Day Thirty Five: Universal

Los Angeles is quite cool in the morning and often cloudy but it soon becomes a bright sunny day. We were going to enjoy the good weather at Universal Studios. There are a few different ways to get to Universal. You can go by taxi, get a shuttle or take the train. We chose the train. The station is a five minute walk from our hotel along Hollywood Blvd. Then it is only one stop to the Universal Station. Then you get a free shuttle up the hill.

Star that has contributed so much to Hollywood

Wall mural in the train station. Love the Cactus!

We arrived and it was sunny. It was a bit confusing trying to find where we were supposed to change our voucher for tickets but it turns out we need to go to the group sales desk. Once we had our tickets and front of line passes we made a beeline straight for the studio tour. They take you around the lots and filming may be happening while you are there. There is also a King Kong 3D experience and some other little extras that I will let you discover if you go. Overall it was interesting and a lot of fun.

Purchasing the Front of Line Pass was definitely the right decision to make. You get to skip the line once at all the rides and you get reserved seating at the shows. We never waited more than 5 minutes for a ride and at one point during the day the wait time for the Transformer 3D ride was 120mins for non-pass holders. Despite Heng's apprehension about fast rides he went on all of them and none were too terrifying.

Wisteria Lane from Desperate Houswives

Watch out Heng!!

Animal actors show

Going down to the second half of the park

Megatron.

There's a minion on my head

I have been to Universal Studios in Japan and Singapore. I thought that this Universal had a little bit of a confusing layout but you have the Studio Tour, which the others don’t have. It was a great fun day.

Above our hotel is a hill and on top of the hill is a restaurant called Yamashiro. This means mountain castle in Japanese. It is an amazing Japanese structure with gardens around it and was built a long time ago. We loved the fell of the place and you get beautiful views while eating. The food is fusion food and we had mixed feelings about it. Heng asked them to make vegetable tempura instead of seafood tempura and we were less than impressed. The batter was too heavy and they covered the tempura in mayonnaise.

What a beautiful restaurant

Garden inside

View of the city

However I ordered the Wagyu beef with vegetables and the whole dish was fantastic! So delicious!! Heng had Sushi for the main and it was adapted to be vegetarian too. That was ok. Then we had their dessert sushi. It was really good! The rice was sweet rice pudding and all the “fish” was actually fruit. It was a fun dish. This is an expensive restaurant but we concluded that if you order from the menu and don’t ask for changes it tends to be better.

Delicious Wagyu beef

dessert sushi

I thought since I had been in America during the summer I should get a tan. It doesn't seem to have happened so I thought I would go all out for the last couple of days. Unfortunately this is the result below. (Ok maybe this was an accident...)

Beth "red lobster" Clarke

Day Thirty Four: Travelling Day

Another day on the move but not by car this time. We are flying from New Orleans back to Los Angeles. However that wasn’t happening until the evening. So we headed out to spend a little bit of time in New Orleans.

For lunch we wanted to try Gumbo. A sort of soup stew, it is a well-known New Orleans food. Not really to my taste I have to be honest. The flavour is ok but I didn’t really like the gloopy texture and all the bits of things that were in there. Oh well it was still worth a try.

Gloopy Gumbo

It was a short taxi ride to the airport and then we were on the plane and off to Los Angeles. We had organised a transfer from the airport and it went really smoothly. Sooner than we thought we were checking into our hotel, The Magic Castle. Our room was a one-bedroom apartment and it is bigger than our old house. Not sure what we are going to do with all the space, but it would be awesome for staying longer as there is a full kitchen.

Rotating toilet seat cover at the New Orleans Airport

Our living room

Our bedroom

We are only one block from Hollywood Blvd so it is convenient if you want to go see all the stars on the pavement and the Chinese Theatre. For dinner we headed to that area upon the recommendation of the staff at our hotel who are very helpful. They had recommended an Italian restaurant. The food was really nice. The lighting was really muted so I apologize for the photo quality.

Wine holders hanging on the wall

Delicious Spaghetti

Day Thirty Three: Alligators and Steamboats

A swamp tour was on the cards for today. It meant an earlier morning but we took that in our stride. There are lots of swamp tour options. It is hard to know which one to choose. Your first decision is airboat, which is speedy but more expensive or slow boat, which is cheaper but slower. Although you do get to see more wildlife when going slower. We chose the slower option mostly because I wanted to see as much wildlife as possible. So we settled on Ultimate Swamp Adventures. Our concierge at our hotel helped us book.

The swamp tour headquarters was not too far out of New Orleans. A little bit too urban perhaps. But once we were on the boat we soon left the houses and powerlines behind. We saw lots of birds, dragonflies and alligators. The guide attracts the alligators by throwing marshmallows, which they eat. Apparently the alligators have bad eyesight so large white marshmallows are easy to see. The guide then tempted them to jump out of the water with chicken on a pole.

