TPIR and The Rest

So, our official Rose Parade Tour is over, so we chose to move to a different, less expensive hotel for two more nights and see a few more sights. We had a few hours where we were homeless-we couldn't check in to our new hotel yet, but we did check our luggage. We moved to the Hampton Inn and Suites in Los Angeles Here's a link. It is a BEAUTIFUL small hotel. It's not in the BEST neighborhood, but it's a really nice hotel and a great location to see things.

It's January 2nd, Iowa has just lost fabulously in their bowl game, the Cheez-it Bowl. Our hotel gives a little goodie bag when you check in, here's what was in our bag. LOL!!

There is free breakfast, but we had to get moving early each day of our stay, so never got to try it out! But I LOVE these chairs that are in the breakfast room! Anyways, off we go! So, my younger sister, Anita, lives not too far away from where we are staying. And it's my day to be at the beach. Her and her hubby drove down from their mountain to see us and we went to Santa Monica Pier.

We had a delicious lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

And the day was beautiful!

The Santa Monica peir is the end of Route 66, and has so much to see. There's an amusement park, there's shops and games and all kinds of fun!

Me, My sister and MCR. 

We couldn't have asked for a better day! I only wished it lasted longer! But it was important to get a good night sleep, we were off to our taping of The Price Is Right in the morning.

I ordered tickets to the taping Here. Then a few weeks after I got tickets, they sent an email telling us our taping would be for a TPIR at Night episode and that it would be a Super Bowl Special! We were asked to appear in NFL team gear and represent our favorites! I ordered a San Francisco 49ers jersey, George Kittle-he played at Iowa and was good, and is really good now! MCR went with the home team Vikings! It was a rainy morning, but not cold, and here's the line when we arrived. Thankfully, we had Priority tickets and moved to the front of a different line!

Here we are in line.

And here we are getting our name tags-notice were were just a number before this!

And just like I imagined, there is a person sitting there writing names on stickers one by one.

Here's MCR getting named!

And there is the photo op!

Our episode will air on Feb 7. It will be a night time episode, so look for us. This is us in the room where all the contestants are seated, then in groups of ten we went to be interviewed. Now the fella that provided the room with information told us that they look for folks who are loud and excited and crazy. 

Not exactly our vibe, but hey, we're in Hollywood and we can ACT! Our 10 person group was led into the room for the interview and the yelling and jumping around and excitement started! Everyone in out group was very excited and enthusiastic. I thought we all did really well. Well, you'll have to watch the show, but I can tell you, we were not selected to Come On Down.

It was late by the time we got done at the taping, we took an uber back to the hotel got changed and got tickets for a tourist, see the stars homes tour! I booked us on a Surf City Tour, but it turns out most of the differently named tours are run by the same folks. Anyways, we boarded the 4:00 tour bus and were off like a bat outta hell! Up the mountain! Seriously, our driver had skills! We were hanging on for dear life! 

The bus drove us past a lot of movie sites, the hotel where Richard Gere climbs the fire escape in Pretty Woman, Terminator, quite a few others.

I got horrible pictures! The sun started setting, and it was beautiful! But the fast bus made it almost impossible to get good pictures!

Our driver was also pretty funny-he realized we were mostly looking at gates and fences but made funny jokes and chatted up everyone on the bus.

If you wanted to hike up to the Hollywood sign this is where you'd park to do that. No thanks!

Nice views of LA. I loved this view!

I was stupid and chose not to bring a coat, but as the sun went down it got COLD in the open sided bus!

There were a lot of beautiful homes in the Laurel Canyon area. I can totally see why folks would choose to live there.

Ha, I caught a car! 

Absolutely stunning views!

Very twisty turning roads up and down the mountain. 

I'm sure the bus driver told us whose homes were hanging on the sides of the canyon, but I didn't retain that information.

And unfortunately, I really only got pictures from one side of the bus. 

These adorable young boys were on the other side, it was funny the bus driver would say things like, you know the Puff Daddy? The kids would look at him like he was nuts and then he'd say you know P Diddy? And they'd go all, yeah, yeah! It was funny they were too young to know almost all of the star references. But they had a good time!

Anyway, we made our way down the mountain into Beverly Hills.

It was starting to get dark and it was really a beautiful evening-chilly for the dummy who didn't bring a coat though.

This tour was totally worth the $40! I'd recommend it to anyone-but bring a coat if you're on the late tour! Take a look at the gas prices $5.29. On Sunset Blvd, across from the Whiskey-a-Go-Go.

And then before I knew it! Off to home!

All the junk in my back pack bag.  So glad to be home. I got a little bit of beach time and had such a good time with My Cousin Robin. 

Next year when I watch the Rose Parade, I can say I saw that live!

Off I Go! Part 1

My cary on bag and my "personal bag are packed with room to spare!

And Hubs dropped me at the airport and I breezed through the TSA check and boarded the plane without a hitch!

It's a full plane going from CID-PHX then PHX-LAX! I used Uber to get from the airport to our hotel in Torrance and met with MCR (My Cousin Robin) let the vacation Begin!

First day in LA! It's New Years EVE! Our Tour group with Diamond Travel arranged several options for us to choose from. We chose the city tour to get the lay of the land.

First stop is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the LA Philharmonic. It's a famous building and designed by Frank Gehry, and we were told it has spectacular acoustics.

Here we are!

We walked down the block to see the view from this part of Los Angeles.

Lots of tall buildings.

And the Concert Hall is beautiful!

On we go to Hollywood Boulevard!

There are these food/drink vendors all over the place!

We took the escalator up to the top of the Mall at the Chinese Theater aka The Dolby Theater to see the Hollywood sign.

Here we are again!

There are a lot of tourist things to do on Hollywood Blvd. 

And lots of thigs to see-If you're a people watcher-there are PEOPLE!

And there's even a Target!

On we go to the Farmers Market!

We had lunch at this stop. The first farmers market in LA started out in  1934 as farmland then a gathering place that soon was covered by a roof for year round markets. 

There are grocery stall, restaurants, food shops, candy stores, just about anything you could want is here! It's HUGE!

Here's a look inside one of the larger World Market Stores.

Pretty plants growing all over the place!

Back on the bus we are headed for Venice Beach!!!!

It was described to us a a Hippy Place. 

And it's kinda true I guess, it seemed to me more like a lot of folks who wanted to be outside at the beach. 

It had been stormy recently in the area so the waves were kind of rough.

Such a beautiful day!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKDuNVoFEpLQ2hSXA  Here's a little video. I love the ocean! I couldn't wait to get my toes in the water! Very COLD water!

And then the bus took us back to the Hotel. I could have stayed at the beach for HOURS! Oh well, some is better than none! We decided to take an uber to a nearby steak place for supper. There had been a disturbance in the area near our hotel the night before, so walking around in the dark did not seem like a good idea. 

A nice ribeye and a nice sirloin sure hit the spot! 

Now we had to get an uber back to the hotel, but there were none available, hmmm, well we'd try to get a taxi! Thankfully that worked out just fine using the yellow cab app! One thing we are finding is that, for short ride, Taxis are much less expensive than Uber. SO now we know!