After a well needed sleep we were up and off on our first full day of LA. This was the first day of driving a left hand drive car and what better way to start than 6 lane freeways!
We weren’t far from Norms Rare Guitars, a guitar shop made famous by youtube but a staple purchasing shop for a lot of greats ( Joe Bonamassa is a frequent visitor ). The shop was loaded with a lot of guitars, and we were told heaps weren’t on display due to repairs to the shop but it was still ALOT.
After a bit of drooling we headed off to Griffith Observatory / the Holywood sign. It was definately a lot busier on the roads in the weekend, but nothing preps you for a big road trip more than LA traffic.
The views were just spectacular, although it was also immensly hot, 31ºC.
On our way back down to Holywood we ended up driving past Mullholland Drive, did the worlds most useless u-turn and off we went. Nice windy roads and we ended up with a much better view of the Hollywood sign, as well as parking by a sweet Corvette.
As we soon realised, LA is massive and everything is usually 30mins from everything else. So a good bit of the day was spent driving on Interstates and sitting in traffic. Once we got out of the random streets Google Maps kept putting us on we were fine, sometimes it is just not worth trusting that lady’s voice on Google Maps. Arrived in Hollywood Boulevard, found a park and went for a stroll down the walk of fame.
After a feed at The Pig and Whistle on Hollywood Boulevard, went for a drive for most of the length down Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills. That place is definately the rich part of the city because they were the only ones with grass that was still green in a drought.
A novelty that wore of fast was cool american cars. Almost every 3rd car is a mustang or a charger. We ended up at Santa Monica again so Paul could go on the on the ferris wheel, which isn’t usually my jam but the view was admittently awesome ( including the worlds most rediculous police car! ).
We swapped seats and headed back towards Hollywood. The guy at Norms suggested we go to Rainbow “if we were music guys”. This place is ‘the’ place that all the great old bands use to go post gig back in the day, but now only hosts some washed up rock stars. The food was great and as expected, unnecessarily big.
Last stop for the day was a huge old record/music shop called Amoeba. This place was, you guessed it, massive. The trend of things in the USA seems to be building pretty quickly. I didn’t end up getting anything, 1 because they didn’t have much I wanted and 2 because even if I did, the heat in our black rental car would render the vinyl pretty damn warped.
Signing of our second day in LA and prepping for the trip to Vegas tomorrow!
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