Shopping, Hollywood and the beach

On Monday we went shopping. In one of the information books in our hotel room Jill found an advertisement for an American Girl Store and wanted to go there. Wow. It truly was a store like no other! The advertisement says it a store that every girl dreams of - and I think they're right. They have books and movies and dolls to buy (we were mostly interested in the books). They have a cafe with sittings for lunch and tea and dinner. They also have a theatre. They even have a doll hospital and a doll hair salon! (Just in case your little brother wrecks your doll's hair or something like that) We had a great time there.

We also checked out a few other great stores. Then we headed off to Hollywood. That was really fun! We walked up and down Hollywood Blvd to see the the stars on the sidewalk. I took this picture for my dad:



If you look up in the right hand corner of this picture you can see the Hollywood sign. We tried to get closer but couldn't figure out how to get up there...so this was as good as it got.



Apparently Mulholland Street is a famous one (I had never heard of it but Allen had) so we drove up it. Talk about a twisty turny narrow road!! It was crazy to see all those houses built into the side of the hill.

A lookout point on Mulholland Street


We hummed and hawed about touring Universal Studies or Paramount Pictures - because we drove right by both - but the kids really wanted to go to the beach, so we headed off to Santa Monica. I think they had as much fun at the beach as they did at Disneyland!! They loved gathering shells, playing in the sand, and hucking seaweed at each other (yuck!). It was a great time.

Peirce really loved the palm trees of California. This is a 'mini palm tree' that we found in Santa Monica!














After we were too cold to play in the water anymore we went up to the playground. What a playground it was!! I found out later that it is called Muscle Beach. It was as much a playground for adults to exercise on as it was for kids to play on. They had monkey bars for adults that were QUITE a challenge. There were 60 year old men doing push up on parallel bars with their toes on the bars, and people doing an exercise class, and a couple who seemed to be dancing while keeping hoola hoops going for 20 minutes at a time as well as people doing the craziest things on the equipment there. What a fascinating place!






Another GREAT day!!