Vacation Day 9: Hollywood Blvd and Venice Beach

Today we went down to Hollywood Blvd to see Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where all the stars put their handprints.  We took some pictures of some choice celebrities hands, Judy Garland, Arnold Schwarzenneger, and the cast of Star Trek among others.  While we were passing my camera back and forth taking pictures, it suddenly was being held by noone and went crashing into the cement. Crash.  Ruined.  Ah well, if you're going to kill your camera, better to drop it somewhere cool, like John Wayne's fist.

Next we took a tour of the inside of the theatre, given by a woman who thought William was the cutest thing ever.  We all wore head phones to hear the tour guide, even though she was right in front of us.  We rubbed a Chinese wax figure for good luck, and rang a gong that they used to use to tell everyone the movie started.  We went across the street to see Toy Story 3, but it was sold out, much to William's chagrin.

Mme Tussaud's Wax museum is next door to Grauman's Theatre, so we paid our $50 and went in.  I had a blast getting my picture taken with a whole bunch of celebrities.  William had less of a blast, and was kind of grumpy.  It's much easier to keep kids entertained at Disneyland than it is at a wax museum.  Some of the wax sculptures were eerily life like.  While others looked a little too waxy.

Adam bought a star map and we drove to Leonard Nimoy's house and took a picture of it.  Then we followed a star tour bus to what turned out to be the Playboy Mansion.  We took a picture of the gate (because that's all we could see).  Then we drove to Micheal Jackson's house, and got bored of seeing celebrity houses (this was mostly a trick to get a nap out of the kids anyway).  We then went to Best Buy, where Adam bought me a new camera and peace was restored to the universe.

We went to Venice Beach where I was hoping to go swimming but it was too cold and windy (possibly because it was 6pm already).  We walked around anyway because Venice Beach is super famous and crazy busy.  There were lots of buskers playing music and performing.  There was a guy dressed as a tree, and shops that sold T-shirts, sunglasses, and marijuana paraphernalia. We found a playground and William and Jadzia played until sunset.