“Some nights I wish I could go back in life. Not to change shit, just to feel a couple things twice” – Childish Gambino

Hi everyone! Today marked our 4th and final day in Los Angeles. The day started off with a great sleep last night (finally!). Ended up getting a solid 8 hours on top of the 4-5 in the arvo. Ronnie woke up well rested but unfortunately still sick. We checked out around 10am. In the hotel lobby everyone was crowding around some guy taking pictures of him and fawning. We thought it must’ve been some celebrity. Turns out it was some guy who won survivor a Tony Vlachos. Not so exciting! To make up for that here is a picture of Ronnie with a real celebrity…..mannequin.

We then Ubered down to Hollywood. Aimee packed way too much shit in her bag and couldn’t fit anything else in. Ronnie also bought some souvenirs for our nieces so we posted a fair bit of stuff back home. Pretty expensive to do that we found out. 12 pounds cost us $104USD, Yuck! We then walked the Hollywood walk of fame, which we felt was pretty overrated. It’s dirty, smelly, there are people everywhere trying to sell you shit. We did see quite a few cool peoples stars but other than that – definitely not worth it. We would recommend skipping this.

While we were in Hollywood we hit up In-n-Out burger. We have heard a lot about this being the best and freshest fast food. We ordered a double double with animal style fries each. As far as fast food goes – it has be on top of the list. Fresh ingredients that are never frozen really makes a difference. Though it was very busy there, it was worth the wait.

Then we Ubered to Griffith Observatory which is at the top of the south-facing slope of Mt Hollywood. The views from here of all of Los Angeles were absolutely spectacular. Though you can clearly see the dirty smog lingering over the city. An unexpected highlight was the planetarium located inside the observatory. We bought tix to the show they had on. It was really fun, the presenter with a cool voice did a full presentation about human knowledge of the universe and the history of astronomy. It was awesome. You lay in these chairs and the whole dome ceiling is a huge screen. It’s hard to explain but so good. It goes to show that a lot of the best moments when you travel are the ones that pop up unexpectedly.

Then we went to Santa Monica pier. We absolutely loved Santa Monica pier. We thought it was stunning. The boardwalk has beautiful views of the beach, lots of little restaurant and shops as well as a mini theme park with cool little rides. It has probably been our favourite place of the day. We went on this little rollercoaster and got some ice cream and walked the boardwalk for a while. We had planned to go to Venice beach but we ran out of time as we had our Contiki meeting at 7pm. Traffic in LA is beyond a joke. Every drive takes forever – It’s the worst.

We Ubered back to the hotel and went to meet our Contiki peers and tour manager. At this meeting our tour manager Braden gave us some info about tomorrow including having to meet in the lobby at 7:15 tomorrow. There are 54 people on our tour which is a full bus – It is going to be huge. We met about 10-15 people from our tour and they were all lovely. Most people are from Melbourne. Two girls actually knew each other and didn’t know either one was coming on the tour, a big coincidence. We are looking forward to sharing the next 26 days with these people. Some people are on a tour called the Southern Adventure that lasts for 13 days and ends in New Orleans. Others are on the Grand Southern like us who do 26 days and finish in New York. There are also a few lucky people who are on a tour called the Epic Adventure which lasts for 55 days and circles pretty much the whole country.

Anyway after the meeting we think a few people were going out but it seemed that most were going to get an early night for the early wake up and a big day/night in Vegas tomorrow. We decided to do that. We went across the road and grabbed Taco Bell which was combined with KFC for dinner, which was honestly bad. We are ready for real food. We think our decisions from here on out are going to be smarter. Less fast food cause honestly it’s not even yum and it makes me us feel bad.

Thanks for reading and we will see you all tomorrow with a story from Sin City.

Much love

Ronnie & Aimee.