Stav in the USA 2010: Las Vegas to Los Angeles

I caught the shuttle back to the airport to pickup the hire car. I got another Chevrolet Cobolt, this time a 2010 model. This one had the factory alloys, cruise control and traction control over the 2009 one I had on the east coast. So I began the long drive to Los Angeles.

A lot of people must go to Vegas for the weekend, cause the traffic was horrible. At one point we were crawling along and basically it looked like we were in the middle of the desert. Lesson learned don’t try and drive from Vegas to LA on a Sunday arvo. It took me around 8 hours to cover the 500ks.

First stop the following morning was Universal Studios. The studio tour I heard was pretty good so I was keen to do that. First I wandered around the park to see what was there. There were the rides but also different things from different movies. There was a car from the Blues Brothers and also a regular show. Plenty of Simpsons stuff (including a Kwik-E-Mart) and Shrek things to be seen. I also spotted a couple of cars from the Fast and Furious movies (Skyline, Charger & Grand National), before heading to the line for the studio tour. The line was huge. It wound around under an undercover area, probably similar in size to a basketball court. However it was all worth it. The tour was amazing, and it shows how clever the film makers are. The 360 3D experience of King Kong was unbelievable, with a return to Skull Island.

After Universal Studios I headed up to see the Hollywood sign. I went up to a spot up near Lake Hollywood and took a few pictures. It offers a reasonable view of LA and some of the surrounding area.

My last stop in LA was Hollywood Boulevard. I wanted to see some of the stars on the walk of Fame. I didn’t hang around super long here as it was starting to get dark and I didn’t really want to be on the streets of LA after dark.