002 - tue 02/05/2006 - los angeles

we woke up early determined to get away from hollywood boulevard, and prove to ourselves what we knew must be true, that there are better parts of los angeles to spend the day. we jumped on a bus which took us south to a place on the map which was called the farmers market, i guess we didn't know what to expect. farmers market turned out to be a shopping centre, relatively upmarket, and relatively small, but it was still fun to walk around briefly. an israeli saleswoman tried to sell us this magic nail buffer thing, she was great and had one of the weirdest most roundabout accents i'd heard. she blurred sentences a little too. she was like vicki pollard as a kind israeli saleswoman.

we headed further south to a part on the map where there was a concentration of museums. we skipped the ones that weren't free and ended up at the la brea tar pits. basically, in the middle of los angeles there is a pond, covered in kind of oil and tar, where they've unearthed thousands and thousands of fossils. there's a museum there (kind of boring but free on tuesdays) to commemmorate all the fallen animals of past eras. basically, the tar pits was a death-trap for thousands of years, where animals would try to drink water, get stuck in the tar, and then get slaughtered by other, meaner animals. at least thats what the dodgy introductory film taught us.

from the stinky pits we caught the bus down to rodeo drive, and the surrounding areas, streets lined with designer and boutique stores. expensive area. we stopped for lunch at a place called brightons, i had an awesome burger, and a good coffee. we then decided to head up to sunset strip, which turned out to be uphill. we walked for a while down the strip, marvelling at the amount of billboards. before catching the bus back to the hostel, we stopped at a supermarket for supplies. we were procrastinating about what kind of cheese to get, when this guy behind us got a little frustrated that we were walking slowly down the aisle, and kind of comically yelled out 'woooah!' he had a pink t-shirt on, spiky hair and sunglasses on (inside). if i was writing a sitcom about a pushy, burnt-out mid-thirties tv producer from LA, it would be this guy.

at the hostel there were some instructions on how to walk to a place where we could get a good view of the hollywood sign. it looked like we'd have to climb a couple of hills, but we were up for it, and it was late afternoon so we figured it was now or never. what we didn't realise was that the instructions led us basically directly up the side of a hill - you know those great rolling californian los angeles hills - basically we walked out onto the freeway, and then directly up the side of a couple of really tall, steep hills, on a barely there dirt track that was falling out underneath us. coming down was harder than going up. and it wasn't worth it - it was smoggy at the top, and we ended up seeing a better view of the sign a few days later, from ground level, driving around in a shuttle bus. when we got down from the hill, a haggard local offered to walk us home. he told us some cute local facts - did you know mel gibson lives over that hill, and that he built his own chapel there? - and thankfully left us alone just as we were both starting to think 'what exactly does this guy want?'.

we got back to the hostel as the sun was coming down. the hostel's bar was open, it was open mic night. we grabbed some cheap beers from the bar, went out on to the front courtyard for more chatting with marco the swiss guy.

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