Leaving Los Angeles

Manda writes:

Manda's turn to write ...

What a busy day! I am currently sitting on board the NZ55 flight to Fiji. An eleven and a half hour flight ahead, so plenty of time to write up today's events...

The flight was not due until 7.30pm. With quite a few hours to kill, we decided to take an organised excursion with one of the sightseeing operators. The tour we decided upon was the 'Movie Stars homes' one. A cliché but what the heck, we're tourists and to come all this way and not check them out, kinda didn't complete the picture! Our driver, an endearing chap called Marcus (who incidentally reminded me of Coolio. Hell, the guy even sounded like him!), took us to the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills and Bel Air to see the pads of the rich and famous.

We went by the houses of Courtney Cox, Keanu Reeves, Tobey Maguire (to name but a few) up in the Hollywood Hills. Some of these houses didn't look that impressive at street level - we only got to see the gate or the garages. Marcus confirmed that they looked more grandeur hill-side facing. To think some of these houses are worth $5m and more.

Next drive-by was Beverly Hills - this is also where Madonna's house and Hugh Heffner's Playboy mansion are based.

Onto Bel Air and apparently, this is where the most expensive real estate is (out of the three). Probably because these are not only big but more spaced out from neighbouring houses. Janet Jackson's house looks palatial. Party removal men were outside Nicolas Cage's house - he'd obviously had a party the night before. My invite must have got lost in the post! Aaron Spelling (producer of Hart to Hart, The Love Boat, 90210 etc) also lives here. Apparently his house even has an ice rink and movie theatre. Marcus pointed out that despite the 100 odd bedrooms, the daughter, Tori, chose to move out as there 'wasn't enough breathing space'. Teenagers, hey?!

"So how do you know who lives where?" Ian asked. Well, according to Marcus, the company has its own resident spy who lives by the stars and knows all the gossip. Once they get wind of any new arrivals, someone goes down to city hall to check out the deeds. Houses are sometimes registered under the star's name, sometimes under the star's company name - these guys are good and even know the company names as well.

Driving down Rodeo Drive, Coolio-lookalike Marcus at the wheel.

Rodeo Drive was next - this is where all the designer shops are based. Perpendicular to this road is Wilshire Boulevard, where the Regent Berverly Wilshire Hotel resides. This hotel was featured in the film 'Pretty Woman'. We even went passed Boulmiche (shop/boutique) on Rodeo Drive, where Julia Robert's character, Vivian, was snubbed in the film.

The Regent Hotel on Beverly and Wilshire (AKA the Pretty Woman hotel).

We were dropped off at Hollywood Boulevard. Feet firmly back on the ground, we just mooched around for a few hours.

Manda spots Britney Spears' star on Hollywood Boulevard.

At 3.30pm, we were ready to depart LA. However, this was not to be a smooth operation! We were at the hotel at 3.30pm - thought we'd get there a bit earlier as we'd booked a shuttle bus for 4pm and was told to allow 15 minutes either side. At 4.30pm, still no sign of the bus so Judy, the receptionist, phoned to see what was going on. We were told that it would be there in 5 minutes ... 4.40pm and still no bus. We started to worry at this point as our flight was scheduled to depart at 7.15pm. Two phone calls later, the bus finally arrived at 4.50pm. Rush hour, excellent!

The driver was apologetic but still proceeded to do two more pick-ups before heading for the airport. "We are late. You were an hour late picking us up, now we are stuck in traffic and you want to do more pick-ups?". They blamed it on their control desk who had obviously messed up the reservations and times. This didn't help us though.

The second pick-up highlighted how big a mess-up it all really was. The driver was expecting two passengers, four came over. Slight problem, bus only had three seats left. While they were faffing over what to do next, we were shouting out, "Guys, we really need to get going! Our flight leaves in under two hours and it is now rush hour!". Did the company get the numbers wrong or were they trying to score another fare? Before we could find out, the four decided to grab a taxi instead. It was just as well as we were livid by this point.

The last pick-up was a lovely Scottish woman who had been here to visit her sister. "So, what time is your flight?", I asked. "8.45pm", she answered. "Guess what, ours is at 7.15pm!", I added. "No!", she said in disbelief. So I continued to recount the story. She managed to calm me down and take my mind off what was happening to us. She gave us excellent practical advise on what to do next - phone up airline to tell them we were going to be late. Ian and I were like bunnies in the headlights and could not think rationally! Good plan, we grabbed the driver's mobile phone and started making calls. But don't you just hate automated phone systems where the end result doesn't actually route you to an operator and just provides useless information?!

Anyway, we got to the airport at 6pm - about an hour before take off. Talk about cutting it fine! We honestly thought we were going to miss the flight, what with the stringent security checks. Luckilly, there were no queues and we got through fairly quickly. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the pilot and his crew at the check-in desk. I breathed a bigger sigh of relief when we overtook them at the baggage checks. There was no way they'll be leaving without us now!