Day 19 - Rialto to LA 89 miles (2969 miles so far)
“So we’ve come to the end of the road…”
We woke up this morning really late with only 20mins til checkout time because we stayed up late last night to buy Skunk Anansie tickets at 9am UK time.
Basically the street the Wigwams were on went all the way to LA even though it was over 60 miles. It was essentially the greater LA metropolitan area so it was just town after town of the Inland Empire area and they were all the same, will the same shops, the same fast food joints and the same scenery as it went along the south of the mountains.
K was very excited to get to San Dimas cos she thought that she would get to see Bill and Ted - there was no sign of them sadly. We hopped on the Interstate for the final part of the journey and then we arrived at Santa Monica where we parked and took loads of photos. The we did a bit of shopping and I got a Pinkberry to cool down - FroYo with mango and blueberries on top, yum.
Then we left the ocean behind and headed back into LA to check in to the hotel. We drove down Santa Monica Boulevard the whole way which was great, we drove through Beverly Hills, Century City and West Hollywood before arriving in Hollywood proper. The hotel is great, it is about a five minute walk down to Hollywood Boulevard and it is quite fancy but not too fancy so that it is uncomfortable.
After we checked in we walked down to Hollywood where we went to the historic Mels Drive In (no longer a drive-in) for dinner. It is a proper old school diner just off of Hollywood Boulevard that has been there since the 50s. I had a cheeseburger and K had a burger, they were really good but the real excitement of the meal was that a celebrity came in for food - with a bodyguard! We don’t know who he was but other people were excited and did I mention - he had a bodyguard!
After that we strolled down Sunset to Amoeba, the most amazing record store in the world - and the largest in the US. Before our visit we went to a coffee shop across the road that we went to on our last visit called Groundwork - very nice and great for people watching. We went to Amoeba and went a bit crazy on ‘new country’ compilations and got the Sugarland album. Even though we brought our ipods and itrip with is for the journey we haven’t used them at all - it has been country radio all the way and we are now connoisseurs of the genre so we wanted to stock up before we went home.
Our next stop off was at an arty shopping/entertainment complex called Space 15 Twenty which had a brilliant design/architecture bookshop where we perused for a bit then went to the bar for a wee (soft) drinkypoo. We walked up the trashy end of Hollywood Boulevard feeling sorry for the people who have their stars down there then went to Starbucks - it is important to keep hydrated in the heat is my excuse. Then we got to the nice bit of Hollywood and we went into the Hollywood and Highland Centre for a little walk about. After that I am ashamed to say that we came back to the hotel to watch the end of the American Idol Final, I am ashamed but glad because I am knackered!
The wifi in the hotel is just in the lobby so I will upload this in the morning.
Tomorrow we are going to see the Late Late Show being filmed, the guest is John Waters!!!!!!!!!!!! I am excited, we better get in (one time we had tickets to see something being filmed at the BBC and didn’t get in cos it was full, this better not happen tomorrow).

(sitting outside at a coffee shop on sunset strip - how cool are we?!)