What a crazy week it has been. So much has gone on and it went by so fast. I can't believe I am already back from LA. I started off by borrowing on of the girls bags to take with me since I broke mine on the way down here. But apparently there is a trick to the handle and once it is up it is difficult to get down. No big deal, I decided to just leave it down. I got to the train station to head to Philly the night before we were to fly out. I wasn't even sitting there 5 min before I realized I forgot my glasses. Not a good start to the week but it ended up that was the only thing I forgot. Not too bad. I got to Philly with no problems and we only had one traveler in for the night. The next morning was a 4:30am meet-up at the airport. The other 3 travelers arrived on time and we were off. As we were walking onto the first flight one of my travelers tells me he is not feeling well. Already holding his stomach. My thought was "oh great...this is going to be an interesting flight" Turns out he just gets nervous at take off and landing. All was good. No delays, no big issues. Switched planes in St. Paul, which is a really big airport. Then we got into LA. LAX is a terrible airport. There are a ton of people and it is laid out very bad. I had to go meet some other travelers and at LAX you can't go from one terminal to the next. So I had to go through security again just to get back into right beside where I came in. What if people had flights from different airlines and had to catch connections? Luckily I had plenty of time. It took a while and a little bit of running around but we had everyone picked up and on the bus. The driver was very rude and ended up getting lost on the way to the hotel. He had to pull over and call someone to help him get us there...it was kind of funny. Check into the hotel, room assignments are done, then rooms are changed and everyone is happy. We walk to dinner at this place called Mel's. It is supposed to be pretty good and they are ready for us when we walk in. Always a good sign with a group of 24. It goes downhill from there. It takes longer for us to get drinks than it does food, some end up with the wrong order, some end up not having food at all. It was a big disaster that took forever. They could have received a lot of business from our group since we eat out every meal on trips, but we were not going back.
The next day, thursday I think, I started out with 2 of my girls waking up super early and deciding to leave their room to go sit outside, or wonder the halls, or wake up everyone else. It was great! We headed to breakfast at I-Hop. It was nice, service was good and we walked down to the strip. We noticed a guy running across the street with a camera. We think that he has to be running to catch photos of someone famous...we are in Hollywood. We see him a few minutes later on our side of the street running through everyone. It was the Amazing Race people. There was a team right there running in the middle of us looking for a specific star on the Walk of Fame. Who knows, maybe we will be in the background when it shows on tv. A pretty cool way to start off our trip. We went on a city tour of all the famous Hollywood home. I took lots of pics but now don't remember who's house was which one. But oh well. It was pretty interesting but got a little boring in the end. 2hrs of looking at houses that you can't really see because of the gates and shrubs is only so entertaining. After the city bus tour we went to the wax museum. That was really cool and I got a lot of pictures. It was interesting to see how these figures are made and they are so accurate. It is crazy how short most famous people are. The only one that I was disappointed in was Jennifer Aniston. It did not really look like her and I had to read the board to figure out who it was. The travelers had lots of fun posing with the figures. That night for dinner we went to California Pizza Kitchen. The service was great and the food was amazing. I was surprised at how many choices they had and it was all really good.
The next day was Universal Studios. I ended up only having 2 travelers with me that day since it was a lot of walking and rides and a couple of my people did not want to do it. It worked out well to have such a small group. We ended up getting to do more that they wanted to do. We took a train down to Universal and we had one traveler get scared on the train. Then it was a short shuttle up to the gates. It was mass craziness trying to get everyone into the park and our passes to not have to stand in line but once that was done it was perfect timing for the show of Waterworld. One of my girls wanted to sit in the splash zone so we did but we didn't get wet. It was a neat show and a good way to start the day. Next we all went on the ride through the movie sets. That was really neat. There was a 3D park with King Kong that was pretty cool, although a few travelers got really scared. Then we got to sit through the earthquake set that was used in Bones, again a few travelers were scared. But my girls loved it. I was kind of disappointed in the rest of the park because it was a lot of wait around for a show or attraction to start so we weren't able to get very much in. We did the Shrek show, which was 4D and the girls really enjoyed that. Then we tried to go to the The Terminator 2 one. Once you go in it had this computer talking to you explaining how the designers are the top technology company in the world and blah, blah, blah. Once it had almost gone through its little greeting a couple times it got old and they came over the speaker to tell us that they were having technical problems and we would have to come back. Go figure! So we didn't get to do that one. A little bit of shopping and it was already time to go. Dinner at the Hard Rock was really good and it was nice to cool off. Everyone was so exhausted from the day and once we got back to the hotel it was off to bed. One of my girls that had chosen to stay back ended up calling her staff and telling them that she couldn't go to Universal because she was too slow. Lol...the staff was kind of upset until she learned what really happened.
