Hooray for Hollywood

As I mentioned, we recently made a quick trip to LA. While we were there we stayed at the Hollywood Celebrity Hotel. This hotel was highly recommended to us by Simone and Tim and it did not let us down. The rooms were basic, but provided all we needed after a long day of touring. The staff were extremely helpful and a basic breakfast was included. Oh, did I mention the location - FANTASTIC!!! The hotel is located right behind the Kodak Theater.... All for only $132/night!

Anyway, it so happened that on the day we arrived, it was the premiere of The Bourne Ultimatum. We wandered down to the theater and started the celebrity spotting.... Now, I don't know if I'd call him a celebrity but look it's Larry Birkhead (father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby).

Ok, you should know who this guy is... Mmmmm, Matt Damon!

And finally a close up of Julia Stiles.

I'm not sure if Brad was convinced it was worth standing in 85 degree heat for an hour, but I think a one second glimpse of Matt was well worth it!

The following day we headed down to one of my favourite places in LA - Santa Monica! While we were there, we got some great shopping done on 3rd Street Promenade before wetting our feet in the Pacific Ocean.

Friday morning we were up bright and early to get our tickets for The Tonight Show. We received our tickets at NBC at 8am, then headed over to Universal Studios for a few hours.

While we were there we took the Studio tour and got to see movie and tv sets from some of my favourites!




It's the city hall from Back to the Future (minus the clock tower)




Where's Terri Hatcher? On Wisteria Lane of course (they were actually filming that day)!

Don't go in... to the Bates Motel from Psycho!

The wreckage from War of the Worlds...

After a few hours at Universal, we headed back to NBC for the taping of the Tonight Show. It was a great show with Kevin James (King of Queens) and the guy who swam in the Arctic Circle as guests. Once again, we left NBC and headed back to Universal to finish our day. Needless to say, we were exhausted!

It worked out well that on our final day, we had booked a tour of the movie stars homes (we needed to give our feet a break)! A few of the highlights included....

Elton John's new house in Bel Air - shaped like a piano of course!

Jack Nicholson's house - Love the tennis court on stilts!

Leonardo di Caprio's house - unfortunately we didn't get an invite in!

All in all, we had a great time in LA - a great place to visit, but I don't think I could ever live there!