Monday 18 January 2010
Highlights: Universal Studios in the Rain, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Mann’s Chinese Theatre

The LAN flight turned out to be very good; they have a large selection of music which I enjoyed listening too. On arrival into LA we saw heavily rain and I was concerned about our planned trip to Universal Studios.

The Hertz Car Rental turned out to be very expensive, about double the quote once they had in compulsory fees and insurance, this is very common in USA and I was expecting a big increase but not double!

Thanks to the GPS and Andrew I managed to get our car to Universal Studios. Due to this being a Monday, it raining and it not being school holidays we didn’t pay for the front of the line privileges at good decision in the end. First up we went on the Simpson’s ride – very funny and enjoyable, afterwards we got a photo in front of the Kwik-E-Mart. The studio tour was good especially the Desperate Housewives set and the ‘earthquake’ tunnel. Despite the rain we managed to also see the Terminator show (great), Shrek 4D (very good), and The House of Horrors (good).

Luckily the rain stopped long enough to also watch a live action performance of WaterWorld. Because of the rain Universal put on hot chocolate and a movie to watch inside, good thinking by the company.

We left around 4 pm very tired due to the overnight flight and found our hotel. We received an upgrade to King beds in separate rooms – Andrew looked like he was in heaven. The hotel was very close to the Walk of Fame and Mann’s Chinese Theatre which we then visited. I got a photo with WWE Vince McMahon’s plague; Andrew went with the Victoria Secret star 🙂

The night finished with a dinner at a diner with huge servings and I spent a few hours burning DVDs of photos from the recent trip to give to our good friend Karen who we are picking up tomorrow for a day of shopping and sighting before we all leave LA.