Not Before Time

We’re now back in Los Angeles staying in a hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, right next door to Beverley Hills.  The weather is back to being beautiful, and very warm.

Our first night back we had dinner with Carey, whom we also met at Tuscan Women Cook.  Carey took us to a great restaurant where we ate really good food, drank a few glasses of wine and talked a lot!

Wednesday we went on a tour to Universal Studios which was a lot of fun.  I think it’s more for big kids than little kids, and we big kids went on all of the rides.  First off we went on the studio tour which takes you  to the back lot of the studios where you can see sets from old movies and television shows – the motel, car and house from Psycho, the set of the town of Amity where Jaws was filmed, the plane crash from War of the Worlds, the lake where the TV show McHales Navy (remember that?) was filmed, sets of old western towns where films starring John Wayne amongst others were made, and heaps more. 

After the tour we started on the rides – Terminator 2, Back to the Future, Return of the Mummy, Jurassic Park.  These were all really well done and again, lots of fun.  Then there were the special effects presentation, the Backdraft presentation, the Shrek 4D movie (very good) and the Waterworld presentation – a live show on water which was also very good.  A great day. 

That night we were tired so decided to get some take away and veg out in front of the TV – something we haven’t done for ages.  Well, at home we have 5 channels of crap for David to channel surf through – here he can surf through 70 plus channels of pretty much the same sort of crap.  What fun!

Thursday we spent checking out the shops in Beverley Hills, catching up with washing and laying out by the pool, nothing too exciting but very pleasant.  Thursday night we went out to dinner with Carey again – we went to AOC an upmarket tapas style restaurant in Beverley Hills which has fantastic food – washed down with a terrific Australian red.  A great ending to our stay in LA.

Tomorrow we fly home! 

We have had a wonderful week in Vegas.  We stayed 5 nights with Nelda (from Tuscan Women Cook) and her husband Jeff and we had a fantastic time with them.  We did a lot of cooking, eating and drinking, met some of their friends, went shopping and generally relaxed and had a great time.  We also caught up with Tennessee (also from Tuscan Women Cook) and her husband John.  It was really good seeing them again.

When we left Nelda and Jeff’s, we stayed 4 nights at the MGM Grand and spent most of the time walking the strip, playing the pokies, watching the really serious players on the craps tables and seeing some shows. We didn’t win anything but it was fun.

It was very overcast when we left Vegas on Tuesday morning, and about half an hour outside of Vegas it started pouring down and  it lasted all the way to LA!    It’s funny seeing it rain in the desert – it doesn’t seem right.

This is part 1 because we are only here for a couple of days before we head off to Las Vegas, but we will be returning for a few days before we fly home.

We got into LA on Friday afternoon and picked up our hire car.  The traffic is really busy and  I’ve never seen so many SUV’s and ute’s on the road as here – it seems like everyone drives them.  We’ve also visited RV dealerships checking out fifth wheel rigs (think caravans with attitude!)  This is RV dealership world – there are so many of them.  It’s obviously a huge market over here and there are some good deals to be made.

We are now on the way to Vegas where we will be meeting up with Nelda and Tennessee  (whom we met in Tuscany) and their families which we are really looking forward to.

 More on LA later.

This week has just flown by!  We have had a fantastic week in New York, staying with Evelyn (whom we met in Tuscany) and her partner Eric in their gorgeous home in New Jersey.  It was the labour day long weekend in the US when we arrived so we got to spend 3 whole days with Eric and Evelyn before they went back to work, and the other days we caught the train into NYC where we did all the tourist stuff -carriage ride around central park,  the empire state building, statue of liberty, Ellis Island, the Staten Island Ferry, lots of walking, eating hot dogs from street vendors, and pastrami and roast beef sandwiches from a typical NY deli.  The weather has been just  brilliant this week – lots of sunny days and very little humidity which everyone kept telling us was very unusual for this time of year.  Contrary to what is generally said about them, New Yorkers are really nice, friendly people.  We were made to feel very welcome wherever we went.  NYC is a great place for a holiday.

The last week in Europe was spent just north of Paris near Chantilly.  This is a really lovely part of France and we used the time to just veg out.

We were originally scheduled to fly from Paris to London where we were to spend 4 days or so before heading off to the US, but we decided to change this so we could fly direct from Paris to NY, so we had some running around to do to change flights and we sent some stuff home, but apart from that we really just relaxed, cooked, did a fair bit of walking visiting chateaux etc and had a really nice time.  We stayed in a caravan park which is situated in the middle of a forest and it was really quiet and peaceful.  We stayed in a bungalow which was more like a little chalet, very cute.

Next stop NYC!