On our last full day in the US, we decided to skip around town and see a few of the sights.  We found the ‘Father of the Bride’ house!  It’s in Pasadena.  They actually used two houses in the movie – one for the front and one for the back.  This, of course, was used for the front.  So fun!  It was so interesting to see it in reality, even though it was decked out for Halloween.

And then westward to visit the sign.  I noticed while we were in the States that the concept of mountain monogramming wasn’t unique to Hollywood.  There were several locations we spotted in the US that did similarly – sometimes whole words, sometimes just initials, but obviously without the degree of fame of the Hollywood sign.

Another balmy day in LA.

And then a short drive south to the Walk of Fame.  The traffic on Hollywood Blvd was craazyyy.  The Walk of Fame extends for quite a distance, and over a few streets.  We just concentrated our efforts around the Chinese Theatre area.  Frankly, we didn’t really like downtown Hollywood. It was a little Las Vegas-like – kinda seedy, complete with overweight middle-aged men in Spiderman suits, endeavouring to convince us to pay for the privilege of having our picture taken with them, and every five metres someone hawking a tour of movie stars’ homes.  We enjoyed the few sidewalk stars we visited, but were pretty happy to move on to the next stop.

Phil and Carol, this one’s for you. 🙂

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Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, famed for hosting movie premieres.

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We meandered our way along Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard, through Beverly Hills, along Rodeo Drive, to eventually end up at the Santa Monica Pier.  This is John pantomiming a roller-blade routine.

After hopscotching our way here and there on Route 66, we finally came to the end of the road.

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Home’s just an ocean away.

Such wide, wide beaches.

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We wandered over to the Santa Monica Place shopping mall in search of Starbucks caramel latte sachets (cough*Kathryn*cough), and so that Josh could pick up a gift for his friend, Ben.  On our return to the car we discovered there’s always time for a game of ‘jump the car’ on the pedestrian bridge over the Pacific Coast Highway.

Manhattan Beach was our location of choice to have dinner and watch the sun go down.

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John and Josh disappeared in search of fish and chips (which, incidently, is a mite trickier to obtain in the US than it is in Aus), while the rest of us soaked in the beautiful evening.  When the fellas returned, we went right down to the end of the pier and ate there, huddling somewhat in the shelter of the lee side of the aquarium, as a brisk wind had blown up by then.

Turning our thoughts across the ocean, and toward home.