LA

Thursday 18 October

Our second day in LA and by eight o’clock it was back on the bus for a morning tour of Beverly Hills and Hollywood.  The drive took us from one end of Wiltshire Drive to the other and then a stop in Hollywood Boulevard to take a walk along the path of famous stars and celebrities.

Cruising Wiltshire Drive

In and around Beverly Hills

Many streets of the rich and famous in  Beverly Hills

Shopping anyone (with a few thousand to spare).

What a shame we were too early for Beverly Hills

Leaving Beverly Hills.

The famous Hollywood sign.

Downtown Hollywood

Ted managed to find John Fogerty's star.

The famous Hollywood theatre

Ted managed to find some friends

The enterance to Universal Studios

After a couple of hours it was off to Universal Studios where fourteen of the group spent the rest of the day. At this point it was farewell to those who had taken the morning tour but not joining us at Universal Studios, our driver Dennis and Tour Director France.

All of a suddent there was rain and flash flooding!

A plane crash in LA!

After a great day first taking the Studio Tour then splitting up to try and cover as many of the shows. First we took the Studio Tour which gave a good tour of the movie lots with several areas with effects and it was a great introduction to the park. It was after the ride that we split up to explore the other shows which included 4D Shrek, Studio Tour, WaterWorld, TransFormers  the Ride 3D, Terminator 2: 3D, The Blues Brothers and Jurassic Park the Ride. Because we had to make our own way back to Downtown LA we agreed to meet at 5.00pm and travel back together on the Metro. Although getting the “Tap” card from a machine for the ticket became pretty trick, between the fourteen of us we finally worked it out. The ticketing system is similar to our Metrocard although the cost of the card was only a dollar and the train trip $1.50.

Ted getting up close with Jaws

The WaterWorld show was full of thrills and spills

After riding the metro and successfully finding our way back to the Hotel we all had dinner together before retiring for the evening.  This was our last dinner as the next day our little group would be splitting with Anne and Jeff picking up a rental car and driving back to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon, while Glen, Teri, Graham, Shirley, Lloyd and Judy flying out to Hawaii for a couple of days before flying home. This was the official ending to the Cosmos tour and we were back to being free agents.