A walk of fame

Hollywood Boulevard

After many hours of surfing, I found that the best place to park one's car if you're paying a visit to the famous Hollywood Boulevard is at the Hollywood and Highland Center. The Hollywood and Highland Center is a shopping complex and they have a basement parking providing validated parking. Validated parking meaning you buy something from any shop in the complex and get them to chop your parking ticket. So when you pay your parking ticket, you'll only be paying $2 for the first 4 hours instead of $1 for every 20mins.

Because it's the Christmas season (ok, i know my post is outdated), we're again greeted by a huge Christmas tree as soon as we stepped out of the parking lot.

A sign of Christmas

Attractions in Hollywood includes the 'HOLLYWOOD' sign on the hill top.

Tiny little Hollywood sign

Walking out from the Hollywood and Highland complex onto Hollywood Boulevard, the first thing I notice is the 'stars' lining the sidewalk.

Poor thing, those celebrities, everyday also get step by people

Just beside the Hollywood and Highland complex is the Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Chinese likes dragon alot

This is where you can find all the footprints and hand prints of Hollywood celebrity.

Some printing is on gray tile but some is on red tiles

There are many people there snapping photos of the hand and footprints. And the super heroes are there to keep the place safe from evil monsters and bad guys.

Spotted: Batman, Captain America and Spiderman (don't know who's on the far left though :P)

The truth is, the super heroes are there to earn some bucks by getting tourist to take pictures with them. See what's in Mr. Captain America's hand? Unlike in Universal Studios where you're free to take pictures with Spongebob or Frankenstein, you have to give the super heroes tips after taking photos with them, or else they'll use their power on you.

Oh look, there's Jack Sparrow and Mr. Ugly Octopus...er, and 2 kids

Other attractions on the Hollywood Boulevard includes Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum ($12.99), Guinness World Records Museum ($15.95) and Hollywood Wax Museum ($15.95). As we're a bunch of cheap labours from Penang, it's not really affordable to visit those museums so what we do is snap photos of it and pretended we've been there.

Ripley's Museum just across the road

Postcard from Hollywood to all

We then walk along the Walk of Fame for a few blocks until we reach the farmer's market on Ivar and Selma Avenue. It is an open-air market, selling vegetables, fruits, plants, handcraft, food and there's also performers and musicians.

Lotsa people and stalls, in the background is CNN building

As it was nearing lunch hour, so we had our lunch in the market.

We just sit by the pavement and eat away our food

Found some Thai people selling satay there, yum yum...but i think it's a bit too expensive costing $1 a stick. What to do, so far from home and I missed satay so much.

Big, nice looking and sweet strawberries are also on sale in the market

After the lunch and market walk, it was almost 4 hours already, times up for our validated parking. Walked back to Hollywood and Highland complex about one miles away to get our car.

Beverly Hills

We didn't have everything planned out for that day. So we just flip through the map and see where we wanted to go. I'm the driver of the day, so my responsibility was just to drive. We've got 2 map readers guiding me where to go, and the decision is to go to Beverly Hills.

Palm trees lined the street full of big houses and a Porsche zooming past

In Beverly Hills, we didn't know what's the attraction or where should we be visiting because the map didn't have the introduction. All of us had been very busy with our work before Christmas that we did not actually surf for info on what's interesting in Beverly Hills. What I know from movies is that Beverly Hills are home to rich people, that's all.

After driving along a few streets looking at nice houses, we just stop at this park with big 'Beverly Hills' words displayed. It's a park with green grass, a few artistic sculptures and a few homeless people lying in the sun (check my Picasa album for photo, link provided below).

The big letters

Ahh..here's the van we traveled in for 5 hours all the way to LA, Dodge Caravan

Nothing much to do there except snapping photos. After awhile, we leave the park heading to the Santa Monica beach. Again, I'm the driver and 2 map readers guided me all the way there.

Santa Monica

The beach of Santa Monica is very wide, from the start of the sand we have to walk so far to reach the sea water.

Can only see little bit of the sea from here

There were people cycling, roller-blading, doing gymnastic activities such as juggling and standing on their hands and kids building sand castle. No people in bikini though as it was quite cold.

There was this place like funfair just beside the beach. They have throwing games, ferris wheel and simple roller coaster.

This is the Venice Boardwalk

The time was about 3.30pm when we reach the beach. Walking around the beach and taking pictures was all I did. No intentions to touch the water because the sand near the water seems to be muddy (i'm wearing sport shoe). Furthermore, in the winter I'm sure the sea water is cold. The sun was about to set so I decided to stay for awhile more and wait for the sunset.

Almost sunset

The sun sets at about 5pm during the winter. Many people awaits the sunset at that jetty in the photo above. Everyone with their cameras ready in hand to take the best view they can get.

Boat passing and birds fly by as the sun sets into the ocean

While the sun is setting on the West, the moon started its shift on the East. I very much agree on the Chinese phrase saying that 'the moon oversea is rounder' because whenever I see a moon in US, it is always so round and bright.

Ferris wheel and the purple skyline

Griffith Park

In the evening, we went to the Light Festival at Griffith Park. It is like a drive through where all the lights are on the left hand side of the road (only one way traffic) and people just slowly drive along the road and watch the decorated lights. As my earlier limited net surfing found that there would be a massive traffic jam in the park, I decided we'd walk rather than stuck in the jam. So in the cold of the night, with temperatures just below 50F (10C) we walk.

After parking our cars, we saw this Starbucks truck distributing hot chocolate!! Wow, it feels so good to have a cup of hot chocolate in a cold night.

The drink tasted so good, I think I had a total of 3 or 4 cups

On top of the hot chocolate is whip cream. My guess is that the whip cream is placed on top of the chocolate to prevent heat from escaping from the drinks. So that the hot chocolate remains hot for a longer period. Or maybe there's no such reason for it, maybe it's just there to make the drink taste better. Am I thinking too much?

This is the kind of lights we see on our 1mile walk, more light photos in Photo Album

Other than the thousands of light bulbs, we were also accompanied by sweet Christmas songs. Nice sound system by the way. Other than the uncomfortably low temperature, all was good. Walked to the end, then walked another 1mile back to the car.

This lights in the picture above shows a motion of the dinosaur eating the plants. The lights blink from the higher neck to the lower neck. Because it's the night mode, the shutter speed is slow and I captured both the high and the low neck in the same picture. :(

So much walking in one day, walk in Hollywood, walk in Beverly Hills, walk in Santa Monica beach and walk in Griffith park. What a good exercise...

More walking awaits in the next day as it's the day we head into Disneyland!!

For more photos, go to my online album: Hollywood Boulevard
(The link might be invalid after some time if my online storage gets full)