Making our California dreams come true: Hooray for Hollywood

Well seems my first impressions of the hotel were right. We had a crap sleep because the room was soooo noisy. The downside to booking a hotel near the airport is that its near the airport - actually under the flight path. I think we figured out planes stop around 3 am for a little bit and then start up again at around 5. We also had to adjust our clocks +2 hours so although it was 1 am we weren't really that ready for sleep. We found tennis on the TV - the Aussie Open in fact and watched that for a bit.

Anyhoo we wandered down to the breakfast room for our free carbohydrate load up. I had a make it yourself waffle which I must say was really good. The boys had a crappy coffee which again seems to be the usual.

We opted to walk around to the car hire place which was about half an hour which helped burn some of the calories I ate. We upgraded our car to a GMC Acadia so now we have a huge troupe carrier. Troupe and luggage!

GMC

With Tony at the wheel again we were off to find Hollywood. Our little GPS that we bought on ebay is rather moody but she managed to get us to our hotel with no real problem. I think Tony wanted a little more time before we had to get onto a freeway but he didn't get his wish - a couple of turns into the trip and we were with the masses on 6 lanes of freeway.

We got to our hotel about 4 hours earlier than we should have but they were really accommodating and let us book in on arrival at 11. Our rooms our quite sweet - no telephone which is a little odd but free wifi which is crucial to being able to sort out what were doing and were we are going.

View from Nate and Dons' room

Next stop was the local shopping centre for supplies. Gotta say I love the supermarkets in the USA. Its super handy to be able to buy sandwiches for lunch, painkillers, snacks for later, breakfast supplies and alcohol all in the same place. The place we went to today was called Pavilions.in West Hollywood.

We spent the afternoon adjusting to our new environs and getting psyched up to go to the Staples Center tonight to watch NHL ice hockey. Just before it was time to go we got treated to another fantastic sunset.

View from our hotel room window

We left at 5.40 pm for the 7.30 start, and it took us about 50 minutes to get there and park. Funny thing was that the trip to get home probably only took 12 minutes. What was the difference? Well the traffic into downtown LA was crazy. 6 lanes, bumper to bumper. The speed limit on the freeway is usually 45 miles on hour, but for the most of the trip into the city we were doing 20 or under. Cant say Id like to do that everyday.

Nate with his new LA Kings beanie

The Staples Center is simply amazing - fantastic facilities from casual to more upmarket dining, plenty of seats, amazing electronic jumbotron. The game was fun to watch, was pretty even but then the LA Kings scored. The crowd was probably the most biased Ive ever seen, maybe just really one sided. The players had a fair bit of agro towards each other that was also fun to watch.