Rodeo Drive & Hollywood

After our evening at the “Shake It Up” studios in LA, I wanted to drive down Rodeo Drive.  I actually really wanted to just walk into one of those stores…just for the fun of it, of course.  :-)  However, they were all closed!  I think Scott planned it that way!  I got some fun pictures anyway.

Eat your heart out, Aunt Cyndi!

Strike a pose

It was really cold, but they were having a blast!

The girls hanging out on Rodeo Drive

This display was actually in the ground along the sidewalk.

This is one of the displays in the ground.

One of my favorite window displays

The next morning we packed up to head to San Francisco via Hollywood so we could see the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame.  Crazy, I know, but since we were that close, we thought we’d drop by just so we could say we’d seen it.  So Scott first Googled a walk of fame address to plug into the GPS, and we were off.  When we arrived, there were people everywhere… everywhere!  We found a place to park and got out to see whose names we could find.  Before we got to the right street I looked off into the distance, and there up on the mountain was the Hollywood sign.  Didn’t even have to make a special trip to find it… it was right there in front of us.  Checked that one off the list!

Welcome to Hollywood

You can barely see the Hollywood sign in the background above Emilee's head.

Then the four of us started walking down the street with our heads down looking at the stars on the sidewalk.  We probably looked like a bunch of goobers, and it’s a wonder we didn’t run into people since we weren’t watching where we were going.  There were lots of names we had never heard of, but here are a few of my favorites.

Ya gotta love Shirley Temple

From my favorite show, "Little House on the Prairie"

Well hello, Pilgrim

Walt Disney

That wascally wabbit!

Shrek

As we were finishing up in Hollywood, we made one last stop at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  There were so many people on the sidewalks that it was hard to get through.  We spotted a guy in a Zorro costume as we were walking by, and he said, “Would you like a picture?”  I’m sure you can imagine my response.  So the girls were posed on either side of him, my camera is poised and ready for some clicking action, and then he says, “I pose for tips… is that okay?”  Well, it’s a little late to spring that one on me!  Did you see the “sucker” sign written across my forehead?  So I take the picture and hit Scott up for a buck to give to “Zorro.”  Then “Zorro” wanted all the Murphy girls in the picture.  Fine… but a buck is all he got!  When we closer to the theater, we saw several costumed characters.  This time I wasn’t falling for the “I pose for tips” routine, so I snuck pics of them.  Wish I’d saved my buck for Mickey or Spidey!  Although my favorite was the FREE pic of the girls with Shrek – he was a statue, so he couldn’t ask for tips!

Paid a buck for this!

But I got to hold the sword!

 

 I snapped this pic just as he was turning around.

He probably wanted a buck too, but I took off

before he could ask for one!

We found the hand/footprints in front of Grauman's Theater

The best things in life are free!

On our way back to the car I got one more fun picture.  Scott had seen this before on his business trips to New York, but I had never seen such a thing.  It was a tiny public parking lot where the cars were stacked on top of each other.  They would drive the car into a parking spot and then lift it up so they could park another car underneath.  This lot had only two car levels, but Scott said the ones he’d seen in New York were stacked five or six cars high.  Very clever!  Too bad the Zorro character didn’t think of that idea… he could have made more than a buck!