A blue heron

I love dragonflies!!

Jump alligator!!

Our guide knew a lot about the area. His family owns a lot of the swampland. He was very knowledgeable about hunting. It was informative and interesting but I think if I went on a swamp tour in the future I would probably look for one that is more Eco focused, as I am not particularly interested in hunting seasons and hunting permits. Although if you want to hunt in Louisiana I can now give you some tips!

 

He did know a lot about the wildlife and vegetation as well. The boat went surprisingly fast in between slow bits so we could see the wildlife. Overall we had fun!

Nice water plant? A weed called the Japanese water hyacinth.

The alligator is coming!!

Working oil rig

White bird

In the afternoon it was time for shopping and exploring. The French Quarter (also where you find Bourbon St) has a lot of old buildings and history. There is a French Market there that has been used for hundreds of years. There are a lot of souvenir shops but also some nice arty-crafty shops.

Feels like Disneyland

French Quarter

The famous Café Du Monde was our first stop. It has been in operation for about 150 years. It sells coffee and beignets. Which are sugar coated donuts. It was super busy but we could see why. The beignets were yummy!

Cafe Du Monde

Yum yum yum

Yummy sugar coated beignets

For lunch I had some lovely Vietnamese Pho (noodle soup) at the French Market. We also had a snow cone as it was hot hot hot!!

Delicious Beef Pho

That evening we had plans. We were finally going to make it onto a dinner cruise. No missing the ship this time. We were there super early and were entertained by the steamboat as it has a pipe organ on the top. A very heat immune lady was up there playing for our entertainment. I feel for her!!

Playing use lovely music

Our steamboat

We had chosen the early dining as our concierge said that you see more after dinner that way. The food buffet was great. I loved the cornmeal-covered catfish. Desert was a bread pudding that was quite nice as well.

buffet dinner

dessert bread pudding

dining room on the ship

We spent the rest of the cruise out on the top deck looking at the Mississippi river and the shore. There was also a live Jazz band playing. The atmosphere was great!!

On the Mississippi

Engine room

Night time New Orleans

Beautiful boat, beautiful sunset, beautiful couple :P

Day Thirty Two: New Orleans

As we said in the previous blog we immediately like New Orleans. However as we were to find out we didn’t necessarily like the very hot humid weather that we had everyday in New Orleans. Today began a little sadly as we had to say goodbye to our car. So we dropped it off and now had to rely on our feet or another form of transportation.

 

We checked out the local farmers market but it was quite small. I am really beginning to appreciate how great the Canberra farmers market really is. In the afternoon we had a walking tour booked so we headed to the area where we were meeting the guide. For once we were very early so we did a bit of our own walking around and checking out the area.

Heng at the farmers' market.

The tour we had chosen is one of the tours by Free Tours by Foot. This is the website http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/new-orleans-tours/. There are many tours in different cities. The concept is that you pay what you like for the tour once the tour is done. You don’t have to pay anything at all if you don’t want to but we enjoyed the tour a lot and thought it was worth paying for.

First we were taken through the Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District. It was fascinating to hear about the history of the cemetery and New Orleans. The death toll in the earlier years was really high. It was sad to see lots of the names and dates on the tombs. Many of them were very young children.

It's the cemetery from the Double Jeopardy!!

One of the graves

Then we walked around the Garden District. All the houses in the area are old and large. Many with interesting stories that our guide was happy to tell us. Our guide was a lot of fun. She is clearly at home in New Orleans as she is a little crazy but I really enjoyed listening to what she was telling us about the area. A lot of famous people have houses in the area. We are not really the type that stalk famous people but it was still interesting.

The trees rule the sidewalk

Big old houses

Would you like corn on your fence?

It's for sale! I want it :D

Our guide, even the cat is interested.

After the tour we were really hungry so we searched for somewhere to have lunch. We ended up at an Irish pub. Where Heng had some very delicious deep fried mushrooms. I tried a beef po-boy, which is a type of sandwich. Very tasty but too much beef filling.

Heng is ready to dig in!!

Instead of taking the bus back to our hotel we decided on walking. It took about 40 minutes but there were many things to keep us entertained along the way.

A band to entertain us along the way.

A mask.

Very unique bin.

When you are in New Orleans you have to check out Bourbon Street at night. Thankfully our hotel was close enough that we could walk but not close enough that we could hear all the partying and noise when we wanted to sleep. It was Saturday night and everyone was out eating, drinking and having a good time.

Busy Bourbon Street

Heng and the musicians

This is what blue slushie does to you

For dinner we stopped at a nice restaurant where I had some great fish. The portions were huge and we struggled to finish.

Huge portion of fish.