Day 2 Recap (Wed Feb 9)

[Scott] The sleep was about as good as could be expected on bedrock. We spent Wednesday exploring the Hollywood and Beverly Hills areas. We drove down Rodeo Drive, at which time I locked the doors to prevent my wife from jumping out and spending our budgeted money for Down Under. Beverly Hills is a truly amazing area. Neither of us have ever been in a place where the mansions are one after another for miles upon miles. It's sort of like a civilized safari to see how these celebrity "animals" live. We then went on a search for "the sign" in Hollywood. Took a nice drive over the hills on Mulholland Drive and saw the sign as well as a nice view of LA...as nice as it could be through the smog. After we got back to the hotel, we walked around downtown Hollywood and saw all the stars on the sidewalk on the walk of fame. I still can't believe Terry Bradshaw has a star. Are they referring to the same Terry Bradshaw I'm thinking of? Back to Hollywood. Both the people and the architecture of the area have alot of character, however they don't seem to put alot of emphasis on keeping the area cleaned up and sharp... I guess they put all that budget toward beautifying Beverly Hills. Not surprisingly, we saw the most and largest movie advertisement billboards we've ever seen. This is the most NY Pizza joints I've seen outside of NYC, and it's not bad for the opposite coast. You've heard all about the bad traffic in LA...it's much worse than you could imagine....and all day long. It requires very aggressive driving to keep up. I was screamed at and honked while driving a few times today. I think I figured out that apparently you're not allowed to make any left turns on the major streets here. We're both glad we got to see this area, but we're looking forward to getting out of the city. We have one more night at our hotel with the comfortable bed, and tomorrow we hope to see a few of the star's mansions and go to Venice Beach before heading to the airport.