Welcome to Hollywood

"Welcome to Hollywood, What's your dream??? Everybody has a dream." This was the opening and closing line in the movie "Pretty Woman". As for Gina and I we are living our dream by traveling this great country of ours.

Before we left California we wanted to take a tour of Hollywood. So Thursday morning we drove up to Hollywood. Here are but a few pictures from our trip. As always if you want to see more pictures just click on any photo and it will bring you to our picasa photo album and then you can see all of the pictures. Here is a direct link to the Hollywood pictures.

The famous Hollywood sign


The plaque explaining the history of the sign


Looking down Hollywood Blvd


Monument at the beginning of the Hollywood "Walk of Fame"

Just to give you a little informaton, there are currently 2,401 stars on Hollywood Blvd and Vine Street. As of 1978 it cost each recipent 25,000 dollars of their money to have a star. They only add 24 stars each year.

I couldn't pass up this star of Ronald Reagan


The view of downtown LA from Hollywood Hills


One of the Streets in Beverly Hills that is lined with Palm trees


The view looking down Rodeo Drive


One of many luxury stores on Rodeo Drive


The Hotel used in "Pretty Woman"


I swear that when I walked by Marilyn I thought she was real and I just had to have my picture taken with her. What they can do with wax is amazing!

Marilyn Monroe's star


The Kodak Theatre

The Acdemy Awards (Oscars) will be held here on March 7th. They were already setting up the road with bleachers and the fences to keep back.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre

This is where there are almost 200 handprints and footprints of movie stars in concrete going all the way back to 1927.

Gina placing her hands on Judy Garland's hand imprint

Capital Records


This is the building used in the films Ghostbusters and Superman


The house from "Father of the Bride"

Gina said the movie made the house look much larger.

The sign letting you know that you're in Beverly Hills


Greystone Mansion

The grounds around the mansion is now a public park. However the house is closed to the public. A lot of movies and TV shows have been filmed here. The house is used for special functions like fundraising dinners.

The Beverly Hillbilly's home


The last home of Lucille Ball


Here is the sign for Bel-Air

We learned that rich people live in Hollywood Hills. Very rich people live in Beverly Hills, Extremely rich people live in Bel-Air and only the richest live in Holmby Hills. Now to us there were big houses in each area. However, we both agreed we wouldn't trade our 396 square foot mobile home for anything that we saw. We like our large backyard (it's always changing)

This is a new house under construction. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what movie it will be in??


This is the house used in Dr. Suess.

There are no angles in this house, it's all curves.

What would Hollywood be without expensive cars.

How about this Bugatti Veyron? Base price is 1.7 million U.S. dollars and for that you can own a car that boosts a top speed of 253 mph at almost 1,000 horsepower.

I hope you all enjoyed our tour of Hollywood. We had a great time seeing all of the sights. We decided early that the only way we could see everything was by taking a tour. There was no way we could have seen everything on our own. We got a really great deal, two for one. That's my kind of price. There was only eleven of us on the van so it was a small group. We were the only US citizens on the tour. All of the other passengers were either from Canada, Germany or UK. Gina and I had a great time on the tour. After we finished the tour we continued our walk down Hollywood blvd taking pictures of stars on the sidewalk and taking in all of the sights around. We finally decided that it was time to say goodbye to Hollywood. It was an interesting day to say the least. Here is a direct link to the photo album with all the stars Walk of Fame

Hopefully this will be our last blog entry in California as we intend to head for Arizona Sunday morning. We're not sure where. But I can tell you that where ever it is Gina will be hunting for rocks. It's hard to believe we have been here in California for six weeks. We have enjoyed our time here with Thomas. However, it's time to move on.

Gina & I hope everyone has a pleasant and wonderful day, enjoying what our Father has so graciously blessed us with.