Los Angeles

We left Sydney on Monday afternoon, after being seen off at the airport by John's sister, Bernadette. We had a short flight to Fiji and a brief wait at the airport - I forgot just how humid it could get there! We arrived at 6 in the evening, and it was dark, but hot and humid! Wow. The flight to Los Angeles was good. There were over a hundred empty seats on the plane, John was by himself in a row of four, with the row empty behind him. So as soon as the seat belt light went off Natalie went to sit with John and used the three extra seats for sleeping, and Rachel and I had the three seats to ourselves. I slept a bit in my seat, and Rachel stretched out as much as she could in the two seats, and slept for about seven hours! I couldn't believe it. She was in a really good, deep sleep, too.

We got to LA in the early afternoon of the same day, as we crossed the dateline and got back the day we lost going to Australia. We just stayed at the hotel that day, resting and making use of the spa-like facilities. The following day, this would be Tuesday, we spent exploirng LA. We got off to a later start that we had hoped, due to the jetlag, and got into the city, by train, at about 11 AM. We went straight to Hollywood and walked along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, reading all the stars on the sidewalk (I'm surprised there aren't more collisions among the tourists - almost everyone was walking with their heads down!) and taking pictures of some of the stars we recognized! We say Grauman's Chinese Theater (http://www.manntheatres.com/chinese/) and the Kodak Theater (http://www.kodaktheatre.com/profile.htm) and saw the Hollywood sign on the hill, albeit from a distance!




























Our main destination of the day was the American Girl store. For those of you that don't know of American Girl, it's a well-marketed 'toy' for tween girls, where you can buy a beautiful, well-made doll that looks like you. So you can get almost any combination of eye colour, hair colour, and skin colour. They also make historical dolls based on life in a certain era. For instance, Rachel owns Felicity, a doll from (I better get this right) Williamsburg in 1774. She has a best friend named Elizabeth (who Natalie has - and these two dolls do resemble my girls). They also make a New Mexican doll named Josefina, Kaya is the American Indian doll, Molly is from the 1920's, and the newest, Julie is the daughter of hippies in the 1970's. I think you get the picture. Anyway, all these dolls come with their own story books, and you can buy beautiful clothes and other accessories, including furniture, for the dolls. At the stores they also have a hair salon and hospital for the dolls, and a portrait studio, and a cafe. It can all be a bit much (especially for the menfolk), but they've really done their homework and developed a very popular product. I like the fact that in this day and age where there is so much junk out there for tween girls (you all know what I'm talking about) American Girl is pretty good. I'd much rather Rachel play with her AG doll that have anything to do with the likes of Miley Cyrus!!!














So, we had a good couple of hours at the store, John survived it (just), and we went back for one last look at Hollywood before heading back to the hotel and on to the airport for our late-evening flight home.