La-La Land.

We're in San Diego now, but thought we'd tell you a little about our time in LA. We stayed at Banana Bungalow Hollywood, with the Walk of Fame literally on our doorstep. This has been the nicest hostel we've stayed at, with a big room, fridge, microwave, cable TV, own bathroom - all the luxuries we've missed on our travels. Oh, and it was clean.

Anyway, we were just down the road from the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre - my hand twin is Jack Nicholson, while Liz's was Doris Day, as you can see in the photo. Quite a couple. Hollywood is a little run down and full of 'smoke shops'and tattoo parlours (how many bongs could you possibly need?), but there are some cool costume emporiums, if you wanted to impress at a fancy dress party.

LA in general is a little difficult - everyone drives their car everywhere, and seem to spend their entire lives in traffic. We relied on the buses, which were ok when we knew where we were going, but it takes forever to get from one location to another. However, Santa Monica and Venice Beaches are well worth the journey.

While Santa Monica is a nice place to enjoy the view from the world's only solar-powered Ferris Wheel and relax, Venice is Freak Central and all the better for it. In our short time there, we saw a moving statue guy row with a grown woman with her nipples showing (and her young son), the most argumentative basketball game ever (between friends), a freak museum which got Elizabeth excited ultimately to leave her feeling quite disgusted (she was enticed by a two-headed turtle) and what appeared to be a spontaneous psychadelic dance circle. I'm pretty sure they all had horrible hairy sex with each other later.