Johnson Family VaCay! LOHT Part 2!

Hey guys! How y'all doing? I hope everyone's having a great weekend so far, I've sure had an extremely busy one! But thankfully today has been all about resting.

I like this thing I've started doing where I say I'd post something soon and voila! Just like magic, a post actually goes up the next day! This is both good and bad though, it's good because the Wifi at my new office hasn't yet blocked websites like blogger and so I can blog and upload pictures and all that fun stuff on my laptop at work... But it's bad because if I ever get caught out by any of my boss' I'd have a lot of explaining to do, especially as I just returned from a nice vacation!

Anyhow, where did I leave of in the tour of L.A. Ah yes... The Walk of Fame... Oh incase you missed it Part 1 of this post can be found here Johnson Family VayCay: Legends of Hollywood Tour.

There are a heck of a lot of stars on both sides of the road famously known as the Hollywood Walk of Fame, like A LOT. So many that in the 30 minutes we were given to roam around the area I didn't even find some of my faves! I found a good few though but I wouldn't put them ALL up, that would be torture! Lol.

This picture of my brother posing as Kermit the Frog is one of my faves, we searched everywhere for a straw or anything similar he could hold but alas we had to use our imagination! Lol.

During our stroll around town we also passed the Chinese Theatre were all the famous hand and footprints are, it was actually a lot of fun going "OMG, Johnny Depp's feet are huge! Look how tiny Mariyln's hands were" etc. I never really took myself as a starstruck person, heck half the time I don't recognise people off screen and I rarely remember their names. For instance, Jason Derulo was on my flight from London to LA, I must have walked right by him thrice but it wasn't till my brother pointed it out AFTER we arrived that I realised. I was just in my own world thinking "What's wrong with black people" because he was wearing his sunglasses inside the lounge. I suppose it makes sense now. Wait what was I saying? Oh yea, so I'm not usually starstruck but it was pretty amazing to be right where all these amazingly famous people once stood and put their hands and feet into cement.

I've never seen the movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" but I really want to now!

And of course, speaking of being starstruck, Dolby Theatre where the Academy Awards takes place is literally just next door. It's like a whole street of celeb DNA! Lol.

Before we hopped back on the bus to go to see the lovely houses and go celeb spotting in Beverly Hills, we stopped for a cheeky family selfie. As you do.

I honestly wish I could remember whose house is which right now but honestly they all looked the same! Tall gates and high green hedges to keep nosey pokers like myself OUT! Haha. The great thing about this tour though was that because of the multimedia in the car, we got to see photos of inside the compound, the backyard and sometimes a really gorgeous aerial view of the entire estate. They really were more of estates than houses, let's be honest. This is another reaosn to go on the "Legends of Hollywood Tour" if you're ever looking to hop on a tour bus in L.A. Most other tours would just drive you past the houses and point them out... Looking at tall green hedges loses it's novelty.. FAST!

I remember we passed Madonna's home, the Royal Family's home in L.A., the home where Michael Jackson took his last breath, Simon Cowell's home and even Al Pacino's home too! Here's a couple of half decent shots I managed to score.

Al Pacino's L.A home

At the end of the 4 hour tour after all the ooh-ing and aah-ing were done, we stopped to have lunch at the Farmer's Market and I tried a corn dog for the first time. To summarise the experience in only one word? OILY!! But what was I expecting from a deep fried snack ey?

I'm really struggling to decide whether to squeeze this last little bit of Day 1 in Los Angeles into this post or save it for another... It's just a short little bit on what we did after the tour and some prett pictures, I'm not sure it deserves a post on it's own! Yeah... I'd add it here... YOLO.

After we got back from the tour everyone was a little bit tired but ready to get their skates on again, this was our only full day in LA! The more I think about it the more upset I get, haha. Our "second" stop for the day was the Santa Monica Pier and Third Street Promenade for a little spot of shopping to make me feel better. Lol. The views from the pier were really amazing and I contemplated in my mind staying to watch the sun set while listening to the beautiful and not-so-lovely voices of the street musicians but to be honest, the shops were pulling me WAY stronger than the sun and waves ever could.

I hope everyone's having a beautiful day today.

Johnson Family Vacay: Legends of Hollywood Tour

So this is like the third blog post I'm writing today, I'm on a ROLL! Haha. However, I've learnt that where my topsy-turvy life is concerned I should always space out my blog posts. Who knows when I'm going to be on a roll like this again. This particular roll is mainly because right now I'm in the middle of a desert somewhere in the world. Doesn't sound very luxurious does it? Lol. Well what if that desert was Palm Springs, California?? Can I get a whoop whoop! Haha. By the time this post goes up i'd probably be on my way back to London and then Lagos but for now I'm revelling in the tranquility that only holidays can bring.

