Lights, Camera, Action! Honeymoon in Hollywood

AND WE’RE OFF!!!

Day 1 of our 2 month honeymoon across Latin America.

We had a LONG journey ahead of us before our first hotel/hostel/camping bed of the trip. Alan and I are flew from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, USA for a day visit. We arrived early in the morning and collected a hire car from Hertz, then started a long drive to Universal Studios. We were only in Los Angeles until the evening so thought to spend our day enjoying one of the many theme parks that L.A. has on offer.

Priority 1 of the day was for me to get my hands on a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks. Sadly, we do not get these in Australian Starbucks (possibly because our winter doesn’t align with Christmas?). It was just as delicious as I remembered it to be.

We visited Harry Potter World, visiting Hogwarts and the town of Hogsmeade with its many shops. Throughout our day at Universal Studios we continued to see so many people wearing cloaks and carrying Ollivander’s wands, you can definitely see its one of the theme park’s biggest drawing cards.

Alan and I enjoyed the many rides on offer including one at Jurassic Park where we got absolutely soaked. We were very fortunate that we visited Universal Studios mid-week as it was reasonably quiet and meant that we didn’t have to queue for most rides. Felt sorry for the people who paid an additional $100 for ‘Front of the line’ passes. We also did the Studio Lot tour and for some reason did the Fast and Furious part 1.5 times as there was some fault *shrugs*.

My highlight of this visit was the Animal Show, which I fondly remember from my childhood. It is an incredible show with dogs, cats, ducks, guinea pigs, chickens, rats, owls, parrots, doves and pigs all doing amazing tricks.

Lunch was enjoyed at Krusty Burger in Springfield from the Simpsons. Surprisingly, it was a delicious burger and what sealed the deal was the crinkle cut fries. More places should offer a crinkle cut chip! We then moved onto Moe’s Tavern and enjoyed a non-alcoholic Flaming Moe.

To end our day in Universal Studios, we returned to Hogsmeade and had an alcoholic Butter Beer at the Three Broomsticks. This was delicious and reminded us of eggnog.

In the afternoon, we drove to The Grove to peruse the shops and pick up some items that we didn’t have time to collect in Sydney. We couldn’t buy too much as we would have to carry it for 2 months through South America. Also, given we were returning through L.A. at the end of our honeymoon, we figured shopping would be the priority in two months time.

We returned to the airport sufficiently exhausted, so much so, I almost left my mobile phone in the rental car! Even though we arrived to the airport hours in advance of our flight, we had to queue a ridiculously long time to check into our flight with Copa Airlines and ended up having less than an hour to spare for dinner before the flight.

We boarded our flight at 11pm, heading to Panama City. Sleeping was made easier for the fact that we had a very long day, but definitely not the most comfortable of flights (particularly as my screen would not switch off and was locked on a bright blue screen of death).

We arrived in Panama City in the morning, and had a 4 hour layover before our connecting flight to Buenos Aires. The airport terminal wasn’t the greatest (although I hear they are building a new international terminal so hopefully the next time we travel to Panama this will be completed). The only win of this stopover was seeing Bear Grylls as we were walking through the airport!

Next destination… Buenos Aires, Argentina.