Beverly Hills Travel Guide

Travelling by domestic air within the United States, at least you don't have to go through the process of being grilled by customs each time. Instead, you just have to contend with the ever-present smiling bald guys in the departure lounge who stop you on the way past to tell you that they're from Texas or Salt Lake City and would like to know if you've found God. I usually tell them that I haven't, but that if I see him I'll be sure to let him know that they're looking for him. Why is it that people in airport departure lounges never ask me to join one of those cults where you get to watch TV all day and have endless sex with a stream of wives? I could go for that. It's mainly the ritual suicides I have a problem with. On my first night in mainland America, I have somehow been booked into a hotel within the golden triangle of Beverly Hills - a small area bounded by Wiltshire Boulevard and Beverly Drive and considered the upmarket area of the city. I'm starting to think my travel agent must've fancied me or something, because this is the second hotel I've had in America which seems totally beyond my means. I certainly have no complaints, that's for sure. The rooms at my hotel start at $180 a night for the most basic, but that doesn't really come as a surprise to me considering I'm only one block from Rodeo Drive - home to the most expensive shops in the world. On Rodeo, I didn't see any famous faces but couldn't really think of many other people who could afford to shop there - chic boutiques sat alongside jewellery and clothing stores such as Tiffany, Gucci and Cartier, all displaying prices that resembled telephone numbers on items that could probably be bought outside of Beverly Hills for a fraction of the price. A few of the stores, in fact, are so up themselves that they don't even bother to open their doors unless you phone for an appointment beforehand - and then they send a limo around to collect you personally, so you'd better be planning on buying something. There's nothing particularly spectacular about Rodeo, and if you're expecting me to tell you that the streets are paved with gold or that the shopfronts are studded with diamonds then you might be a bit surprised - in fact, you could easily walk straight through the place and never know you'd been in one of the most famous streets in the world. The shops are all plain white fronted stores which don't even particularly look much like shops, but then nobody goes to Rodeo for the architecture. On the corner of Rodeo and Wiltshire is a more traditional shopping arcade called Via Rodeo, a winding modern street of shops and cafes where you can actually afford to buy something and say you shopped on Rodeo. Tourists usually choose to stand on the grand stone staircase leading up to the precinct and have their photographs taken under the Rodeo Drive sign. This is where I discovered just how helpful Americans can be - I was approached by a young lady who just happened to be passing, who offered to take my photo under the sign as I was clearly on my own. As soon as I had positioned myself and she had lifted the camera to take my photo, we were both approached by another passer-by who assumed that we were a couple and wanted to offer to take our photo together under the sign. Although embarrassing for all concerned, this really was a great introduction to the friendliness I can obviously expect from this country over the coming weeks.

You can read my complete travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

As soon as I step out of my hotel in Beverly Hills, I am surrounded by beautiful people in "Hey, look at me" cars and wearing Versace everything! There's a small café a block down which is open twenty-four hours a day and would happily sell me a donut if I re-mortgaged my house to pay for it, but apart from that there isn't really an awful lot to do. About the only thing I wanted to do before heading for Hollywood was the obligatory tour of the local movie star's homes - everybody who comes here absolutely must do this, it's the law. Before leaving Los Angeles, you have two choices. You can buy a ridiculously expensive map to the movie star's homes from an ever-present street vendor and then walk about all day striding up to heavily fortified gates and peering through, which, lets face it, must really piss the stars off. Alternatively, you can pay somebody to drive you around in a bus so that you can point at large mansions and say to the guy next to you how disgusted you are that somebody has wasted all their money on a big stone monstrosity like that while secretly seething inside that you can't afford to live there yourself. The tours are run in small mini-buses which take punters on a two hour drive around the community areas within the most famous zip code in the world - Beverly Hills 90210. According to the large signs outside the imposing gates of the mansions, most of the star's homes are heavily guarded by high tech security equipment and wired up to a privately owned local armed response team - so anybody thinking of paying an uninvited visit can probably expect to have men with dogs pointing assault rifles in their face before they get up the driveway, but that's probably the sort of over the top response you might expect from the famous. In Britain, we actually have policemen to protect our citizens and don't usually allow local companies to set themselves up with heavy duty weaponry and offer to come round and shoot anybody stepping over our property line without permission, but we're funny like that. The residential areas of Beverly Hills are the only part of the city not on the block system, so streets here are pleasant palm tree lined winding avenues like in Europe - and the average price of property in 90210 is between three and nine million dollars, so if you want to live here you'd better start saving now. The fire hydrants are all painted silver instead of red as they are elsewhere in the States, and are apparently filled with Mineral Water. Most of the residents of the area are old time movie stars like Ronald Reagan, who now lives full time in Beverly Hills with Nancy, and TV personalities of times gone by such as Lucille Ball. However, the younger generation are starting to get in on the act as well - Leonardo DiCaprio has an enormous place up in the hills - although most of them tend to stick to places like Miami and Malibu where the nightlife allows them to behave badly on a more regular basis.

You can read my complete travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

There are several tour companies that operate outside the chinese theater on hollywood blvd. The celeb crib trip is a must, and who knows, you might even see Will Ferrel washing is car in his boxers! Accomodation in hotels can be over priced, a good hostel will do fine if your running on a budget. The food is typical american, eg, you can get your fastfood every hundred feet, but you can get your upperclass restauraunts too, choose wisely as the bill may give you a heart attrack!