Before I hop, skip and jump to my adventures in Palm Springs though, let me backtrack to a few days ago when I was in Los Angeles, the City of Angels! You see, it's been about 5 years since I last went on holiday with my family not counting Antalya, Turkey which was for my mum's birthday last year. So my parents kind of felt it was high time we did something fun together, make some memories before we really get too old for these holidays, even though to me there's no such thing as being "too old" for an all expense paid trip but hey... that's just me right?

The first night in LA was spent resting and getting over the long flight from London. BIG mistake seeing as we only had 2 days there! By the time we woke up the next morning and realised our error it was almost too late! My dad and I thought it best that we take one of those tours of the area that highlights all the best parts of it and our very helpful concierge Tym, whose name I only remember because he was cute, recommended a pretty awesome one for us and booked it in the middle of the night! Haha. Thanks Tym! It was called "The Legends of Hollywood Tour" and out tour guide was a brilliant guy called Mick, I just happen to remember his name though, can't say he was very cute. :D 

It was during this tour that I realised that my actual camera memory card was laying on my bedside table all the way in Lagos, Nigeria. I had taken it out to edit pictures and then classically forgotten it right before my holiday! Pained is the understatement of month, I ended up having to lug it around all day unable to use it, thankfully my iPhone 5 was feeling slightly up to the challenge, I have literally thousands of pictures to share but I'm going to try my best to be concise so I don't bore you guys! Sadly though, because we were on a driving tour it does mean that I missed the amazing initial picture of the Staples Center home of the NBA L.A Lakers! Nevermind though, I have some other pictures to share...

The Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the lifts of this hotel are on the outside of the building and they seem to move quite fast! I think this is the largest hotel in the city and certainly one of the oldest too. Isn't it just so huge?

Next stop and the building I was most excited to see was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the LA Philharmonic. Don't get me wrong I love a great show as much as the next person but it's the architecture of the building that gets me every single time. It's simultaneously weird and beautiful and apparently the backdrop for many many wedding photos. Can you blame them? 

The Los Angeles City Hall. I just really liked the shape of this one so I took a picture, it's so symmetrical...

Bob's Market... Now this place is still fully functioning but it's best known for being "Toretto's" in the Fast and Furious movies. RIP Paul Walker.

There's a whole row of very pretty Victorian houses and somewhere on this street lays this slightly run down one but don't think it's just another house, this is the house where MJ shot his world-famous Thriller video! There's something so amazing about being so close to were the King of Pop spent countless hours filming for his video.

 

A rather lopsided picture of the MJ Thriller house!

The iconic Capitol Records which was built to look like a stack of records!

You can see the inside of the car in this picture, lol. My bad!

The Hollywood sign! Need I say more? To be fair we were fairly far away from it, this was one of the moments I really wished my camera was working because this picture's a bit grainy from the zoom.

Las Palmas Hotel... This three storey building was one of my FAVES of the whole tour... It's not much to look at really until you realise this is the hotel from the final scene in "Pretty Woman" where Richard Gere comes dashing out of his limousine with some flowers and an umbrella and runs up the fire escape to meet a gorgeous Julia Roberts! I think I'm partial to this because really, Pretty Woman is one of my favourite old school movies of all times, probably second only to Dirty Dancing (NOT Havana Nights).

We also passed the shop on Rodeo Drive "Badgley Mischka", where Julia Roberts isn't attended to in the movie because she doesn't "walk the walk" and "talk the talk". She even has to ask for the price of some items and everyone knows "If you have to ask then..."

I foresee a VERY long post if I try and fit the entire tour into one post but I would definitely say that if you ever want to do a tour in LA, go for the Legends of Hollywood if you can, it's a really small privately owned company and you go around in a nice Mercedes which can only take a maximum of 12 so it would be nice and intimate. They also have multimedia screen so you don't just get facts and information about the place, you get to see scenes from the movies and hear clips from the songs being talked about. You might even be lucky like us and get the whole mini van to yourselves!

Never fear guys, more on the tour and the rest of Day 1 in L.A. coming real soon! Like as soon as I'm done putting up the pictures kinda soon! Haha.

Have any of you ever been on this tour in L.A. or on any similar tours? What was your favourite part about the city? And any Pretty Woman fans in the house lemme get a heyyyy!