hollywood tour

I'm not quite sure what I thought I'd be doing when I went out to visit LA, but I'm pretty sure "take an open van ride tour around Hollywood" wasn't one of them. However, I did get some pretty cool shots, we drove by Justin Timberlake's house and we had the pleasure of the most deceptively awkward tour guide.

Possibly ever.

After some breakfast at Tinwood Flats, with the obligatory mimosas of course, we headed down the street to hop on our tour...bus? It wasn't really a bus, more like an open top van? I dunno. Great breezes, though!  

The church from Sister Act

For all the opinions and thoughts I had on LA that traffic tho, you will never, ever hear me say that the landscape isn't beautiful. Because it is. Blue, blue, blue skies and mountains, mountains, mountains. It was a lot drier than I expected, but that was kind of beautiful, too.

Our tour then led us through Beverly Hills where we basically saw every famous person's house. All of them. ALL THE HOUSES. From what we could see from the road they did look really beautiful, but unfortunately it was really hard to get any decent shots from the car without standing up and violating about 6 tenements of motor safety. I do, however, have a vague idea of what it's like to live like Bruno Mars.

On the side of a bushy hill.

Overlooking a bunch of other rich, famous people.

Look familiar? Think Pretty Woman!

 
For some reason, this was my favorite part of the tour! I guess you'd call it the Fairfax area? Angelos what would you call it? The whole street and vibe really reminded me of Little Five Points in Atlanta. Though I'd have to give the graffiti trophy to Melrose/Fairfax because wow. I completely fell in love with that wall and one of the artists even found my shot on instagram and tagged all the other great artists in it! People promoting people, I love it. Seems like a pretty cool scene!


So after the tour was over, our Jekyll-Hyde of a tour guide goes from being an incredibly knowledgeable social tour guide butterfly to, I don't even know. Mandy asked him to take our picture and he stared blankly at us for a while before going, "Of all you?"

No. Actually we'd like you to do a creative piece with this random Spiderman impersonator we're planning on taking home.

YES OF ALL OF US.

Lawd.

It was so weird because he was a great tour guide, but probably the unfriendliest person I encountered in LA. And that's including the meth head. Weird.

On our way back to the car, Carrie and I stopped by the Chinese Theatre. It was so much smaller then I expected! Still really cool and unmistakably iconic, I just expected it to have more...grandeur? I don't know. It was like looking at a mini-version and I kept expecting there to be the "real" one somewhere around the corner.

Oh, and we went looking for the oldest hand prints and footprints we could find! Shirley Temple's wasn't the oldest (1927 was I think?), but hers was definitely my favorite. Tiny, tiny hands!

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I think I have about one more LA post to crank out? Last couple days and my thoughts on the whole trip. Actually I think I've decided on my next city as well! But that's for a different post :)

♡ jennifer