tipping, wandered round and got some shirts for the baseball game tomorrow night for the LA Dodgers, then came back &  had a 3 hour kip as we have been up 24 hours.

Got up later & went for a walk around again, got our bearings, then Graeme and I got ready to go out to a concert tonight - what a day lol! We went to Johnny Rockets diner for dinner, complete with sit up counter. Had our first american burgers- double meat patties double cheese, grease & shameful to say - absolutely delicious. The patties we so fresh and tender, put our burger joints to shame back home.

Graeme and I caught the metro to the Walt Disney Concert Hall - $8 return instead of $80 for a cab! Easy as & very similar to Melbournes metro. Had an icelandic beer to get in the mood for Sigur Ros who are on their opening night - playing with the philharmonic orchestra. Their conductor is also Icelandic. It was pretty surreal - especially when you had been up for as long as we had haha! They had a choir, then the orchestra with 2 conductors, then the orchestra with Sigur Ros then the band alone. Far out - are there any other words for surreal? Their music is very unusual, emotive and primal - it crescendoed into the last song that assaulted all the senses - it was like salt & vinegar, lemon and sugar, bright light strobes in the darkness all at the same time. Very cool and actually worth the scalping price you had to pay for tickets at the sold out concert.

Rode the subway home at midnight - some very weird & wonderful (or not so) characters around. Felt like the ghost that found Patrick Swayze in the movie 'Ghost', was going to come whizzing through the carriages, the sounds of the fast train were exactly the same as in the movie! Saw Pretty woman walking out on Wiltshire Boulevard, except it turned out to be pretty man at about 6" 3 lol.