The next day was a trip to the Autry Museum. I was pretty excited about this. They were having a little farmer's market outside so we went there before we went in. Farmer's markets are so neat and I finally got a water fresca. That made my whole trip! It wasn't as good as back home and I still plan on getting one as soon as I get home but it was still great. Went through the museum with a tour guide and he was very knowledgeable and did great with our travelers. I had a really hard time staying with the group and kept getting distracted with everything to look at. After lunch our travelers went shopping and I got to go back in to look at the room with all the guns. We didn't get to it on our tour so I went back. Got lots of pics. We panned for "gold" and made a movie. It was a really fun time. That evening we were suppose to go on a tour of the Dolby theatre but did not get there early enough so we went on an open bus tour of the city. It was a little chilly sitting on the top deck, we could not hear the announcer, I stubbed my toe getting on, and it was a lot of the same stuff we had already seen. But we just sat back and chatted and enjoyed the fresh air. After the tour we went back to dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Once again we saw the cast of Dance Mom's. This time they were waiting with us to be seated. I chatted with one of the mom's for a few minutes and found out they were there for a month and she was ready to go home...lol. I even got a pic with the dancers. It was pretty neat, but only to me since the other staff did not know who they were.
We got up a little early the next morning to go on the Dolby theatre tour. It was kind of neat to see where the Oscars are held. It is a really big deal. But we couldn't take any pics and we were in a rush to get back to the hotel to meet the bus to head to Venice Beach. I absolutely loved Venice Beach. We did not get to stay there nearly long enough and I could have stayed all day. The shops were neat, the beach was beautiful and the people watching was so much fun. There were the places of course that had the medical marijuana and I just had to laugh at them. All that hard work on our debate last semester a reality. They even wore green scrubs standing outside yelling for people to come in and "visit the doctor" LOL. We left there and went to Santa Monica Pier. There were a ton of people there. We ate at Bubba Gump. It was pretty neat. The view was great and the service was good but it was one of those places you go just to say you have been. We did not make it far on the pier because of all the people and the limited time but that was ok with me.
Monday was a really early morning to go to The Price is Right. They were really accommodating and let us in to sit instead of waiting in the long lines. Most everyone skipped the interview process but it was a lot of waiting around in lines. We were there about 6hrs and the tapping itself was only a couple of hours, if that. The studio was a lot smaller than I expected and they didn't even let anyone take in phones. It was a neat experience and there were some cool shirts and some crazy people. Some of our travelers were not very into it so I'm sure the cameras were trying to avoid us. But there was a guy in the row right in front of us that was called up. He was going crazy! He fell getting out of the isle, hit his arm on the lights on the stage running up to the front and was just funny the whole time. Drew Carey was really funny with him and it will be great on tv. This episode won't air until Nov. 15th, but who knows. Maybe we will be seen. Lots of people won some really great prizes and I knew that they had to pay the taxes on the prizes before they got them but I didn't know that they didn't get the prizes until after the air date but the taxes have to be paid within 30 days. Kind of crazy. That was the day that the song "Can't Have You" was sang every 5 minutes and was stuck in every one's head for the rest of the trip. That night was dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. Dinner was great and the service was pretty good. Lots of good conversation and a great way to end the trip.
Flying home the next day was a really long short day. We were at the airport by 8am to get everyone to the right terminals and on their flights in time. I took my 4 travelers through security and it went well except there was a bottle of sunscreen in one of their bags and we had to stop and get it rescanned. One of the other girls freaked out about it taking so long but overall not too bad. We got on our first flight and found out that one of the other flights that had 9 flying out was cancelled and 8 of the 9 ended up staying another night in LA. Both of our flights were smooth and everyone was picked up relatively quickly. We ended up getting into the hotel about 1am. Losing 3hrs made that day really long. But I got a nice quiet night in a room to myself. It was great to relax and have some time to myself before returning to the shore house the next day.
It has now taken 3 days to get this blog done and I will have to do another one soon to catch up on the craziness going one since I got home. But in short, I passed my roommate on my way in as she was heading out for her Orlando trip, we lost our nurse this week (not a big loss), and we have a 1 on 1. So this makes staff pretty stretched. I am in the process of moving down onto the travelers floor into the nurse's room. It is a nice, cosy room but it will be different being down there since I am now used to my view and having a big bed and a roommate. But it will be good.
Oh...I forgot about the rash that I had the whole trip. I noticed my chest was itching the day I left for Philly but just thought it was from a sunburn since I had been out in the sun a lot the previous couple of days. But by the time we landed in LA I was miserable. One of the other staff had some benadryl and anti-itch cream and I used it like crazy but by the next morning it was on my arms as well. I took the benadryl all week and it finally went away the day we left to come home. I am still not sure what caused it.
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