Leaving Santa Monica for a day-trip to Hollywood:
In Santa Monica we’re staying at the Holiday Inn Express and they supplied us with an affordable limo to take us to see some of the famous sights of Hollywood.
Hollywood boulevard:
This is the street that passes both the famous “Graumans Chinese theater” and the so-called “Hollywood Walk of Fame”. The place is crowded with tourists, with street actors and with star look-alikes. This is also where you find the concrete-cast hand- and footprints of lots of filmstars. From Humphrey Bogart to Donald Duck, from Shirley Temple to Clint Eastwood.
This (Hollywood Boulevard) is also where you’ll find all the stars imprinted in the sidewalk, some famous and some not so famous (not to us anyway)
As you walk along the sidewalk there are lots more, you’ll literally be walking on stars
There is one more thing to see while you’re here:
The Hollywood and Highland Shopping Mall!
Basically it is a themed shopping mall, along the interior staircase there are illuminated pictures of winners of the “Best Picture Academy Award”. Inside there are lots of different stores and all the sort of things that you expect to find in a mall. But what really stands out is the elephants.
They are actually left from the Babylonian scene in D. W. Griffith’s 1916 epic, “Intolerance”
The sheer size of them is just crazy; totally in the spirit of Hollywood.
Where else would huge sitting elephants be a natural part of the skyline?
Just outside on the sidewalk there are lots of “actors” imitating some moviestar and the odd street act but you can easily get through all that this place has to offer in a couple of hours and you wouldn’t even have to rush.
But, thank you Hollywood – tomorrow we head for Palm Springs!
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