Rewind to Los Angeles

We stormed back from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, covering loads of miles in a couple of days. Our motel in Flagstaff had a jacuzzi, which was something of a first!

Finding somewhere cheap (and wholesome) in LA to stay was a little tricky. In the end we opted for the Motel 6 in Hollywood, which was within walking distance of all the sights and not too expensive. It even had free valet parking (which merely served to run down our car's battery - great!).

Hollywood: of course, we strolled along the Walk of Fame, where all the stars' stars are, and visited the Chinese Theatre where the hand prints in the conrete are, as well as the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars now take place. We drove up into the hills to get a good view of the famous sign. Surprisingly, Hollywood is a pretty grim place - no celebs actually live there, and it's a bit unsavoury after dark.

Much much nicer is Beverly Hills - we drove out and walked along Rodeo Drive, by far the swankiest place we've been to yet. Every imaginable fashion boutique is there, all of which way out of our price range :-).

Somehow or other we managed to get free tickets for the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, who is essentially an inferior version of Conan O'Brien, but on CBS. Guest star was Eva Mendes, which was pretty cool, but his jokes just weren't as good! We were able to watch the same programme on TV that night, but none of us made it on screen :-(.

We spent the next day at the Getty Center - more art, very swish. I liked the illuminated manuscripts (not entirely popular with Katherine and Andy). After a few hours there we dropped Andy off at LAX and drove out to our new, budget-er hostel...

... Which turned out to be rather nice. The place has a swimming pool, as well as free muffins for breakfast, coffee and biscuits for lunch and glasses of champagne, cake and pasta in the evenings. Plus lots of cute little kittens wandering the grounds. All in all probably the nicest hostel we've been to, and good VFM.

The hostel offered a daily shuttle bus to Venice Beach, which we took the next day. It was a bit too cold to swim, but we found plenty to entertain us...

What happens next is so ludicrously funny that it probably deserves its own entry. See above.