Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hollywood & Santa Monica

Thursday was our second day in California, and we were gonna make the most of it!  We started out the day with breakfast at iHop then headed to the Paramount Studios for another studio tour.  The tour was not nearly as good as the WB Studio tour, but it was still interesting. 


This is the original main gate of the Paramount Studio...called the Bronson Gate.  This is the gate that Charles Bronson got his name from, not the other way around.


This is the actual bench from Forrest Gump...awesome!  We both got to sit on it!  The back lot of the studio was pretty small compared to the WB lot, but there were a lot of sound stages.  There was a section that used to be owned by Lucy & Desi that was created to look like her LA home and her NY vacation home so that reporters could make it look like she actually had a home life and wasn't such a workaholic. 

After the studio we went to Hollywood & Highland.  There is a pretty cool outdoor mall there as well as the Kodak Theatre and Grauman's Chinese Theatre.   We made sure to look at all of the footprints and handprints.  There were quite a lot...although some of the people who have a spot were surprising.



Across the street is the El Capitan Theatre, which is the Disney Theatre.  There is an old fashioned soda & ice cream shop there too, so we decided to stop in and have a sundae.  It was yummy...and I found the Disney Vault that hides all of the Disney movies that we aren't allowed to buy right now ;)


We also wented to the Hollywood Museum, which was pretty cool but not great.  There were 4 floors of movie props and costumes, as well as movie posters.  It was pretty cool.  There was a cool statue of Marilyn Monroe outside though.


We also went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, but I will discuss that later :)  We have more pictures that I need to sort out..  Thursday night we went to Burbank to have dinner with a friend of Shawn's named Brandon.  They grew up together in church and Brandon has been living out in the LA area for a couple of years I think.  We went out to dinner with him and his girlfriend, Cambria.  We went to a place called Barney's Beanery.  It was pretty good, huge menu, but we had terrible service.  It was nice to have the extra time to chat though.

Friday we decided we wanted to go to Santa Monica.  Bryce didn't have to work so he came with us.  It was a terrible gloomy day...raining off and on and pretty chilly.  We still had a great time though!  Shawn had to touch the Pacific Ocean of course!  We walked around for a bit, found a comic book shop, then went to Happy Hour at a Mexican place.  It was a good day. 


We went to bar that night near Bryce's place, which is just by UCLA.  Shawn drank too much.  That was our last night...and we ended our trip to LA with a bang!

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