The first thing we wanted to do was get the tourist stuff out of the way. We went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater first to see the celebrity hand and foot prints. We were on the lookout for Marilyn Monroe, who we couldn’t find for a while until we realized we couldn’t see hers because it was always blocked by a crowd of people. You could tell hers was the most visited because her hand prints were darkened in from all of the hands that have touched it.
We were also looking for Frank Sinatra (obviously), and his was a little hard to find too because it was so old. His hands were almost as small as mine! We also found the Harry Potter cast, Star Wars and Shirley Temple.
Then we went for a walk along the walk of fame on Hollywood Blvd. We were surprised at how many names we didn’t recognize but also at how many people we didn’t think should have had a star.
It was pretty cool that Elvis & The Beatles had their own section in the Walk of Fame.
By the time we finished the long walk we were pretty hungry so we went to another place on our triple D list, in honor of mother’s day: Mama’s Tamales ;). We couldn’t believe how cheap everything was. Tamales were only $1.50! We decided to try one of each. Each one was better than the last. They were out of the pineapple and we were upset we didn’t get to try it.
We left Mama’s very full and satisfied, then we decided to do the next logical thing: Go see the Playboy Mansion. All you can really see is a gate (and if you’re lucky a peacock) so we left right away.
Next, we went to see Rodeo Drive where we saw our first (and only) celebrities! We saw the Jonas brothers and actually Larry was the one that spotted them! We weren’t sure which ones we saw (clearly, we’re huge fans), so we looked it up and turns out it was Nick and Kevin.
Next we stopped at "the witch's house." It's a house that used to be used in movies but then was moved to a Beverly Hills neighborhood. It's so creepy and cool looking, we couldn't believe people actually live in it!
Next, we went to Griffith Park to see the Observatory. The park overlooks all of Los Angeles and the Hollywood hills. It was a really cool park and the view was amazing. The observatory was full of information about the birth of the universe and had a lot of meteorites from outer space. We went outside the observatory to see the big telescope and saw the city from even higher up. We spent the rest of the afternoon until it got dark finding caches.
After many unsuccessful attempts at ordering good Chinese and Thai food throughout the trip, we had high hopes for LA thanks to one of our favorite shows, The Big Bang Theory. And The Palms Thai restaurant finally delivered! For $7 an entre, we got the best Thai food we’ve ever had! The restaurant has an Asian Elvis impersonator that sings next to a bronze statue of Elvis in platforms. It was really weird, but he was actually pretty good!
